Books Read Recently

25th January 2023

I seem to be in the habit of picking up books lately without entirely knowing what I'm getting myself into. This is a good thing, and my comfort zone can certainly take some expansion. Judge a book by... read more.

20th January 2023

This wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be from the title. I was expecting something more anthropological about how people do things differently in different cultures, and the book is very mu... read more.

19th January 2023

Absolutely loved this. One of those books you realise early on is going to be a five star book, and one that I read slowly in order to savour it. 

The story stretches from the second world war... read more.

8th January 2023

Once again I was just looking for something mindlessly light to read for a few days to take my mind off other things and this looked both light and kind of silly. Flora is thirty-two years old and at ... read more.

29th December 2022

Just as lovely as the book that came before it! Both are short and very worth a read. A wonderfully conjured up world of people and robots who have agreed to live separately and never meet, until they... read more.

29th December 2022

I kind of wish these books weren't given such twee titles and covers that make me a little self-concious about reading them. Yes, they are pretty light entertainment but I'm often surprised by the the... read more.

21st December 2022

Volume 11, we're reaching the end I guess, and the characters have aged a little, I think they are in their mid-fifties and it must be the 1960s or thereabouts. Everything is beginning to seem a bit m... read more.

7th December 2022

This is a gorgeous little book and you should go and read it right now!

It's only short but longer than a short story and plenty long enough to let the characters develop.  The characters are ... read more.

1st December 2022

My reading mojo has gone missing in the last few weeks and I was after an engaging read to get it back into order. This nearly fitted the bill. 

It's the story of a young English woman, Lily, ... read more.

10th November 2022

I was looking out for books about canals and boats and not really sure what I was going to find. This is a book written by the Canal & River Trust's writer in residence who claims to not have know... read more.

30th October 2022

I have no idea where I got the recommendation for this book from but it turned up in my library holds and I started reading without any clue as to what I was going to find. And I'm glad I did!

... read more.

26th October 2022

 Well the last free book I downloaded from Apple Books wasn't great so the first thing I did was try reading another...

...and this worked out much better.

Tuva is a youngish journalist... read more.

7th October 2022

I often download the free book of the week on the Apple bookstore, and occassionally even get round to reading them. Sometimes they are great, sometimes they are not. This was not great. I quite liked... read more.

6th October 2022

I can't fault this one. It's another excellent entry in the series. I like that this series doesn't have the thing going on that makes some mystery series feel like sitcoms - where nothing is allowed ... read more.

6th October 2022

It took me a while to get through this, I'm not entirely sure why. The setting is an interesting historical one: Italy under Mussolini, I think it was 1933. The main character is a woman doing somethi... read more.

27th September 2022

So, it's a novel by a novelist who has written a couple of wildly successful books that is, in part at least, about a novelist who has written a couple of wildly successful books and then had a breakd... read more.

27th September 2022

Four thousand weeks is about the span of a pretty average modern day human life. And I've already gone through about 2.5k of them!  But Burkeman's conceit is that this is all fine and you should stop... read more.

5th September 2022

So, having reached volume 10 of the 12 volume series we're plunged into 'Winter' according to the seasonal cycle of the books. Which I have issue with as by my calculations the main characters are not... read more.

For everything else I’ve read this century, and more, you are best off visiting my goodreads pages as the archives here are a bit flaky that far back! Though I’m actually moving over to storygraph in an attempt to escape another Amazon tentacle.