Al-Andalus is the forgotten heritage of the Muslim presence on the Iberian Peninsula. A thriving educational center where the Muslims, Jews and Christians were able to coexist in relative peace for almost 800 years. It is a period of European history that is rarely mentioned and if it is then only briefly. Yet it left …
My only explanation why I read this classic of sci-fi only now is that I rarely dabbed in the sci-fi space. Recently this has started slowly changing and when someone recommends a book to me I tend to try it and usually with a good outcome. It was the same with this one. A book …
Dive right into the heart of Cuba with this collection of seven short stories.
A collection of quirky short stories, showing how this jewel-like form helps to unleash imagination. You’ll meet nursing home escapees, writers meeting their characters in real life, statisticians winning the lottery, middle-aged witches, and a bit extreme role-play games aficionados. And many many others. I had this book on my shelves for so long I …
What do you do when your taxidermist father shoots himself in the head and your bereaved mother starts making pornographic art using the animals he stuffed? Also, the woman you loved was your brother’s wife and she abandoned both of you. Those are the things Jessa-Lynn Morton is trying to figure out, among few other …
Imagine if you could read all the unsent letters, all those that got lost or that were never meant to be sent. This book gives you a good sense of what would happen. A sense of what’s lost when we don’t communicate our thoughts, but also what may happen if we do. A book on …
Imagine a James Bond wannabe, called Jaime Butt. He is a butt of his colleagues’ jokes, got the job because of his family ties, but finally lands a case that gets him out of a chair and into the thick of it. Meet Jaime Bunda in Luanda. This is one more book in translation I …
As an audiobook, it could have only been read by one voice - Stephen Fry. And listening to 40 hours of Fry reading Jeeves and Wooster has been bliss. They went with me for lunchtime walks and accompanied me while I was knitting and crocheting. And as promised by Fry in the foreword, it felt …
Continue reading P.G. Wodehouse Volume 1: The Jeeves Collection – P.G. Wodehouse
“Wherever you travel you always take yourself with you” word by Neil Gaiman, but very relevant to Natalie. They describe the heart of her problem. Disillusioned with her life, she decides to travel. But she is always there. A sharp, clear-eyed examination of how we cannot get away from ourselves, no matter how hard we …
Have you ever had that moment when reading a conspiracy theory when you were on the verge of being convinced? This book pulls it off not once, but twice. It is a fascinating work of fiction that grows out of reality. A book that will have you checking facts, while it holds you in its …
Continue reading The Shape of the Ruins – Juan Gabriel Vásquez
