Read with caution: Cleaning companies may never be the same again! I've come to Kate Atkinson late in her career: I can recall surprisingly vividly my mother's water damaged, crinkly paper copy of Behind the Scenes at the Museum teetering on the side of the bath - an avocado kitsch bath - from my childhood… Continue reading One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson
Author: The Book Lover's Sanctuary
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Wakenhyrst, Michelle Paver
This was my first Paver read having heard some good things about her, and it thrust me straight into a solid Gothic historical yarn with some genuinely creepy moments! The novel is perhaps misnamed: it focuses on the house Wake's End set beside the local fen, some three miles from the village of Wakenhyrst; and,… Continue reading Wakenhyrst, Michelle Paver
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The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon
It is no secret that I love my fantasy. I cut my reading teeth on fantasy - thank you Tolkien and Eddings and so many others! I love the way that the freedom of a fantasy world can throw a light into the contemporary. I love the sheer fun and spectacle that can come with… Continue reading The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon
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Lost Acre, Andrew Caldecott
This is a deliciously quirky trilogy of novels! Many many things in the books, Rotherweird and Wyntertyde should not work, and yet they somehow do. Gosh! Wyntertyde had left us on a cliffhanger: a second mixing point was discovered; Bolitho was revealed as Fortemain and then dispatched; the vile Calx Bole had succeeded in resurrecting… Continue reading Lost Acre, Andrew Caldecott
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A Map of Days, Ransom Riggs
Some series just don't know when to die. But I guess, if you get acclaim - and money - for it, why stop? Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's series was enjoyable enough as a piece of popcorn reading. And the books were better than the awful film - but that's not saying much. In the first… Continue reading A Map of Days, Ransom Riggs
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The Comforts of Home, Susan Hill
How does Simon Serrailler recover from a vicious assault at the hands of paedophiles, which left him on the verge of death? How does Serrailler manage his post-traumatic stress disorder? Entry number nine in Susan Hill's DCS Simon Serrailler series picks up where the previous novel, The Soul of Discretion, finishes: Serrailler is in hospital… Continue reading The Comforts of Home, Susan Hill
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The Pisces, Melissa Broder
Why is it that the words of female sexuality - and of female anatomy - are either rendered taboo or fetishised in our society ? Vagina. Clitoris. Vulva. Menstruation. Compared to "cock", there is a different quality in these words. A frisson of shock and challenge. And that is a frisson which Broder does not… Continue reading The Pisces, Melissa Broder
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The Rosie Result, Graeme Simsion
I’m not a person with autism any more than I’m a person with lesbianism. I’m lesbian. I’m autistic. When I get a cold, I have a cold; I’m a person with a cold and I want to get rid of it. Medical help appreciated. But being autistic and lesbian—that’s who I am, and I’m not interested in anyone trying to cure me of who I am.
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Lanny, Max Porter
Lanny Greentree, you remind me of me.
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The Salt Path, Raynor Winn
Part memoir, part nature book, part social commentary, The Salt Path kind of fails to be any one thing. Had it not had a local interest for me, I am not sure that I would actually have finished it! The local section came - obviously - towards the end. It was a Sunday Times best… Continue reading The Salt Path, Raynor Winn
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Circe, Madeline Miller
Divine days fall like water from a cataract, and I had not learned yet the mortal trick of counting them.
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Edgedancer, Brandon Sanderson
Sanderson's Stormlight Archive and the wider Cosmere is a fabulous creation interweaving various worlds into a universe with a coherent and cohesive magic system... if magic be the right word for the investiture process which borders on the scientific. It is certainly more precise in application than most magical powers in fantasy. As a rule,… Continue reading Edgedancer, Brandon Sanderson
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Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
There are some books you want to love so much, but which - for some reason - you cannot. There's a barrier between you and what you think you should feel about the book. And this is one of those books. There is so much about it that chimed wonderfully with all the things I… Continue reading Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
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My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
Next up, from the Women's Prize Longlist came Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, an interesting parallel to Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater. It is an intriguing little novel - a mere 240 pages, for those for whom that is relevant, not much more than a day or weekend's read - and remarkably effective in the… Continue reading My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite
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Spring, Ali Smith
Look what arrived this week: an ARC of Spring, the third in Ali Smith's gorgeous Seasons Tetralogy, following Autumn and Winter. Autumn being hailed as the first post-Brexit novel - and it is so much more transformative and lyrical and funny and tragic than that! - the timing of this novel's release at the end… Continue reading Spring, Ali Smith
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Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi
I have lived many lives inside this body. I lived many lives before they put me in this body. I will live many lives when they take me out of it.
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The Mitford Murders, Jessica Fellowes
What a classy cover! Don't be judging a book by its cover, but even so... classy! I want to describe it as being in an art deco style but I'm not entirely sure what that term means... Similarly classy is the pedigree of the author: Jessica Fellowes is a well renowned journalist and editor; she… Continue reading The Mitford Murders, Jessica Fellowes
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The Soul of Discretion, Susan Hill
Trigger Warning: child sexual abuse and rape. Ah, Susan Hill, you seemed to have taken a different direction with this book from the rest of the Serrailler series. Had the gentility of Lafferton started to wane for you? Was there only so much you could do with the cloistered - and I choose that metaphor… Continue reading The Soul of Discretion, Susan Hill
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A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I often find - as I mentioned in my previous post - a post-Christmas lull in my reading. The cold dark days of January, which this year… Continue reading A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Rotherweird and Wyntertyde, Andrew Caldecott
Of coracles and crosswords... You know what they say about judging books by their covers? Well, I did with these because they are lovely lovely covers! I was also aware of Caldecott, a respected QC in media law with a string of high profile cases to his name - and what appeared to be a… Continue reading Rotherweird and Wyntertyde, Andrew Caldecott
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30 Day Book Challenge: Day 20!
Heading - finally - into the last ten entries with A book with an unreliable narrator I do love me an unreliable narrator since reading Poe. Oh The Tell-Tale Heart! You know you've made it when your novel is restaged by The Simpsons! I love that shifting uncertainty of these narrators: how are they misleading… Continue reading 30 Day Book Challenge: Day 20!
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30 Day Book Challenge: Day 19!
Taking advantage of a rare quiet moment, let's throw another entry into the 30 Day Book Challenge, namely today An audiobook you like because of the narrator's voice. Now, before selecting a book, I'm going to relate a terrifying incident from my student days. My early student days. Imagine, if you will, a young and… Continue reading 30 Day Book Challenge: Day 19!
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30 Day Book Challenge: Day 18!
Returning to this Book Challenge - I fear optimistically as the prospect of returning to work looms! - we meet Day 18 and A book you like by an author no longer living. Now, as I've said before, I've had to read widely and enjoyed a huge variety of books written by people who have… Continue reading 30 Day Book Challenge: Day 18!
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Melmoth, Sarah Perry
Look! It is winter in Prague: night is rising in the mother of cities and over her thousand spires. Look down at the darkness around your feet, in all the lanes and alleys, as if it were a soft black dust swept there by a broom; look at the stone apostles on the old Charles Bridge, and at all the blue-eyed jackdaws on the shoulders of St. John of Nepomuk. Look!
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2019: A Year in Books
Thanks to Melany Parker at meltotheany's review of her year in books - which looked so much fancier than mine: oh, we teachers do love a colour coded spreadsheet and pie charts! - and led me to Brock Roberts' 2019 Book Tracking Spreadsheet. Reading. Books. Spreadsheets. Charts and Graphs. What's not to love? I'm still… Continue reading 2019: A Year in Books
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