February 2022 Reading Roundup
Last month I read some excellent books, including Japanese literary fiction and some more Caribbean literature from local bookshops.
Nightshade by Annalena McAfee
If you need your fictional characters to be likeable, to be the sort of people that you can "root for", then absolutely do NOT read Nightshade by Annalena McAfee. If, on the other hand, you want characters to be interesting,…
German Literature Month: The Weight of Things by Marianne Fritz
German Literature Month happens every November, and usually I remember about it some time in December. This year, though, I’m taking part for the second year in a row! After my review of Austerlitz last year, here are my thoughts…
Stories of Racism and Retail Hell: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Race and capitalism in America should be fertile ground for literary fiction. This year’s Black Friday shopping frenzy brought the usual bout of stabbings and shootings to add to the overall death count, not to mention the looming environmental collapse that…
Literature and Empathy
As a (very) part-time journalist, I get inundated with press releases, most of which I delete. But one email subject line today caught my eye: “Step into the shoes of a migrant in the UK with groundbreaking audio experience.” In…
November Reading Roundup
After a busy few months of travel, we slowed down a bit in November and spent more time just staying in comfortable rural hotels in Bulgaria and northern Greece. That meant more time for work and writing, but also for…
German Literature Month: Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
November is German Literature Month, hosted by Lizzy and Caroline! If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an annual celebration of literature in the German language. There’s a schedule of readalongs, but I’m too disorganised for that, so I’m going…
Review of Dodge and Burn by Seraphina Madsen
Imagine Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson engaging in a wild, drug-fuelled orgy somewhere out in the Arizona desert, and by some mystical process conceiving a daughter who then turns around and gives them the finger, inverting their male-dominated…
Q&A with the founders of new indie publisher Dodo Ink
Dodo Ink is a new independent publisher in the UK, promising to publish “bold, daring, risky but accessible literary novels”. They’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign to fund their first three novels, with incentives ranging from free books to getting…