This is a very slim book – just 95 pages – and yet it comes with a big promise in the title and big endorsements from Shekhtman’s former students in places like The New York Times and The Pentagon. Surprisingly, the book does deliver on its promise. Shekhtman’s technique is not to improve your language [...]
Tag Archives | book review
The Quiddity of Will Self by Sam Mills
This book is unlike any other I’ve read. That, in itself, is a reason I’m glad I read it. In a world in which too many books are reminiscent of other books, this one is truly unique. It may sound a little odd to praise the book’s uniqueness, when it has another writer’s name and [...]
Capitalism & Slavery
This book does an excellent job of showing exactly how the development of British capitalism was dependent on slavery. The author is Eric Williams, an obscure PhD student at the time of writing, but later in life to become Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago. Williams goes through his evidence in systematic detail, examining British economic [...]
The Silk Peacock by Hilary West
This is an interesting and very varied collection of short stories. The overall style is literary fiction, but there are some murder mysteries mixed in there too. Most of the stories are strictly realistic, but some have elements of fantasy, like Dreamcatcher, about a man who sells dreams which can affect the person’s real life. [...]
Who needs Paradise? by Paula Harrold
I first met Paula Harrold when she was a pink-haired Oxford theology student who decorated her bedroom wall with a large scythe. I never expected her to write a romantic comedy. She has now done just that, but it’s not your typical romance. The will-they-won’t-they couple in question are Father Daniel O’Reilly, a dead Catholic [...]
Off-key stories hit the mark
I was excited to meet Courttia Newland at Bim Literary Festival here in Barbados earlier this year. He’s a British writer, but was here because his mother is Barbadian. I’d read his debut novel The Scholar when it first came out, which I now realise is a long time ago (like, last millennium). Had always [...]
Tabucchi Week: Pereira Maintains
Whadda you mean, “What’s Tabucchi Week?” It’s a week of readings, reviews and blog posts about Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, organised by Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my contribution, a review of Tabucchi’s short and delightful novel Pereira Maintains. The most striking thing about Pereira Maintains is the narrative voice. It’s narrated in the third [...]
Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe
The premise of this book is delightful: a novella in 51 short chapters, describing the life of famous 17th-century Chinese painter Bada Shanren, partly through his paintings themselves, which are reproduced in the book. The writing in places was quite beautiful, but as a novella it didn’t really work for me. I’ll attempt to explain why. [...]
The Body is a Temple by Luke Bitmead
First of all, I should declare an interest. As regular readers will know, I won the Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary in 2008, an award set up in Luke’s memory, and winning that award launched my career as a writer. So you could say I was predisposed to like The Body is a Temple, the novel [...]
How to write a book review
Just saw a nice post on Read.Learn.Write which goes into the methodology of writing book reviews, using my novel On the Holloway Road as a model. I’ve never really thought about a method for writing reviews before – I tend to just give my response to the book in whatever form seems natural. That’s probably [...]
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The 20 best Caribbean book blogs
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The cafe killer
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Liebster Award reloaded
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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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Evan: What I'm starting to think here is that the refer...
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Brian Joseph: Sounds like a super trip. Have a great time Andrew...
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Charlie: All the best to you both. Crete most definitely b...
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Ptm: Oooooooo - this makes me think veronica and jack w...
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TS: Tony and Adrian being the same person is problemat...
