Once again, I was lucky enough to win another book to review from the Pot Luck draw for Waterstones cardholders a few weeks ago. This time, it was ‘Crossing to Safety’ by Wallace Stegner which was first published in 1987 a few years before his death and has recently been reprinted by Penguin Classics featuring an introduction by Jane Smiley. You can read my brief review here on the Waterstones website under the name Clare90. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Reviews
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Filed under Books
Canada by Richard Ford
I randomly picked ‘Canada’ by Richard Ford off the shelf in a shop not long after it was first published last year and turned to the first page. I was immediately struck by the first two sentences: “First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” As opening lines go, I found those to be pretty memorable and also very intriguing. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn
Even though I love music, I rarely seek out autobiographies or biographies about musicians. In fact, I don’t think I have read any books even vaguely related to music since starting this blog over eighteen months ago. However, I love love LOVE Tracey Thorn and was very excited to get hold of a copy of her memoir ‘Bedsit Disco Queen: How I grew up and tried to be a popstar’ at the library this week. If her writing was half as eloquent and understated as her songwriting, then I knew I would be in for a treat. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
‘Sweet Tooth’ by Ian McEwan tells the story of a young woman called Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) who is recruited by MI5 after she finishes studying at Cambridge University in the early 1970s. She is assigned to an operation named Sweet Tooth in which a cultural foundation is set up to offer financial assistance to writers who speak out against communism. However, her romantic relationship with one of the young writers involved in the project, Tom Haley, starts to complicate things. Continue reading
Filed under Books
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
‘The Panopticon’ by Jenni Fagan tells the story of Anais Hendricks, a fifteen-year-old young offender from Scotland who has spent all of her life in care and is more or less constantly in trouble with the police. After being accused of assaulting a police officer who ends up in a coma, she spends time in the Panopticon, an institution for chronic young offenders which takes its name from Jeremy Bentham’s suggested “circular prison with cells so constructed that the prisoners can be observed at all times”.
Filed under Books
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003, ‘Notes on a Scandal’ by Zoe Heller is a tightly-written psychological thriller driven almost entirely by the characters rather than the actual events. The story is told retrospectively from the point of view of Barbara Covett, a History teacher at a North London comprehensive school. Lonely and nearing retirement, she forms a friendship with a new pottery teacher, Sheba Hart. However, Sheba’s affair with one of her fifteen-year-old male pupils has far-reaching consequences for everyone, especially Barbara.
Filed under Books
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1995, ‘The Stone Diaries’ by Carol Shields is a fictional biography of Daisy Goodwill which outlines her life story in ten chapters covering her birth, childhood, marriage, love, motherhood, work, sorrow, ease, illness and death. Born in Canada in 1905, Daisy’s life spans the majority of the twentieth century and is both very ordinary and yet also highly extraordinary. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
I have finally got round to reading ‘Where’d You Go, Bernadette’ by Maria Semple which was the only book shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction that I didn’t manage to read before the winner was announced in June. It tells the story of Bernadette Fox, an award-winning architect who lives in Seattle with her husband, Elgie, who works for Microsoft and their teenage daughter, Bee. For various reasons, Bernadette loathes Seattle and one day, she simply disappears, leaving Bee to compile a series of emails, letters, police reports and other correspondence in order to find her mother. Continue reading
Filed under Books
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, ‘A Tale for the Time Being’ by Ruth Ozeki tells the story of a diary written a decade ago by a Japanese teenage girl called Nao which is washed up on an island off British Colombia in a Hello Kitty lunchbox after the tsunami in 2011. The diary is discovered by a novelist called Ruth who tries to find out what happened to Nao and her family, including her great-grandmother, Jiko, a Buddhist nun and her great-uncle, Haruki, a kamikaze pilot in the Second World War.
Filed under Books
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Even though I have been a book blogger for quite a while now and am generally meant to be on top of all things bookish, I have been very slow at getting round to reading the book that pretty much the entire world (no exaggeration) has been discussing for the last year or so. I got a bit fed up of my mum and my sister going into another room to talk about ‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn so I thought I had better get round to reading it so that I could join in with the conversation.
