“The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion
“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.…
“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…
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…
London rioting
I live in Haringay, the same borough as Tottenham, where the riots started that have since spread across London. If you take…
“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…
“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…