I may spend the next few paragraphs regretting not knowing Elif Shafak’s prose earlier. But I won’t. Instead, I will be grateful for the spur of the moment decision back in August to sign up for three book subscription boxes. I got The Bastard of Istanbul from Books That Matter. This kind of gems was …
Saturday was no breeze for Megan, either. She woke up and immediately felt embarrassed. That nasty, awful, hollow endless embarrassment that was becoming her life. Randy was still asleep. She lay there, wishing she could be unconscious again. If she got up and out of bed, what would there be to do? "Yeah, I guess …
When I heard that Bookshop.org opens in the UK, I had to try it. I hate buying physical books on Amazon, because there is no such thing as browsing with them. It's all fed by algorithm that is really bad with my tastes and basically just pushes bestsellers at me. No surprise to be had. …
Of course we can argue which fairy tales are the most famous. With contenders such as Aesop, Andersen and Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm may not be the winners for everyone. But there is a category in fairy tale Oscars in which they will always get a prize - the most bloody of them all. …
Oh no I'm hopeless with visual things, she said And I remember thinking what a strange and sad thing that was to say. Hopeless, with visual things. Someone must have said something to her to make a notion like this stick. I thought of my mum. someone said to my mother once when she was …
I loved Grief Is the thing With Feathers, which I first read shortly before Lanny was due to be published and also reread recently. Who would have thought that it would take me so long to get around to reading Lanny. But that's how things pan out in a life of a person with a …
There was a lot written about this book. And books that cause so much reaction always make me both curious and apprehensive. On one hand, we all want to be in the know, and if everyone says it’s so good there may be some truth in there. On the other, I am a bit of …
Continue reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
Yet another of my book subscription finds this time Willoughby Book Club. And again a book I would probably not pick myself. Not now, at any rate, I did enjoy my share of reading about magic when I was younger. Even though it was before Harry Potter times. And if you can believe this I …
Continue reading The House on Vesper Sands – Paraic O’Donnell
Another book from my How Novel subscription. Again a surprise of sorts, and again a book I probably wouldn’t buy on my own. I enjoy crime and thrillers but usually default to a list of authors I trust. Not to mention that I rarely buy this genre in paper, selecting Kindle as the greener option …
Simply by being female I was excluded from the lists of potential usurpers, since no woman could ever sit on the Council of the Commanders; so on that front, ironically, I was safe. My life might have been very different. If only I’d looked around me, taken in the wider view. If only I’d packed …
