“The Iron Duke” by L. Ron Hubbard
I don’t generally read this kind of thing, but it was given away free by a very nice lady on the L. Ron Hubbard stand at the London Book Fair earlier this year. I don’t like to write anything off…
“In Dependence” by Sarah Ladipo Manyika
I love the opening line of this book: “One could begin with the dust, the heat and the purple bougainvillea. One might even begin with the smell of rotting mangos tossed by the side of the road where the flies…
“Birchwood” by John Banville
This book has very clear echoes of Proust, both in the writing style and in the sense of nostalgia that pervades the story of aristocratic decline. The references are clear and deliberate – in the very first chapter, Banville’s narrator…
End of the sea code
Saw this very sad snippet of news in the 29 August edition of Freedom magazine: At least 73 migrants have died at sea after ships repeatedly passed them by despite their being in difficulty after their dinghy ran out of…
“Fire Horses” by Mark Liam Piggott
Joe Noone seems to have it all – a beautiful house built into a Mallorca hillside, a comfortable lifestyle, a beautiful girlfriend. Yet it’s New Year’s Eve 2007 and as fireworks go off around him and people celebrate, he seems…
“T.S. Eliot” by Peter Ackroyd
I hardly ever read poetry, but for some reason T.S. Eliot’s poetry speaks to me. Perhaps it’s because, like Eliot, I used to work at a bank in the City of London, and the feeling of his poems is the…
Miscellaneous facts about bees
Sorry, this has nothing to do with reading, or writing, or anything else this blog is supposed to be about. I just read an amazing piece about bees in the latest issue of the New Internationalist, and before I throw…
“The Gentle Spirit” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky is one of my favourite writers. I discovered him in my teenage years, read as many of his books as I could get my hands on, and to be honest haven’t read anything else by him in a long…
American vs. British readers
Some interesting analysis of US and UK reading habits, courtesy of the summer edition of The Author magazine: American readers prefer romance; British ones prefer literary fiction Men make 35% of book purchases in the US; 42% in the UK…