I have used the metaphor of food to describe reading for many years now. Some books are hearty, healthy and honest like a rare steak; some are delicate and fragile, like over-wrought sugar work in a pretentious restaurant, beautiful to look at but whimsical, self-indulgent and lacking taste; some are fun, entertaining chocolates and candies;… Continue reading Inferno, Dan Brown
Category: Genre
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Angela Carter is just bloody brilliant! I mean bloody brilliant! Being just a man, lacking in x-chromosomes, I'm sure I'm missing much of her political feminist subtlety but as a writer she blows me away! The balance she holds between the real, the fantastical and the macabre is fantastic. Take this first eponymous tale in… Continue reading The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
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Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist
Its odd how my book reading lurks in certain genres for a while: after a crime spree, I notice a range of horror books collecting on the pages of this blog - with more on my to-be-read list. I wonder what it is with Scandi-Lit. Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy; Jo Nesbø; Mons Kallentoft ... There… Continue reading Let The Right One In, John Ajvide Lindquist
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The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder
Some books are born great. Some books achieve greatness. Some books have greatness thrust upon them. This book is not one of them. It's not great. It's not beautifully written. It's not literary. But it is immensely fun! Mark Hodder propels us into Victorian London: the search for the source of the Nile, Stanley, Livingstone,… Continue reading The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, Mark Hodder
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Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner
When we got the books for the Carnegie Shadowing in school, there was a lot of excitement that this was a book about a dyslexic, in the voice of a dyslexic, written by a dyslexic. Obviously, in an educational environment, it was ... enticing. And, whilst that is all true, that is only minor part… Continue reading Maggot Moon, Sally Gardner
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Mortal Coil, Derek Landy
I have been enjoying this series. They were nothing exciting, nothing terribly original. But they were fun. They were light hearted. They were fast-paced and witty. But niggles and worries are starting to mar my enjoyment of them now. The worse elements are coming to the fore and the books are becoming increasingly dark, violent… Continue reading Mortal Coil, Derek Landy
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In Darkness, Nick Lake
In Darkness is Nick Lake's debut novel and an extraordinarily powerful one at that. Set in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the novel is literally set in darkness: our narrator, Shorty, is entombed in the remains of a collapsed hospital as rescuers lose hope of finding any survivors. In the darkness and rubble,… Continue reading In Darkness, Nick Lake
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Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick
This is my second foray into Marcus Sedgwick's writing: White Crow, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal a couple of years ago was the other. And this is by far superior, more beautiful, more powerful, more poignant. This book is shortlisted for the Cilip Carnegie 2013 and tells the tales of Eric and Merle. Tales. Tales… Continue reading Midwinterblood, Marcus Sedgwick
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Carnegie 2013 Shortlist
It's that time of year again: the Cilip Carnegie Medal Shortlist has been announced! It is genuinely one of the highlights of my year! I reserve the Easter holidays to reading as many as I possibly can of the list. I mean, we do shadow the Carnegie Medal in our school and I like to… Continue reading Carnegie 2013 Shortlist
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Playing With Fire, Derek Landy
Reading this immediately after the first in the series, Skulduggery Pleasant, is interesting: it highlights both some flaws and some developments. In terms of plot, there's a sense of déjà vu from the first book: a general from the previous war escapes from prison; he sets about acquiring an artefact to bring back ancient Gods,… Continue reading Playing With Fire, Derek Landy
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The Yard, Alex Grecian
What was this book about? Murder and a new detective in the Murder Squad of Scotland Yard. What was the detective like as a character? (Shrugs) I didn't think he was a very confident person in what he did but he was actually very good at it. How would you compare him to other detectives?… Continue reading The Yard, Alex Grecian
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Skulduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy
I read Landy's The Faceless Ones - the third in the Skulduggery Pleasant series - and, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it: a smart and sassy heroine; an enigmatic and intriguing (possibly anti-) hero; a wide range of engaging characters. So I have taken the fact that the current seventh book, The Kingdom… Continue reading Skulduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy
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The Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman
