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Das Boot
I first saw the original 1981 Wolfgang Petersen version of Das Boot on TV sometime in the late 80s. But it wasn’t until a 1998 re-release of the extended director’s cut of the film, that I saw in a cinema on Lower Regent Street, that I can honestly say that I saw it properly. That version…
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My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing
A twisted thriller about a couple who are not all they seem. The set-up for My Lovely Wife is intriguing and it’s hard to avoid giving away too much in the way of spoilers. ‘Tobias’ narrates this story. He’s married to Millicent and they live together in an idyllic gated community in Florida with their two kids…
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Tangerine by Christine Langan
The cover of the paperback edition of Tangerine has a quote from The Times claiming that the book is like a cross between Girl on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley. This was one of those books that I absolutely did pick up based on the cover – but that strapline also sold it to me. Tangerine is Waterstones’ fiction book…
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Normal People by Sally Rooney
When a book receives as much hype as Sally Rooney’s Booker longlisted, Costa winning and Waterstones winning novel, it can have a reverse reaction for me. The book sounds like it’s being over-hyped. I begin to think that it can’t possibly live up to expectations. I tend to actively avoid such titles. But then, I…
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Turbulence by David Szalay
This is essentially a book of short stories with a clever over-arching mechanic that links them. Each chapter tells a different story about someone who is somehow travelling between airports. So the first chapter starts with a flight from London to Madrid. The next story will take us from Madrid to Dakar. And so we…
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Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Ghost Wall was a book that seemed to come up in quite a few of Best of 2018 blogs and articles that I read over Christmas, so I was eager to read this. It’s an incredibly slim volume, running to around 150 pages, but in packs an absolute punch. I read it across a single day. Silvie…
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Man at the Helm and Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe
When Love Nina came out a few years ago, I thought it was one of the funniest books I’d ever read. Nina Stibbe was a young girl from Leicester who’d come down to London to become a nanny. The book is made up of letters sent home describing the goings on the Gloucester Place household.…
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Books, Books, Books
If you’re a reader of this blog via an RSS reader like Feedly then two things are of note: You are very sensible. RSS readers are still excellent ways to stay on top of numerous websites. You are going to see a deluge of book reviews sometime around about now. Read on to discover why.…
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The Not-Live BAFTA Awards
In 2002, Ant and Dec remade the famous “No Hiding Place” episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. This was a classic episode of the sitcom where the “lads” tried to avoid learning the result of an away England game, before highlights were shown later that evening on TV. Something that made some sense when the original version aired…
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The Desperate Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is not doing well right now. It only sells 363,000 paid copies of the printed paper, having long since been overtaken by The Times. Despite being one of the earliest news providers in the UK to have a web presence – eTelegraph anyone? – it feels somehow left behind now. Titles like…
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RAJAR Q4 2018
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product,…
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Podcast Exclusivity
As always, these are my personal views, but it’s probably worth reiterating at the outset. I am not a fan of exclusivity, for a number of reasons. Let’s start by looking at the streaming music market. We continue to see fairly significant growth in this sector with companies like Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Google Play Music and Tidal…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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