The Vastness of the Dark by Alistair MacLeod
The Vastness of the Dark seems to be a quite simple tale about a young man escaping from the confines of his family to find freedom, but it becomes something more complex in the last few pages.
February/March 2021 Reading Roundup
I missed my monthly reading roundup in February, so here are two months together. As you’ll see, they were dominated by one huge book: Marcel Proust’s seven-volume, 3,000-page masterpiece. But I managed to squeeze in a few more good books…
Best Books I Read in 2020
There’s a quote by Alice Walker that I love: “When I was a child, I read books for entertainment and information; I now think of books as lifeboats.” 2020 was a year when I reached for the lifeboats more often…
The History of Serbia by Cedomir Antic: Review
This is a useful overview of the history of Serbia, starting in neolithic times and going right through to the present (it was published in 2018). The book starts by describing the early inhabitants of the territory now known as…
October 2020 Reading Roundup
Here's a quick roundup of some good books I read this month, featuring Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Tyler and more.
August 2020 Reading Roundup
After my quick trip to the UK last month, I’m back in Belgrade again. We made a few stops on our drive back across Europe, but it’s really not a good time to be travelling. It was, nevertheless, a great…
Children of the Cave: A Fascinating Finnish Novel of Ideas
In Children of the Cave, Finnish writer Virve Sammalkorpi imagines an encounter between a group of explorers and some strange creatures living in a cave in the remote forests of northern Russia that look like animals but also have some…
May 2020 Reading Roundup
The COVID-19 lockdown here in Belgrade was very strict in March and April, but this month it ended, and things are more or less back to normal now. The cafes, shops and restaurants are all open again, and there’s rarely…
April 2020 Reading Roundup
In a short time, I've gone from travelling full-time to being under strict lockdown in a Belgrade apartment. Perhaps that's why I've spent the month travelling through the world of books, from the Russian wilderness to a still-divided Germany and…