After reading a couple of extremely well-written, moving but rather serious books, picking up The Bloody Red Baron was intended to be a welcome piece of light relief: a bit of fun vampiric horror. Kim Newman takes up the reigns of his alternate history some thirty years after the events in the previous Anno Dracula. Having fled from England… Continue reading The Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman
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The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
There are some books that revel in plot, action and events. Other books - perhaps quieter books - are content to develop narrative: characters and settings, relationships and language. This book by Ali Shaw is very clearly and very effectively one of the latter: little really happens, but so much is created. Lets take the… Continue reading The Girl With Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
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World War Z, Max Brooks
My teeth grated together in horror as soon as I listened to this: "World War Zee by Max Brooks!" intoned the narrator. "Zee"? "Zee"?! No!! World War Zed! Despite that, this was a brilliant book to listen to as an audiobook: it is formed from interviews with various survivors of the war against the undead.… Continue reading World War Z, Max Brooks
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The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell
The last book I read, The Passage by Justin Cronin, took me a month to read. This book, The Shakespeare Curse, took me 72 hours. That's not a good sign. Not good at all. I like to lose myself in a book, to live, breathe, love and bleed with the characters I share my reading… Continue reading The Shakespeare Curse, J. L. Carrell
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The Passage, Justin Cronin
Horror is not usually my thing at all. I don't like blood. I get bored by violence. I get worried by crime writing's increasing interest in hugely violent bloodied crime scenes and the minutiae of destruction that can be inflicted on the human (and usually female) form. So it was with some misgivings that I… Continue reading The Passage, Justin Cronin
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The Way Of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson writes high, epic fiction: huge worlds in which the very nature of the earth is as much a character as the creatures that he inhabits it with. In the Mistborn trilogy, the ashen and grey polluted earth dominated the tale; here in The Stormlight Archive, his created world is one of rock and… Continue reading The Way Of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
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Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve; Railsea, China Miéville
Right, following on from seeing Philip Reeve in person - gabardine clad, animated and inspirational - and having had the question posed to me of how you could not read a book whose opening paragraph is “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town… Continue reading Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve; Railsea, China Miéville
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Here Lies Arthur, Philip Reeve
For some reason, I cannot read this title without intuitively reading it in Latin hic iacit Arcturus. I attended a literacy conference this week where Philip Reeve was - for wont of a better phrase - the keynote speaker and I was lent this book as an introduction to his work as - to my… Continue reading Here Lies Arthur, Philip Reeve
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The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Do a book club, they said! It'll be fun, they said! We'll call it Addiction to Fiction, they said! Okay, fair enough that's cool! It won't take much time, they said. Oh. Right. Of course not. So now, at 3:15 every Thursday a group of book hungry students descends on me. Seriously, it's fabulous: a… Continue reading The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
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The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
I had enjoyed The Name Of The Wind. It was refreshing within the fantasy genre. I didn't think it quite deserved the incandescent - which seems to be my word of the week! - praise that it had received. But I liked it. Part 2 of The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Wise Man's Fear, heaps more… Continue reading The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
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The Name Of The Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
I signed up to Audible nearly a year ago now. I was interested in trying audiobooks and had been for a while : I drive. Lots. Daily. And whilst I like the Today Programme in the morning, I'm less keen on PM in the afternoon. But I'm also a skinflint and object to paying £20… Continue reading The Name Of The Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
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Railsea, China Miéville
In the words of Mieville himself, this novel is a wonderful "gallimaufryan coagulum of mixed up oddness".
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The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler
I worry about Sweden. It keeps me up at night. I wake in cold sweats. I worry about the weather there: the snow and freezing temperatures. I worry about the trolls. I worry about IKEA. And I worry about the people. And families. It must be a terrible place. Every single novel I've read from… Continue reading The Hypnotist, Lars Kepler
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