Category: Books

This is the third of the Fandorin novels to be published in English. I’m not all together convinced that they’ve been published over here in the same language as they were in Russia, since this one seems to follow on more from the first UK published novel than the last. In this instance our hero…

This time two years, Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves was the de facto gift for those people you hadn’t already bought a Christmas gift for. And yes, I do know that we’re not in any way close to Christmas yet. It really annoyed me seeing the “gift” sections of Waterstones and WH Smiths today.…

I read this because it was slim, and came for just 99p with a copy of the Telegraph in WH Smiths this week. I knew next to nothing about the book, and having it read it now, I’m not entirely sure that I know a great deal more now. The book is presented from the…

My second Ian Rankin Rebus novel, and unlike the first, I liked this a lot more. A the theme of the novel is race, and we get everything from overt racism in our inner cities to Morecambe Bay-style cockel pickers. There are several stories going on simultaneously, that may, or may not be interlinked. A…

The latest Henning Mankell novel’s recently been published, but it’s not actually his latest book. It just happens to be one that’s out of sequence. Actually, we’ve had loads of Mankell novels out of sequence, but this one jumps back quite a few years and characters who were last known to be dead are suddenly…

The only Philip Roth book I’d read before this was The Human Stain, which ultimately I found unsatisfying. I haven’t been to see the film. But when this came out in hardback a year ago it was so well reviewed that I thought that the man who’s regarded as one of America’s greatest living novelists…

I stumbled across this slim volume by chance in the bookshop and it intrigued me. It’s a basic (very basic) introductory guide to probability. The trouble is that it’s just too small and light. While the author’s not afraid to include some equations in the text, he embarks on a chapter on, say the normal…

I thought I’d catch up with the books I’ve read recently. I’m quite a Michael Dibdin fan, and this is the latest Zen novel. He spoke to James Naughtie on the Radio 4 programme, Bookclub recently, and you can hear the conversation here (with Realplayer). On that occasion he spoke about Blood Rain which is…

Another Hard Case Crime series novel, and it’s a brash and trashy as the rest of them. Swede is big and big-hearted sailor, fresh off the boat with a pocket full of cash after three years at sea. He’s planning on finding himself a wife and setting up a farm in the mid-west where he…

I’d not read any of Kate Atkinson’s books before, although I’ve seen them riding high in the bestsellers for a while. So I didn’t really know what to expect when I started Case Histories. What we have is something akin to one of those Barbara Vine or Minnette Walters crime things you see on TV…

I’ve only read a handful of McEwan’s previous books. Amsterdam won the Booker a few years back, and I’ve never quite understood why, since it has no really likeable characters. Enduring Love and Atonement are far superior – pleasurable books. So along comes Saturday, which had vast swathes of press devoted it to it back…

Jose Carlos Somoza is the talented Spanish (or maybe Argentinian) author of The Athenian Murders, a very clever mystery set in both present day Spain and ancient Athens. His latest (well, I say latest, but I’m not completely sure of the original Spanish publication dates) is set in the art world. Well I say, art…

In Spain, the fictional character, Captain Alatriste, has appeared on stamps. And now, the biggest budget film ever produced by Spain is being made about the man, starring Viggo Mortensen (of Lord of the Rings fame). So who is this man? He’s the creation of Arturo Perez-Reverte, the Spanish writer, some of who’s books I’ve…