Filed under Books
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
Winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ by Adam Johnson tells the story of Pak Jun Do’s journey from life in a North Korean state orphanage to professional kidnapper to a career in Pyongyang at the heart of Kim Jong-il’s regime. It is an intriguing and sprawling story which explores several aspects of life in one of the most secretive countries in the world. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
For me, one of the great things about literary awards is discovering the work of authors which might otherwise have passed me by. The Man Booker Prize longlist, for example, recently brought Jhumpa Lahiri to my attention. After reviewing ‘Unaccustomed Earth‘ just a few weeks ago, I got hold of copies of her first collection of short stories ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and her first novel ‘The Namesake’ published in 2003. I am now hoping that Lahiri’s new Booker Prize shortlisted novel ‘The Lowland’ lives up to my increasingly high expectations.
Continue reading
Filed under Books
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
‘Under the Skin’ is a very difficult book to summarise without giving away too much of the plot. Essentially, it tells the story of Isserley, who drives around deserted areas of northern Scotland picking up well-built lone male hitchhikers. I really don’t want to tell you any more than that and if you’ve already read it, then you’ll understand why. If you haven’t, then you’ll have to forgive me for being so cryptic. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that the book is much more intriguing if you read it without any real clues about what will happen beyond the initial set-up. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre
‘Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients’ by Ben Goldacre exposes the dodgy trial methods and practices behind the $600 billion pharmaceutical industry. In a nutshell, drug companies regularly hide negative results from clinical trials and exaggerate the benefits of medicines in order to make vast profits. Even regulators have been known to withhold information and allow ineffectual or dangerous drugs onto the market. The consequence is that both doctors and patients are unable to make well-informed decisions about healthcare. Continue reading
Best Book to Film Adaptations
There have been so many mediocre film adaptations of great novels which don’t even come close to capturing the magic of the original story. But there are quite a few gems out there and even though the book always comes first, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the film adaptations which follow are always completely inferior to the original work. Here is my list of the best book to film adaptations (where I have both read the book and seen the film).
We Need To Talk About Kevin (book by Lionel Shriver published in 2004, film directed by Lynne Ramsay released in 2011)
I loved this understated and creepy adaptation of ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. The sparse style and atmosphere of the film contrasts with the comparatively “wordy” text of the book but it works. The casting of Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller as Eva and Kevin were both excellent choices.
Filed under Books
The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
‘The Testament of Mary’ by Colm Tóibín will probably be the only book longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize that I will definitely be able to read before the shortlist is announced in a few weeks time. The story is told from the point of view of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is still grieving for her son many years after his death and does not believe that he is the son of God. Her testament in her old age focuses mainly on her son’s last days before the crucifixion and what happened afterwards. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
I recently won another book from the Waterstones read and review competition in which cardholders receive a free copy of a book in return for posting an honest review on the website. This time, it was a pot luck draw and I got a copy of Artemis Cooper’s biography of the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. Again, I am not sure if I can publish my official review in full on my blog but you can read it here under the name Clare90. Continue reading
Filed under Books
The Last Life by Claire Messud
‘The Last Life’ by Claire Messud is a coming-of-age story set in the early 1990s about Sagesse LaBasse, a French-American girl whose family own a hotel in the south of France which was opened by her grandfather after he emigrated from Algeria. The story follows Sagesse as she explores her multiple identities and comes to terms with the events of the past. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
I am probably not going to have the chance to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Man Booker Prize longlisted novel ‘The Lowland’ any time soon as it isn’t due to be published in the UK until the end of September so I thought I would try a collection of her short stories instead. ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ contains eight exquisitely written stories. The first half of the collection consists of five stand-alone stories while the second half is more of a novella in three parts featuring the same characters, Hema and Kaushik. Continue reading
Filed under Books
Take Me to the Castle by F. C. Malby
Firstly, I must thank F. C. Malby for her patience as she sent me a copy of her first novel ‘Take Me to the Castle’ several months ago and I have only just got round to reviewing it. Set in the Czech Republic in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, ‘Take Me to the Castle’ tells the story of a young woman called Jana and how the tumultuous political changes in her home country are affecting her life following the recent death of her dissident father. Much of the story also focuses on a love triangle between Jana and her two potential suitors, Milos and Lukas. Continue reading
Filed under Books
A Little Blog of Books 
You must be logged in to post a comment.