My Name is Lucy Barton has been included on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2016, and so understandably it’s quite popular at the moment generating a bit of hype. Almost every review I have read (both in newspapers/magazines and online) has been favourable, mentioning the beauty of the writing and the emotional … More Beware the Hype: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
I’d heard of The Glass Castle long before I read it, and I was vaguely interested in it, but the real impetus to read it came from two things: my putting together reading lists of the books I most wanted to read; and the news that it has been adapted into a film starring some … More The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
As some readers may know, I was a big fan of Emma Chapman’s first novel How To Be A Good Wife. It was a taught thriller with wonderful characters and plotting, and though dark in subject matter it was a joy to read. Chapman’s literary skills are similarly showcased in her new novel The Last … More New Fiction: The Last Photograph by Emma Chapman
I bought this book last year, and somehow have only just got around to reading it. Too many books as always. Despite being about life during the Second World War I knew that it would not be a heavy read – and so I took it with me on holiday to Mallorca. The introduction and … More Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
I have read relatively little on feminism and gender since I left university, and so to that end I ordered myself a copy of Girls Will Be Girls by Emer O’Toole after seeing positive things about it on Twitter and various other blogs. It’s a very appealing book – written by an academic but not … More Girls Will Be Girls by Emer O’Toole
I decided to write about both these books in one post for several reasons. They share obvious themes for one, and they complement each other in that one is written by a free German woman, an ‘ordinary citizen’, and the other is written by a Jewish German woman who spent the war in hiding. They … More Tales of Survival: A Woman in Berlin and Gone to Ground
I’m focusing purely on reading at the moment, and I know it’ll be a week or so until my next review – so in the meantime I thought I’d share a ‘preview’ of what’s coming up, both in my reading and here on the blog. I am about to finish reading the third book in … More Upcoming reads and reviews
As you can tell I am steaming ahead with the Lady Trent series! I finished book one, A Natural History of Dragons, and went straight into book two – The Tropic of Serpents. This one is set three years after book two, and Isabella is on another foreign expedition to study dragons. This time she … More The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
I do indeed. Specifically for my feminism/women reading list. I have recently compiled reading lists of the books I most want to read out of the huge list I have on GoodReads, and realised that I actually don’t have that many on feminism/women/gender. This is an area that I find fascinating and I feel like … More I Need Recommendations!
I generally read ‘literary’ or historical fiction, and I’ve wanted to reach out into more genre fiction for a while. While browsing in Waterstones a few weeks ago I wandered with my boyfriend up to the sci fi/fantasy section, and came across the Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan. Lady Trent is a ‘dragon naturalist’ … More Exploring genres with A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
