Reading

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…
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Tabucchi Week: Pereira Maintains

The most striking thing about Pereira Maintains is the narrative voice. It’s narrated in the third person, but the two words from the title, “Pereira maintains”, occur regularly throughout the book to qualify what we’ve just been told.
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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,…
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Sleeping Patterns

The latest winner of the Luke Bitmead Award, the prize I won myself back in 2008, Sleeping Patterns is an intelligent, intriguing and ultimately rewarding book. It’s experimental in nature. The author, J.R. Crook, stated in an interview with his…
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The Politicians by Don Walther

Coruscating look at the world of politics. If you’ve ever looked at the politicians in your country and wondered why they’re all so bad, this novel goes a long way to explaining it. The book is set in a Caribbean…
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A different take on holiday reading

With the newspapers and blogs full of recommendations for books to take with you on your summer holidays, I decided to do something a little different. My suggestion is not to take any books at all – bring some back…
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The Pleasures of Exile by George Lamming

I loved George Lamming’s novel In the Castle of my Skin, but wasn’t so impressed by this collection of essays. There were some wonderful ideas in here, but the book as a whole felt disjointed. First of all, for those…
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On Scandinavian literature

The darkness looming over the Scandinavian Countries has crossed the sea and reached Great Britain and the US. With shows such as The Killing and The Bridge reaching international success and Borgen winning a BAFTA award, New Danish Drama has…
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Why reading is social rather than solitary

Although reading is termed solitary, some of my best times on holiday have been when we've been sitting beside each other, each immersed in our own book. And in fact here reading becomes very social, because a laugh will make…
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