2026

1. 11/02/2026 tagged: Louise Kennedy, ★★★★

   Read: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy ★★★★ 📚

   Northern Ireland 1975 Cushla young RC teacher starts an affair with a Married Protestant Lawyer & gets mixed up with a mixed family of a pupil. Spent the whole book tensed against the expected end.

   While in Dublin:

   They walked up Grafton Street. Buskers were playing guitars, huddles of youths standing about watching them.
   Something was wrong. She looked up and down the street and didn’t know what it was until she was in the doorway of Switzers, sliding her handbag off her shoulder and holding it open. Michael laughed. You’re not in Kansas any more, he said.

   I remember in the 70s my aunt on a visit to Glasgow going up to the security guard in M&S & opening her handbag.

2. 11/02/2026 tagged: Catherine Newman, ★★★

   Read: Sandwich by Catherine Newman ★★★ 📚

   3 Generation family holiday week on Cape Cod. A mix of comedy & more serious matters. Some LOL. Most of the serious was around termination & miscarriage. A bit of holocaust history added it seemed, to me, too much for the book to carry.

3. 06/02/2026 tagged: Sinéad Gleeson, ★★★

   Read: Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson ★★★ 📚

   Last summer there was a rogue patch of phosphorescence at Cloughkeel beach, a psychedelic wreath. Tonight, in the dark swell there is only the sound of a lone whale, and Danu above. How lonely to be always reaching out for someone who isn’t there.

   An artist living on the island she was born on. Lots of intriguing ideas: the descriptions of her art work; a weird sound that not everyone hears; a colony of women who have left the world; a local lover; a dead whale & a visiting film star. Not all quite tied up.

4. 26/01/2026 tagged: Peter Heller, ★★★

   Read: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller ★★★ 📚

   This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool.

   Post apocalyptic, few survivors left, mostly killing each other. The main character loves fishing & the outdoors, handy skills to have except all the trout died too. The descriptions of what is left & what has been lost are poetic. Mixed with adventure, murderous action & brutality in a fractured storyline without much punctuation, not in a bad way.

5. 23/01/2026 tagged: Neil Young, ★★★★

   Read: Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young ★★★★ 📚

   I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next.

   Reads almost as it has been run right out with any editing. Jumps from topic to topic & across times, with occasional words to the reader. Follows a wide range of the author's experiences obsessions in a somehow really engaging way.

6. 17/01/2026 tagged: Omar El Akkad, ★★★★★

   Read: One day, everyone will have always been against this by Omar El Akkad ★★★★★ 📚

   Clearly, logically & beautifully written. I started collecting some of the most powerful quotes, but there is little that could be skipped. The focus on children, the author's own & those in Gaza, is so important.

7. 08/01/2026 tagged: Ian Green, ★★★

   Read: Extremophile by Ian Green ★★★ 📚

   A note on Scrim’s eyes. He is proud of the eyes. (I’m proud of the eyes, baby, he is heard to say often.) Eye tattoos across the sclera with polarised something in them, micro-LED implants, he thinks, and his eyes shine and glow like the devil himself, if the devil himself followed a very western European late nineteenth-century vibe (which for Scrim he certainly does, baby).

   Punks, biohackers, climate-collapse & eco-terrorism. London after societal collapse. A super villain, a mole person, breathless thrills & violence with a little nature writing thrown in. A bit too sweary & headlong for me.

