Reading

“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…
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“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…
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“Too Loud a Solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal

The narrator of Too Loud a Solitude is an idiot. His boss despises him, others laugh at him. He drinks beer all day, and works in a cellar compacting wastepaper. He has been compacting wastepaper in the same cellar with…
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Summer reads

Nice list of summer reads posted by largeheartedboy, linking to all the “books you must read this summer” lists. I like lists, so a list of lists is even better. It’s a US-centred list – wonder if someone has done…
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“Irma Voth” by Miriam Toews

I enjoyed this tale of a young Mennonite girl marooned on a claustrophobic family compound in rural Mexico. At 19 she has already been through a lot, marrying a non-Mennonite Mexican guy called Jorge and getting ostracised by her family…
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Best reading/writing sites

Kinga at the Book Snob has a great post listing the 21 best sites about reading and writing. Along with well-known ones like Goodreads and London Review of Books, there are some that were new to me and look very…
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