I began this trilogy last year (though never blogged it then) but read the bulk of it this year, so I hope my fellow bloggers won’t mind if I blog it as my books six, seven and eight for 2008.
His Dark Materials Slipcase
Philip PullmanScholastic 2007, Paperback, 600 pages, £25.00
I wasn’t sure what I would think of [...]
Revolutionary Road is the story of a young couple full of promise. Smart, stylish and stuck in what they consider to be suburban hell, Frank and April Wheeler struggle to come to terms with the let down of where their lives have ended up compared with what they dreamed of as young adults.
As the story [...]
Though it has been a long time since my last post, I am officially back on the horse and have lots of books to catch up on. Unfortunately, the ones at the top of my list are a little bit hazy in my memory…
The fourth book I read this year (months ago now) was David [...]
The opening chapters of A Spot of Bother set up a plot that could compete with the most dramatic soap opera. George Hall is slowly going mad, his wife is having an affair, his daughter is marrying someone she isn’t sure if she loves, and his son’s aversion to commitment has finally driven away his [...]
The Dig is a lovely novel. In it, John Preston imaginatively recreates the excavation of the burial mounds in the grounds of Sutton Hoo House in the summer of 1939. Though he admits to changing some facts to better serve his story, he hardly needed to add drama. Sutton Hoo was an incredibly significant find, [...]
Anita Diamant’s bestseller, The Red Tent celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2007. I never got around to reading it in ‘97, despite many recommendations, and I probably wouldn’t have read it now had my sister not insisted that it was a wonderful book and worth reading.
It starts with the scant information the Bible provides about [...]
When I decided to read Theft, I thought it would be about theft in the metaphorical sense. And it is, but Theft is also about theft in the literal sense – art theft, identity theft and authorship theft. It is somewhere between love story and thriller, exposing a seedy underbelly of the art world and [...]
I’m a big fan of Michael Chabon, so I was excited to see another of his novels appear at the bookshop. Expecting another Kavalier and Clay might have been too much, but I was still very happy with his latest effort.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union imagines an alternate history where the state of Isreal didn’t get [...]
Its New Year’s Eve here in New Zealand, and before we hit 2008, I want to make one more attempt to get close to my target of 26 books for the year. So here goes. I read this book ages ago, and haven’t had a chance to blog it, so please forgive any errors in [...]
My Family and Other Animals is a charming title for a charming book, written by Gerald Durrell about his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. I had the good fortune to be given this book before I departed for Corfu on holiday.
The story begins as Gerry and his family, tiring of the dismal English [...]
