Kate Atkinson - Cold Histories
Gripping and incredibly well written. Perhaps too many shadows of 90s lad culture ?
Vicente Luis Mora - Centroeuropa
One of the best I’ve read in a very long time. Magical realism in a muddy field in 1800s Prussia.
Andrew Michael Hurley - Starve Acre
Grief and isolation and the crimes of the past. Very bleak and atmospheric.
Oliver Burkeman - Mediations for Mortals
Essentially 4000 weeks chewed over and formed into daily nuggets. Very good all the same.
Ben Gazur - A Feast of Folklore
Nice round up of a lot of peculiar traditions and beliefs. The devil will steal your potatoes!
Bae Suah - Untold Night and DayLoved this. Dream-like is an overused descriptor but this deserves it. Shadows, images, symbols, collapsing in on themselves in a hot Seoul night.
Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine
Very lovely but a little empty. It’s a thickly textured slice of summer as a child, full of little scenes and stories. Pleasant.
Richared Brautigan - Trout Fishing in America
A very 60s slice of American surrealism. Little vignettes of life, only loosely connected, vaguely revolving around trout.
There is some amazing imagery and very funny bits.
Italo Calvino - Mr Palomar
27 little vignettes of Mr Palomar looking at things and pondering.
Ranges from the visual to the metaphysical with a structure that becomes apparent as you read. Small, deep and rather wonderful.
Paul Loomans - Time Surfing
A zen approach to time management. A lot of nice ideas but the main approach doesn’t really do it for me.
Dashiell Hammett - The Dain Curse
A detective novel split across 3 acts, managing to take in ghost story, action, and all sorts. Fast paced and good fun.
Javier Marías - Berta Isla
A spy thriller that avoids the spying bits (and really the thriller bits too). A novel of absences and missing people.
It’s a good read but it astonishingly long for a story in which everything happens ‘off screen’
Percival Everett - The Trees
At once fast paced comic thriller and an exploration of American racism past and present. Fantastic.
Nigel Slater - A Thousand Feasts
Little snippets and moments of quiet appreciation and small joy, from rose bushes to cups of tea. A calming read.
Percival Everett - So Much Blue
Three crises overlap in a story about secrets that’s funny, tragic and moving.
Marghanita Laski - Little Boy Lost
A powerful little story of a father seeking his son among the corruption of post war France.
Des Fitzgerald - The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow
Fascinating and funny tour of urban planning and 21st century thinking, but it does not offer many alternatives to the ideas it dismantles.
Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit
Decent story with a paper thin layer of allegory. Perhaps a bit long for this sort of thing, and clearly preaching to the converted.
H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon’s Mines
Classic Victorian adventure novel, with all the racism and sexism that implies. Good story though.