When Hotel Arcadia was first published by Quartet in 2015, I found it unputdownable, reading it in one session (which is perfectly doable given its length of 224 pages). Now it has finally got a paperback release through Magpie/Point Blank Books, and I was delighted to revisit it for the new blogtour. Think of hotel Read More
Category: Shiny New Books
Shiny Linkiness: Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre
I often wait before linking here to my Shiny reviews: why? I don’t know. But I’m on the ball today to direct you over there to my review of The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman. His second novel is superb. It’s a late Elizabethan era adventure with two wonderful teenaged protagonists, featuring the child theatre, Read More
Catching up with Shiny linkiness…
I’ve had several reviews posted at Shiny New Books lately, so I shall take the opportunity to plug them here as well. Bournville by Jonathan Coe I’ve read nearly everything that Coe has published and reviewed four of them for Shiny (see here). He has favoured themes: many of his most-celebrated novels are concerned with deciphering Read More
Review Catch-up
In an effort to plan for Christmas and beyond (who am I kidding?), I’m aiming to clear the decks of my review pile, so this is the first of a couple of catch-ups. Shiny Linkiness My three latest reviews for Shiny … Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries – edited by Alan Taylor. Rickman’s diaries, Read More
A Friday Miscellany – Tags, Shiny & a new Readalong
Now School’s out for me, I can breathe and get in some serious staying in bed with a book (and cats) in the mornings (fan on at the moment and through the heatwave), so I hope to ramp up my #20BooksofSummer22 books – I’m up to 10 already (by including recent backlist book group reads), Read More
Review Catch-up – again! Cocker, Saint, Jamieson & Stibbe
Firstly some Shiny Linkiness… Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker This book of memoir, styled as an inventory of the stuff in Cocker’s loft from his teens and the early Pulp years until he went down to art college in London, is just a delight. Cocker has such a quirky personality, a conforming Yorkshire Read More
Shiny Linkiness
I’ve been very remiss, and forgetting to link to my various reviews over at Shiny New Books, here are my latest from this month and last: The Gift of a Radio by Justin Webb Webb’s memoir of his childhood and years up until he joined the BBC in 1984 is a candid, funny and touching Read More
Lots of Shiny Linkiness
Time to catch up here with a bit of linkiness to my reviews published at Shiny New Books, there have been several over the past weeks I’ve not mentioned here. Star Turns by Tim Walker Journalist Tim Walker has worked at many publications, currently at the New European, where he resurrected the Mandrake diary column Read More
Review of the Year #1 – A Year of Reading and Blogging
I’m saving my books of the year for the 31st, but today I plan to share some other blogging highlights, discovered authors and the few disappointments of my reading year. Let’s go through the year first… JANUARY – was the beginning of The Japanese Literature Challenge 13 which carried on until March. I read The Read More
Shiny Linkiness
In the last few weeks, I’ve written four reviews for Shiny New Books, and neglected to mention them here until now. Click on the title below to go straight to my full Shiny review. I’m loving the colour-coordinated covers of these four books too! Numbers Don’t Lie by Vaclav Smil – one for fans of Read More
Reviews catch-up: Harris, Murata, Daré & Wigglesworth
My pile of read but not yet reviewed books runneth over, so some shorter notes follow, plus some Shiny linkiness. The Book Lover’s Quiz Book – Novel Conundrums by Gary Wigglesworth My full review of this fun book is over at Shiny, but I’m writing about it here too as it’s an ideal Christmas present Read More
This Could be My Book of the Year!
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke We’ve had to wait 16 years for Susanna Clarke to write her second novel, with just some short stories in between. Was it worth the wait or was it a ‘difficult’ second novel? It was definitely the former! Piranesi is one of those uncategorisable novels that has a bit of everything Read More
And with the click of a button…
…I inadvertently deleted the whole of Shiny New Books! It’s a long story – but involves finding ourselves as admins locked out of the website. Why?: Because we were using more than our allotted space, I discovered when I ‘chatted’ to our webhosting company. Solution: moving from ‘managed WordPress’ (controlled by web hosting co) to Read More
The Shiny New Books Archive: A furlough project!
