Come and escape from the world in some great books!
A fun vampire novel whose setting was one of its strongest features, divided between middle class white suburbs and poor black communities; it built tension well in the first half but revelled a little too much in visceral body horror to the point where it became inadvertently funny.
A highly entertaining and enjoyable read retelling Medusa's story, told with Haynes' trademark wit, erudition and caustic humour - although I wonder whether I come away from the book having learned anything new...
As I have said on this blog before, I don't really do to be read lists. Whilst I may intend to tackle a certain set of books, I am more than happy to pick up this other one that caught my eye in Waterstones or the library, or that one that I began and put down six months ago, or this book that a friend recommneded, or that one which is all over social media, or - let's face it - sometimes this random one which I opened on my kindle by mistake! But this time of year coincides with the release of the Women's Prize for Fiction and I do try to read along with that longlist each year - to varying degrees of success - and so this week I offer you that longlist which I hope to have read some or most of before the 14th June when the winner is announced.
This is a nice whimsical topic: the bookish people I'd love to meet... but there are so many of them! Authors we could have to a dinner party, or meet at a book festival; characters who might be able to step from the page like Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, bloggers and reviewers... Let's think...
This time of year is also the time when I indulge in these genres - just before we start on the tradmill of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker longlists and the more self-consciously literary offerings. Do I see or recognise the distinction between genre and literary fiction...? I'm not sure that I do at all to be honest. Isn't it all just a marketing tool? All I recognise really is the ability of books to transport and entertain and challenge me in some way. Anyway, let's pick... crime as a genre for the purpose of this list after a somewhat lengthy preamble. And I offer to you my ten favourite crime books... prepare for murder, deception and violence.
My first Austen for an age - and I'm not sure I ever read this one - has revealed itself to be delightful: genuinely funny and literate with a well fleshed out protagonist and a surprisingly knowing and assured narrative voice - for a novel written when the author was but 28.
This week's topic asks us to turn a spotlight on our favourite heroines. Whilst casting around for an angle - do I really want to trot out Jane Eyre, Jo Marsh or Lizzie Bennett again? - I was distracted by reading my daughter her bedtime story. And whilst Mesdames Eyre, Marsh and Bennett would all fit the topic - or more kick ass heroines like Lisbeth Salander, Arya Stark or The Priory of the Orange Tree's Ead or Tané - the power of literature to inspire young minds is so powerful that I thought I would focus on inspiring female heroines in the books she has been reading because there are many.
A fantastic romp through a richly imagined world filled with warrior mages, queens and empresses, dragons and knights, Shannon's characters are as fleshed out and convincing as the apocalypse that is visited on their world.
In terms of reading, romance is not my preferred genre - my imagination tends towards the darker areas, gothic and crime and literary fiction... Of Gooderads 100 best Romance novels of the last three years, I have read, well, one! I have read more romance recently than at any other time in my life, and in fairness thoroughly enjoyed them. But it is still with some trepidation that I embark on a list of my favourite romantic pairings from recent reads.
This week's theme is a look forward to debut authors that have already piqued our interest - which does require a little research... and also a solid publicity campaign behind those authors. So the following list is drawn from various sources, selected by reason of their covers, their blurbs, the endorsements and of course the inherent interest I have in the themes and genres they represent.
A kaleidoscopic performance: a colourful, dizzying and disorientating exploration of the turmoil in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s, and our host for this exploration is the recently deceased Maali Almeida, "Photographer. Gambler. Slut."
This week is a freebie week and I am in the midst of listening to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, her first novel and written around 1798, albeit not published until after her death. It is part of my half-formed intention - a vague idea and inclination perhaps - to try to re-read Austen, returning to an author that I did not gel with as a teenager at university. Certainly, it is much funnier and more wry than I remembered Austen to be. Which bodes well. Anyway, the point of this preamble is that I love the way Catherine Morland becomes obsessed with The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe - to the extent that she would prefer to curl up at home with the novel than venture out into Bath's social scene, has limited conversation save for her love of the novel, and is desperate for her life to emulate the thrills and passions of the novel. So I thought I'd use this as a springboard to explore bookworms in fiction.
This week is a look back again at 2022 and those authors we met for the first time last year. And isn't it great to meet new favourite authors year after year. Of course there are the old favourites, the reliable familiar authors who we just know we are going to enjoy, but new authors add some extra spice and variety... and often then become some of our new favourites!
A book the teems with potential - an academic setting within a gothic museum, an unreliable narrator, intense relationships within the scholars, murder, tarot - and yet it somehow fell a little flat and slow.
A gripping and fast-moving young adult alternative-reality fantasy novel with really effective world building, a (somewhat precocious) thoroughly engaging protagonist and a well-crafted plot. Comparisons with the Rivers of London series are both inevitable and, in general terms, justified.
After looking forward to future releases in 2023 last week, we are looking at bookish goals for the upcoming year - new year resolutions for the bookish.
A truly strange and disturbing novel, simultaneously horrific and hilarious, brutal and humane - a coruscating satire of American racial conflict and politics, embedded in both Trump's America and the lynching of Emmett Till in the 1955.
Overall, 2023 looks like almost all of my favourite authors have new books coming out! A fantastic array of exciting new novels from a parade of wonderful writers! It's looking like a good year!
Another slippery little thriller with everything you would expect from Janice Hallett: an epistolary format using messages, emails, transcripts and, here, extracts from fictionalised accounts of events; vivid characters brought to life through their own (unreliable) voices, a twisty plot. A great, fun read to see the new year in with.
An undeniably beautiful and lyrical piece of science fiction poetry but, for me, the beauty of the language and the translation came at the expense of vivid charaterisations; there was an ephemeralness about the characters, a transparency, that was perhaps deliberate - how small we are in the vastness of space and time and Light is, after all, a familiar science-fiction trope - but left me wanting more of the humans.
And there we have it: Christmas has come; Christmas has gone again. The new school term looms at work - feeling like it is hot on the heels of the festive period this year - and my daughter and I are sharing last-day-of-the-holiday jitters! We are in the midst of the annual negotiation about when the Christmas Tree should come down: my wife wants her living room back from our rather expansive tree; I want my money's worth from the rather expensive tree; and twelfth night superstitions... Anyway... this month on TTT is a combination of looking back at 2022, and looking forward to 2023, and this week's topic is a list of my favourite books from 2022. I have already listed on my lookback on the year post my 5* reads which you can review here... but it does raise the question of whether a book needs to be a 5* read to be one of my favourite reads of the year...
And as the year draws in its final breaths, it leaves me only to say fare well and thank you so much for contributing your time, your comments and your thoughts on the blog. I am truly humbled and have a fantastic new year!
A gentle science fiction philosophical amble through the foothills of the world of Panga searching for the comfort of the perfect cup of tea in the company of a sentient robot, this novel never feels saccharine whilst looking at the world and its people with hope and faith and warmth.
Occasionally brilliant, but somehow less satisfying than I would expect from an Ishiguro novel, When We Were Orphans explores familiar themes and characters but feels perhaps shackled by the weight of its own detective fiction baggage.
Replete with fascinating characters, Atkinson's wit and humanity shines as she peels apart the sordid vapidity of the interwar Jazz Age and Bright Young Things - this delight is, by turns, tender, delicate and wonderfully satirical.
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.