“You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” This book has simple sentences like this scattered through it. They’re things you know, but forget. Your loved ones will die, so make the most of the time you have. I suppose I don’t like to look at members of my family and [...]
Archive | August, 2011
“The Generation Game” by Sophie Duffy
An interesting premise: the book starts with a woman in hospital talking to her newborn baby girl. She starts to tell the story of her life, beginning with her own birth in St Thomas’s Hospital in 1965 and going right up to the present day. “I’ll tell you my story. Our story. Because there’s nothing [...]
Why I like independent bookshops
You often hear people talking about supporting independent bookshops as if they’re some charity case. I don’t agree with this – they have real advantages. One of them really hit me recently when I was buying a book for my nephew’s birthday. Time was short, and I was worried about being able to buy it, [...]
London rioting
I live in Haringay, the same borough as Tottenham, where the riots started that have since spread across London. If you take the 41 bus from the corner of my street, you’ll be in Tottenham in 15 minutes or so. But Crouch End, where I live, is a middle-class enclave, popular with families, full of [...]
“Book of Clouds” by Chloe Aridjis
A very quiet, meditative book about a Mexican woman adrift in Berlin. Tatiana is alienated from her family and her friends, cut off from the rest of the city, uninterested in forming a relationship with anyone. She gets a part-time job doing transcription work for a historian, goes on a few lacklustre dates with a [...]
“Brenton Brown” by Alex Wheatle
Brenton Brown is a follow-up to Alex Wheatle’s famous debut Brixton Rock, which was set in the early 1980s. We catch up with the characters of that book about 25 years later in contemporary Britain, and those who read the first book will enjoy seeing how things turned out, especially with the title character Brenton, [...]
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The 20 best Caribbean book blogs
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Liebster Award reloaded
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The cafe killer
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The Kindle Report: does it beat paper?
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The next big thing…
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We could take a train, be miles away by morning…
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Ten years ago: Voluntary poverty in New York City
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Some interviews
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Giveaway: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2003
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How to Improve your Foreign Language Immediately
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Andrew Blackman: Hi Geo Good to hear from you. I love the way yo...
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Leslie Finkel: Andrew, I appreciated your review and the comme...