It’s hard to believe perhaps, but the labour of love that is my other booky place, Shiny New Books, had its sixth birthday this week. Shiny launched on April 7th, 2014 as a quarterly book recommendations site, with four sections: Fiction, Non-fiction, Reprints and BookBuzz, edited by me, Harriet, Simon and Victoria respectively. We recruited Read More
Mid-week Catch-up…
An afternoon in Oxford with Rebecca I had a lovely lightly bookish afternoon in Oxford yesterday with Rebecca (aka Bookish Beck). We met at Blackwell’s – where better in Oxford, and both being on a budget headed upstairs to the sale/second hand section on the top floor of the main shop – where we spent Read More
Shiny Linkiness
Just popping in quickly to highlight my latest review at Shiny New Books. Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon Sometimes a novel just grabs you and won’t let go – Slow Motion Ghosts was one of those books! Jeff Noon is more famed for his alternative Manchester, weird slightly SF novels, but now he has Read More
Shiny Linkiness
Eric Idle – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography Yesterday I reviewed Eric Idle’s ‘Sortabiography’ for Shiny. Read the full review here. He and Michael Palin have always been my favourite Pythons, so I was fascinated to read Idle’s memoir. However, he remains a slippery character – self-deprecating, one who’d rather Read More
Shiny Linkiness: Aug into Sept
Over the past few weeks, I’ve reviewed three cracking new novels for Shiny New Books… … Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale Gale’s latest is just lovely. This novel is a wonderful blend of coming of age story, small-town childhood, friendship and finding oneself, bound up with a love of music, cello music in Read More
Shiny Booker Week
We’re celebrating The Man Booker Prize at Shiny New Books this week, as the prize gears up to its 50th year with the Golden Booker being announced at the weekend (I’m going to the prize ceremony in London). I do urge you to take a look – as each day we’re celebrating a different decade Read More
Shiny Linkiness…
It may be the Easter hols, but I’m still very busy on the termly school magazine for a day or two. So I have a link to my latest Shiny review for you to fill the gap. Almost Love by Louise O’Neill I was a big fan of O’Neill’s first two novels which were hard-hitting Read More
Shiny Linkiness
The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley I reviewed Pulley’s first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (reviewed here) for Shiny a couple of years ago, and recently reviewed her second The Bedlam Stacks there too. I loved both books, but after the delight that was Watchmaker, Stacks goes even further in developing the relationship between Read More
My August Shiny posts…
This month I wrote quite a few posts for Shiny New Books, here’s a summary of those I haven’t already mentioned: The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce Although a more conventionally plotted ‘will they ever get together’ type of romance than the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, (see my review of that here), Read More
One for #WITMonth at Shiny…
Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello Translated by Alex Valente August is Women in Translation month – and my review of this debut novel by Italian author Elena Varvello is over at Shiny New Books. A combination of psychothriller and coming of age story that works, brilliantly, these two theme entwine around each other, Read More
Meanwhile at Shiny…
White Tears by Hari Kunzru I loved Kunzru’s last novel Gods Without Men (reviewed here), so I was really keen to read his latest. White Tears is the story of two young white men who discover and appropriate an old blues song, which drives them to the edge. It’s very thought-provoking and made me examine Read More
Amanda Craig at Shiny…
The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig I’ve long been a fan of Amanda Craig, always loving her book reviews in the Times/Sunday Times and then her novels – I still have a couple to catch up on on my shelves which will be a pleasure. Meanwhile I recently read and reviewed her latest, Read More
Meanwhile at Shiny…
An English Guide to Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle I was delighted to make the acquaintance of Professor Nicholas Royle through reading and reviewing his second novel for Shiny New Books, and then the Q&A we did. An English Guide to Birdwatching is in essence a novel exploring (English) human relationships through ornithropomorphic means – the Read More
How I’ve Read – Revisited
Nurturing my reading habit I’ve been adding old book reviews that failed to transfer over from my old blog to this one in the hope that I can finally erase the old blog. I came across a post which I wrote in March 2010, which I felt was definitely worth revisiting, so I’ve edited my Read More
Meanwhile, at Shiny…
Here are links to my recent posts over at Shiny New Books… Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh This is one of my most-loved TV programmes ever, and the original play is now 40 years old. Penguin have reissued it with a new intro by Leigh – and it still holds up today! Little top up? Read More
Busy, busy, busy… and meanwhile at Shiny…
My poor blog – I’ve been neglecting it of late, life’s been so busy! The next couple of weeks should be easier, although my priority will be supporting my daughter in her GCSE revision. Still, we did manage to get to IKEA earlier this week, and I now have a rather lovely new armchair/rug/coffee table Read More
Meanwhile, over at Shiny…
I have two reviews from the past couple of weeks, I haven’t shared here yet… The Fatal Tree by Jake Arnott Jake Arnott’s novels are moving back in time. He started in the 1960s and 1970s with his Long Firm trilogy, (the first of which I reviewed here), then he moved back to WWII followed Read More