2025

1. The Book of Goose 29/12/2025 tagged: Yiyun Li, ★★★★★ - Read: The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li ★★★★★ 📚 As far as I can see, people handing out this verdict freely are those for whom any external movement is a sign of decisiveness, personal strength, virtue. But my chickens, with their small brains, never seem to tire of walking around, pecking, coo-ing, clawing. The… …
2. The Benefactors 26/12/2025 tagged: Wendy Erskine, ★★★★ - Read: The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine ★★★★ 📚 She has read that in Belfast during the conflict there were séances because so many were taken unexpectedly, leaving behind unanswered questions and husbands, wives, children who didn't get to hear or say a last I love you. Who couldn't understand why they wanted an ectoplasmic gush… …
3. This must be the place 22/12/2025 tagged: Maggie O’Farrell, ★★★★ - Read: This must be the place by Maggie O'Farrell ★★★★ 📚 You see, my mother’s idea of a good time was to spend the evening re-reading The Divine Comedy, whereas my father liked to have several beers and watch the game. That they were woefully mismatched seemed a given, a background presence in our lives;… …
4. The Power of the Dog 16/12/2025 tagged: Don Winslow, ★★★★ - Read: The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow ★★★★ 📚 "That's what you want me to choose? Dope-pushing Contras? Cuban terrorists? Salvadoran death squads that murder women, kids, priests and nuns?" "They're brutal, vicious and evil? Hobbs says. The only worse people I can think of are the Communists." A decades long thriller &… …
5. Review: Flashlight by Susan Choi 11/12/2025 tagged: Susan Choi, ★★★★★ - Read: Flashlight by Susan Choi ★★★★★ 📚 Louisa's parents were people for whom things went wrong. The car got lost in the lot, or the driving directions were bad, of the check to the gas company never arrived and the stove was turned off. They misplaced things, or forgot facts, or disagreed on the facts,… …
6. The Memory of Animals 06/12/2025 tagged: Claire Fuller, ★★★★ - Read: The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller ★★★★ 📚 The satellites will probably remain in the sky for years, circling the earth, taking their power from the sun, continuing to transmit their messages with nobody listening. A pandemic. A teased out back story via memory & letters to a mystery character both strangely contrived… …
7. Seascraper 25/11/2025 tagged: Benjamin Wood, ★★★★★ - Read: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood ★★★★★ 📚 Little waves are shouldering the cart’s tyres, spitting upwards at his face. The sea is patterned by the rain like honeycomb. He’s trying to make the best of it, but he can tell the horse is getting more reluctant. A wonderful novella. A few days in the life… …
8. Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time 23/11/2025 tagged: 4-stars, Penelope Lively, ★★★★ - Read: Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively ★★★★ 📚 There is a vogue for ‘life writing’ at the moment, both for publication and as private endeavours. I am all for it, partly because I gobble up other people’s lives, as a reader, but also because it seems to me a… …
9. No Friend to This House 19/11/2025 tagged: 3-stars, Natalie Haynes, ★★★ - Read: No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes ★★★ 📚 What do you mean, you didn't see me there? Well, of course you didn't. It's not a trick, it's grammar. Greek uses the masculine and the feminine, but it prefers the masculine (I know). So no matter how many girls were in a room… …
10. And He Shall Appear 07/11/2025 tagged: Kate van der Burgh, ★★★★ - Read: And He Shall Appear by Kate van der Burgh ★★★★ 📚 Working class boy is dazzled by Cambridge & his magician, occultist "friend". Page turner, dark academia. Some people say we're our true selves when we think nobody is watching. But how do we know our own identities without others' confirming gaze? If, like… …
11. Americana 05/11/2025 tagged: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ★★★★ - Read Americana by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ★★★★ 📚Love story that investigates class, race, sexism & history in Africa, USA & Britain Obinze saw himself through Vincent’s eyes: a university staff child who grew up eating butter and now needed his help. …
12. Against Identity 28/10/2025 tagged: Alexander Douglas, ★★★ - Read: Against Identity by Alexander Douglas ★★★ 📚The Guardian describe this as a powerfully strange counterblast to identity fetishism and quote What we think of as our own special identity is just a suit of borrowed clothes but although I enjoyed parts the references & context in this philosopher's book was a bit above my… …
13. little monsters 25/10/2025 tagged: Adrienne Brodeur, ★★★★★ - Read: Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur ★★★★★ 📚A scientist as monster father. Adam's ego and bi-polar comes to a head his family is exploding in various ways. Alternative chapters written in close third keep some sympathy for all the privileged Cap Cod cast as the family history is dug up. Lots of nature, funny &… …
14. dance moves 20/10/2025 tagged: Wendy Erskine, ★★★ - Read Dance Moves by Wendy Erskine ★★★ 📚Slightly off kilter stories about off kilter characters that keep you wondering. The author leaves you waiting until you start to grasp the main ideas. All with a Northern Ireland connection. …
15. the water dancer 14/10/2025 tagged: Ta-Nehisi Coates, ★★★★ - Read: TheWater Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates ★★★★ 📚Slavery & the underground railway in the USA. Realistic, except for the hero's developing 'superpower' which I guess was a metaphor. Not as horrific as other slavery novels I've read but spells out a lot powerfully. …
16. Fundamentally 07/10/2025 tagged: ★★★ - Read: Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis ★★★ 📚 UN newbie gets caught up with isis bride. Interesting, engaging & very mixed up on several levels. The mix of humour & seriousness felt slightly off kilter to me. The authors credentials made this more surprising when I read them. …
