Category Archives: Books

It’s been an age since I finished this book, but I haven’t been able to write a review of it yet. There are many excuses for this: I’ve been starting a business, building walls in my front garden, enjoying the … Continue reading →

A loan from a friend at work, I read Brighton Rock shortly after watching Rowan Joffe’s recent screen reworking of the title. Having rather enjoyed the movie I was expecting good things of the book. I discovered a much darker … Continue reading →

I’d watched the Cohen Brother’s film before I read this novel. Coming to the book itself it was not difficult to see the appeal of the text to a film-maker: McCarthy’s writing is so sparse it is practically a screen … Continue reading →

I’ve read Terry Pratchett’s books for years now, his writing career progressing in parallel with my reading career. I think I read Wyrd Sisters before I was out of primary school, although most of the jokes went over my head. … Continue reading →

If you’ve seen the film of Cold Mountain, be aware that Hollywood ruined it — the book is far better. Part anti-war novel, part love story, part paean to feminism, Frazier’s book is a more nuanced and complex work than … Continue reading →

Quite how Robert de Board hit upon the idea of basing his novella about the psychological process of counselling on Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In The Willows is beyond me, but it was a happy moment of inspiration. Although both … Continue reading →

It seems natural that every generation feels itself to be living in pivotal, vital times; and we are no different. Technology in general, and the Internet in particular, are changing the world. Yet we really have nothing on Issac Newton … Continue reading →

A book with the word “classic” on the spine is sometimes difficult to approach. Irrespective of what you encounter within, the mere label compels respect. And so it was with Moby Dick, a book famous enough that it is more … Continue reading →

Having spent nearly the last two months sounding the depths of Moby Dick, I felt the need for some distraction. Leviathan hooked me in a bookshop within the first two paragraphs, and I decided that Melville, were he alive today, … Continue reading →

In many ways, Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy has everything a fan of modern detective thrillers could ask for: there is tangled and murky conspiracy; there is bleak, sadistic violence; there is a triumphant tale of redemption. There are a pair of … Continue reading →