Come and escape from the world in some great books!
A massive congratulations to the authors on the 2021 longlist for the Carnegie Medal, announced this week. It looks like a diverse list with some familiar names - Francis Hardinge, Elizabeth Acevado. And of course Patrick Ness. Would the Carnegie Medal be the Carnegie Medal without a book by Ness appearing on it? - and… Continue reading Carnegie Medal 2021 Longlist
“The only place I went wrong, he writes, was expecting things to be perfect. Abruptly, he signals for a turn, and when the light changes he heads east instead of continuing north.” After reading a number of heavily plot driven books this year, Redhead was a definite change of pace for me. I'd not read… Continue reading Book Review: The Redhead by the Side of the Road, Anne Tyler
“I don't need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like... happens.” I have been holding fire on reviewing this book for a few weeks because it is a - a difficult, problematic novel in my view. A novel which is almost good, almost dealt with… Continue reading Book Review: Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid
“Believe me,” the badshah says, “today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We… Continue reading Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara
So this year's Man Booker has been announced and comprises: Diane Cook (USA) The New Wilderness (Oneworld Publications)Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) This Mournable Body (Faber & Faber)Avni Doshi (USA) Burnt Sugar (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House)Gabriel Krauze (UK) Who They Was (4th Estate, HarperCollins)Hilary Mantel (UK) The Mirror & The Light (4th Estate, HarperCollins)Colum McCann (Ireland/USA) Apeirogon (Bloomsbury Publishing) Maaza Mengiste (Ethiopia/USA) The Shadow King (Canongate Books)Kiley Reid (USA) Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)Brandon Taylor (USA) Real Life (Originals, Daunt Books Publishing) Anne… Continue reading The Man Booker Longlist, 2020
“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
I didn't post yesterday because it was Father's Day, so it seems apt to put up a poem from a father's point of view today, from Niall Campbell's tender and personal collection, Noctuary.
750 Taken from the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prize shortlisted "Surge", "a fearlessly original exploration of the black British archive: an enquiry into the New Cross Fire of 1981... Tracing a line from New Cross to the 'towers of blood' of the Grenfell fire, this urgent collection speaks with, in and of the voices… Continue reading Flowers by Jay Bernard
For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family
The penny drops. You’ve only ever heard the goldcrest, till you find one in a mist net and the ringers show you how to handle a bird not much bigger than a bumble bee - The penny drops. You’ve only ever heardthe goldcrest, till you find one in a mist netand the ringers show you… Continue reading Goldcrest, Paul Farley
So much more than a "black Bridget Jones"
The Top 5 series is back! Top Five Saturday is a meme hosted by Devouring Books to discover and share books that all have a common theme. Previously on the blog I have focused on witches, werewolves, thrillers, faeries, fairy tale re-tellings, high fantasy and many more. I am going to try and bring this series back for… Continue reading Top Five Saturday: Books with a Colour in the Title
“All you can do, Rosemary — all any of us can do — is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play. And what I see in you is a woman who has a clear idea of what she wants to be... You’re trying to be someone good.”
The Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist 2020 Announced last night, the Women's Prize longlist looks both eclectic and challenging and is as follows: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa AnapparaFleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-AknerQueenie by Candice Carty-WilliamsDominicana by Angie CruzActress by Anne EnrightGirl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoNightingale Point by Luan GoldieA Thousand Ships by Natalie HaynesHow We Disappeared by… Continue reading Women’s Prize For Fiction Longlist
This is the sort of novel I feel the need to reach for metaphor to describe, tired and cliched metaphors at that: it is a roller coaster, a kaleidoscope, a hall of mirrors, shifting sands.... It is dazzling - but being dazzled is not always the most comfortable experience!
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
I have sat on this book for a while since finishing reading it - partially as a result of workload; mainly because it, like The Heart's Invisible Furies and many others, is a book that deserved some time to settle and be absorbed before launching into a review. The novel revolves around a single character,… Continue reading 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak
Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker. I am shamelessly stealing this from Ali's blog iwuvbooks because -… Continue reading Teaser Tuesday: The Fountains of Silence, Ruta Sepetys
Disclaimer: Received from NetGalley and the publisher, Penguin, in exchange for an honest review. There are some novels which flow fluidly like a river. Others are curved and twisted. Others are very linear taking a route from inciting incident to resolution without a deviation. Others are shaped like a tree, branching and dividing but never… Continue reading The Man Who Saw Everything, Deborah Levy
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
Lanny Greentree, you remind me of me.
Divine days fall like water from a cataract, and I had not learned yet the mortal trick of counting them.
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
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.
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!
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
You must be logged in to post a comment.