Tag: books

For a long time now, Facebook has had a serious problem with some of its users – myself included – a lack of trust. It’s hard to put a finger on why that is exactly, and why they should be viewed as any worse than, say, Google. Perhaps it’s the way they introduce new features…

Michael Lewis’ books are always very readable as he has a knack of navigating you through sometimes very complicated stories. In The Premonition he is tackling the pandemic. In particular, he’s actually tackling it from the perspective of a handful of individuals who had previously been planning for something like this, or who were more…

Eve Laing is an artist who works in her London studio on works based around very accurate reproductions of flowers. But she is perhaps most famous as the muse of another painter, and for moving in the same circles in the sixties and seventies as a number of other more successful artists. She did find…

The Absolute Book is a complex and sprawling fantasy novel of a very unusual sort. And it’s all the better for being so. To try to even describe the plot would be foolhardy, but it starts in a contemporary world, mostly in the UK, but with excursions to Canada and New Zealand, and tells the…

A year or so ago I read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, which laid out in often horrific details, the kinds of things that would happen to the planet if we didn’t change our ways. Bill Gates goes for the much more practical, “So what can we do about it now?” approach. This book…

Having previously read and enjoyed Convenience Store Woman, it wasn’t a hard decision to pick up Earthlings. As with the previous novel, this is a story about someone who finds society quiet alienating. Indeed our protagonist, Nutsuki handles life initially by imagining she has magical powers. Beginning as a girl, we follow Nutsuki’s life as…

I love a good Scandi-noir, and this doesn’t disappoint with an entertaining tale about a slightly-disgraced Swedish detective who feels compelled to visit his long-estranged father in the rural countryside. He heads to the home where for years his father has kept ravens in a barn, but is now suffering from dementia and is talking…

This is a twisty little tale where you’re never quite sure where the story is heading. Una has just got a job as a live-in companion to the wealthy, but cold Elspeth. But the money is good, and she’s willing to put up with the fact that Elspeth’s daughter Kathryn really doesn’t take to her.…

Richard Osman’s first novel is as delightful as it is unexpected. Writing a crime novel didn’t seem like the obvious next thing for Richard Osman to do, and I always get a little nervous when celebrities turn their hands to something outside their previous career. Are they just being published because they’re famous? Well that’s…

The Chalet is a debut thriller, and it’s a great ride. Told from several vantage points, and from two timelines, we are taken to an Alpine ski resort. In the present day, a wealthy group has gathered in a luxury chalet, and of course there are secrets. Ria has come with her husband Hugo, who…

This is the first Nick Hornby novel I’ve read in a while, although I’ve certainly read most of his more famous work. I couldn’t quite put a handle on why I’d stopped reading him, but I definitely enjoyed this new work. Lucy is a white school teacher in her forties who’s getting over a breakdown…