Tag: books

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…

Laura Lippman writes some deliciously noir-ish tales, and her books always have something about them. Prom Mom is the name that the tabloid press gave to Amber when she unexpectedly gave birth on the night of her school prom back in 1997. The book opens with Amber being confused as she returns to a hotel…

The Guest by Emma Cline Emma Cline’s previous novel, The Girls, was a massive hit although I never read it. But I was interested enough based on reviews to pick up The Guest which is an archetypal summer read (assuming we ever get a summer here in the UK). Alex is in a spot of…

A pair of recent crime books featuring female detectives. The Devil Stone by Caro Ramsey When an entire family are found dead in a seemingly ritualistic fashion in a small town in the Scottish Highlands, DCI Christine Caplan is asked to help out with the investigation. It’s not helping matters that the policeman in charge…

At the weekend I saw the new Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer. It’s a powerful and superbly told biopic about J Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of the United State’s attempt to build an atomic bomb, before the Nazis got there first. This is a story that I’m very familiar with, having seen everything from…

I should state up front that I have no interest in reading Spare the new book from Prince Harry which has perturbed much of the UK press so much for the last few weeks, alongside the Netflix series he’s made with his wife. I hold no candle for the Royal Family. However, if Harry and…

Around this time of year I always have good intentions to write more about the books I read. I’ve got a note somewhere of a long list of titles that I read last year, but remain unblogged. I’ll try to get back to that list at some point. But over the Christmas/New Year period, I…

William Boyd is the contemporary master of the ‘whole life novel’ – books that use a character’s entire lifetime to tell a story. He wrote about how he fell into this in The Guardian back in 2018, first writing a novel in this fashion with The New Confessions. Subsequently, he has also written Any Human…

As I write, Apple is the second most valuable company in the world. A couple of weeks ago it was the most valuable, but many tech stocks have taken a tumble over that period. Nonetheless, Apple is currently worth $2.4 trillion. While Steve Jobs set Apple on the way, it has actually been Tim Cook…

In 1996, I was on a mountain biking holiday in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. It was an organised trip with a small travel company and we spent our days cycling between fairly remote towns and villages, camping out at night. One day, I noticed large numbers of people dressed up in costumes. There were…

I should probably preface this review by saying that I know one of the Cavendish’s ghostwriters, Daniel Friebe. So make of that what you will! When Mark Cavendish stormed to victory on Stage 4 of this year’s Tour de France, I was ecstatic. Cavendish is a cyclist who I’ve loved to follow for years. He…

The latest book from Michael Connelly feels as contemporary as anything he’s written recently. Connelly always says that his books are set at the time that he writes them – hence his characters like Harry Bosch age in real time. But he also heavily references what is happening in the real world, and this book…

In The Second Cut we revisit the world of Rilke, who readers first came across in Louise Welsh’s fantastic debut The Cutting Room. Rilke works for Bowery Auctions, and he’s given a tip by a friend, Jojo, that there’s a house clearance sale coming up that his firm might want to get involved with. Rilk…