Week three, how are you all doing? After last week’s dystopian and depressing list, I thought you may be in the mood for something more uplifting. So this week we’ll look at the wise and calming books. Those that transport you, help put things in perspective or focus your mind on other things. A Gentleman …
Another week of the lockdown passed. I’m sure all of us are getting a bit antsy by now. Hopefully, all of you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. Last week we looked at happy and funny books. This week we’ll take another tack – going down the dystopian and apocalyptic route. If you …
Continue reading Books for the Lockdown – Dystopian and Depressing
I read this book as a teenager, which I guess is pretty typical. The age of fascination with Plath's tragic figure. A while ago as I was visiting my family home I came across the copy I read then and decided to see how much has changed. I remembered being deeply impressed by the book …
For food was then our most pressing problem, and the progress of the regeneration schemes, and the advance of the cultivation lines on the maps, was followed with almost as much attention as an earlier generation had paid to battle fronts. In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save …
Continue reading The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham – Quotes
While on Tenerife in the last week of February I got my holiday reading mojo back. Meaning reading around a book a day on non-sightseeing days. I know it may not be much for some of you, but normally I'm not a fast reader and in the last two years I seem to have slowed …
Rachel Abbott clearly is a very prolific writer, having published over ten books since 2011. This was my second one, both read on my Kindle and just as the majority of my crime fiction on it probably bought on one of the daily deals. A habit I stopped, as so rarely one can find something …
I managed to move from the country to the city. I made the great journey between worlds. It kills some people, and drives some of us mad. [...]the red-tulip-flowered trees called kabakanjagala which means ‘the King loves me’. (King Ronald still loves us, though he does not really rule us. Now we are ruled by …
I read this book a while ago. Early September of 2019, just after the end of my August camping vacation in northern France. I must have started reading it during the trip, as it was yet another one of the books lingering quietly on my Kindle for a few years. Not sure why I was …
On holiday I again turned to my Kindle. This time a February retreat to a beautiful villa in a wind farm on Tenerife. The weather matched the dystopian mood of the book as a storm carrying Sahara sand descended. There was no sea, whitish emptiness where it was supposed to be. The wind turbines, by …
The notebook that burned, then. People who make a study of old documents have a name for this very kind of thing, a missing piece. lacuna, it's called. More memories bubble up every day. The sea cave in Isla Pixol, cold water on prickly boy-skin. Images, conversations, warnings. The first time seeing Frida in the …
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