literary hoohah
The Ladies of the House has had a lot of hype around it, and is a big new title for Picador (a publisher I've found to be reliably quite good). The cover alone intrigued me when I saw it shared over and over on Twitter, and I had to get in on the action and… Continue reading The Ladies of the House by Molly McGrann
I don't remember the impetus behind my finally buying a copy of Bonjour Tristesse, but I'm glad I did. Honestly it sat on my shelf for a long time - there are too many new books! - but deciding to do TBR20 made me pick it up again. I have a beautiful PMC edition whose… Continue reading Sweet Francoise
Spring is (kind of) in the air, and I at least am starting to long for the warmer weather, no need for a big coat, sun shining down… and what better way to embrace the new (slightly) warmer weather with an appropriate book? Yes, it has the wrong season in the title, but Summer Crossing… Continue reading Top 5 Books for Spring!
After finishing The Silent Woman I was at a loss as to what to read next and so I did what I usually do in that situation, which is to choose a few books that appeal and read the beginnings of each of them, read the blurbs over and over, and choose which one to commit… Continue reading “Never trust your secrets to a Raven, when you are not its true master…”
Let’s do a quick bit of remembering here… the TV series ‘Game of Thrones’ first aired in 2011; in the same year my boyfriend read the entire series of books it is based on, A Song of Ice and Fire; in 2012 I read the first book in the series, A Game of Thrones; later… Continue reading Ice, Fire, and Indecision
I was always ‘one of those people’ who had not read To Kill A Mockingbird, and people’s amazement and indignation at this did nothing but annoy me. It did not make me want to read the book, despite it looking like something I would really enjoy. It was only the recent announcement of the discovery… Continue reading To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Having only read Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and some short stories, I was eager to branch out into the less obvious novels of Daphne du Maurier. For years I have found her and her work fascinating, and always tell other people they should read her - and yet Julius is only the third novel of… Continue reading Julius by Daphne du Maurier
To me, at least, the psychology of reading for pleasure is interesting - why do we do it? What do we get out of it? Why is pleasurable? Why do we like what we like? Different people will have different answers to these questions. Generally I know what I like, and I can judge relatively… Continue reading In Praise Of: Reading Outside Your Comfort Zone
These days I can't help but worry that people won't always appreciate literature as they should - that everyone will have a Kindle and no one will have any books - that children will only want to read if it's on a screen - that people will forget the classics and anything that isn't new… Continue reading The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth
Creepy children, and indeed twins, are not a new idea - they appear in countless films and books as a classic scary, horror motif, and aren't very original. And yet they are still creepy, and probably always will be. In The Ice Twins S. K. Tremayne (the "pseudonym of a journalist and bestselling writer", according… Continue reading The Ice Twins by S. K. Tremayne
These Little Words 