17. There There 29/09/2025 tagged: Tommy Orange, ★★★★★ - Read: There There by Tommy Orange ★★★★★ 📚Cleverly told, almost thriller from multiple characters with different POVs. Life & life histories of urban Native Americans, all carrying the weight of the collective past. The train emerges, rises out of the underground tube in the Fruitvale district, over by that Burger King and the terrible pho… …
18. The Bean Trees 27/09/2025 tagged: Barbara Kingsolver, ★★★★ - Read: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver ★★★★ 📚You can see some of the roots of Demon Copperhead in this tail of a poor Kentucky girl. Published in 1988 the refugee sub story is still pertinent. …
19. Ripeness by Sarah Moss 26/09/2025 tagged: Sarah Moss, ★★★★ - Read: Ripeness by Sarah Moss ★★★★ 📚Edith in her 70s in 2023 and 17 in the 70s in alternative chapters, the echos of the holocaust, family, belonging to a place, refugees & friendship. Excursions into Irishness & ballet. Mike’s friend Phineas in Dublin is a sound engineer, hears whole orchestras of weather, traffic, birds that… …
20. now we shall be entirely free 25/09/2025 tagged: Andrew Miller, ★★★★ - Read: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller After The Land in Winter, this turned out to be quite different. Reminded me of Kidnapped! An atrocity in Spain, an English solider, running from another sent to kill him, heads for the Hebrides. Excitement & sympathy for all the characters. Below them, the last… …
21. Golden Child 16/09/2025 tagged: Claire Adam, ★★★★★ - Read Golden Child by Claire Adam ★★★★★ 📚Engrossing & troubling story. Set in Trinidad, with a strong flavour of place & family. Twins, one very bright, the other, Paul, "slightly retarded". Told from several view points, Paul's was particularly strong. Father Clyde values both children in different ways loving & being embarrassed by Paul. …
22. One Good Turn 12/09/2025 tagged: Kate Atkinson, ★★★★ - Read: One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆📚I think the author was trying to see how many seeming unrelated treads she could tie up. Good fun, subtitled A Jolly Murder Mystery, set in Edinburgh during the festival. …
23. Bel Canto 11/09/2025 tagged: Ann Patchett, ★★★★★ - Read Bel Canto by Ann Patchett ★★★★★ 📚Probably the cutest terrorists in fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed the mixture of emotion, love, fear and boredom. Gives a good account of the joy of opera too. …
24. Winter 07/09/2025 tagged: Ali Smith, ★★★★★ - Read: Winter Ali Smith ★★★★★ 📚Amazing book, floats between time and characters, dreams & hallucinations. Funny too. Her sister Iris is making nothing of her life. Sophia thinks of their mother, when Iris worked at the filling station, telling anyone who asked how her daughters were doing that Iris had a good position in an… …
25. The Distance Between Us 27/08/2025 tagged: Maggie O’Farrell, ★★★ - The Distance Between Us by Maggie O'Farrell ★★★ 📚I enjoyed the telling very much, clever switching between characters, time & location. The whole story didn't really move or gel with me much though. …
26. Bringing the House Down 25/08/2025 tagged: Charlotte Runcie, ★★★★ - Read: Bringing the House Down by Charlotte Runcie ★★★★ 📚Great fun. Critic makes a right mess of mixing review & life in the most selfish way. The criticised act tears him apart. Online cancelling follows. …
27. Burial of Ghosts 23/08/2025 tagged: Ann Cleeves, ★★★ - Burial of Ghosts by Ann Cleeves ★★★ 📚Convoluted telling of a convoluted mystery. I enjoyed the twists and turns without any idea of the solution. An unstable narrator who recalls fragments of her past at different times. …
28. The High Places 21/08/2025 tagged: Fiona Mcfarlane, ★★★★ - Read: The High Places by Fiona McFarlane ★★★★ 📚A quite varied and strange set of short stories. My favourite involved a colossal squid and the ghost of Darwin. There was an eternal mechanical budgie in another! …
29. The Sleepwalkers 16/08/2025 tagged: Scarlet Thomas, ★★★★ - Read: - The Sleepwalkers by Scarlet Thomas ★★★★ 📚Quite a fevered read. Story told in fragments, notes, voice memos from different p.o.v. The narrators are all unreliable, even the voice memos, mixed up like an automatically generated transcript. Gothic & gruesome. …
30. Havoc 10/08/2025 tagged: Rebecca Wait, ★★★★ - Read: Havoc by Rebecca Wait ★★★★☆📚Collapsing girls boarding school, where the buildings and most of the characters are broken. Illness, hysteria & comedy ensue. Mostly through the eyes of the most normal mistress & Ida, new 6th year fleeing from a Scottish islands scandal. I raced through. …
31. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi again 10/08/2025 tagged: Agni Doshi, ★★★★ - Re-Read: Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi ★★★★☆ I’ve read this 5 years ago, complete forgot even as I read! https://johnjohnston.info/blog/read-burnt-sugar-by-avni-doshi/ …
32. The Unwilding 07/08/2025 tagged: Mariana Kemp, ★★★★★ - Read The Unwilding by Mariana Kemp ★★★★★📚An excellent artist as monster, but looking at the fallout for other characters more than the monster himself. Two main narrators, the possibility of some unreliability, time & location change make for a captivating read. …
33. Tell Me Everything 02/08/2025 tagged: Elizabeth Strout, ★★★★ - Read: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout ★★★★☆ 📚Back reading Elizabeth Strout after a couple of years break. She brings together lots of characters from different books. Olive is still my favourite. The first half of this was a bit too diffuse & simple, but somehow pulled it together so that the second half felt… …
34. In Ascension 22/07/2025 tagged: Martin MacInnes, ★★★★★ - Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes ★★★★★ 📚My goodness what an interesting book, from biology to spaceflight with climate change & corporate greed hanging over everything. Plenty of mystery, some from my own lack of knowledge some written in (or out).Turtles: Lifting the bulk from below, tipping forward, using the momentum of the minor collapse… …
35. The Lying Room 12/07/2025 tagged: Nicki French, ★★★ - Read: The Lying Room by Nicki French ★★★☆☆As readably as usual, but I didn't really get engaged with the characters at all. …
36. The Divorcees 08/07/2025 tagged: Rowan Beaird, ★★★★★ - Read: The Divorcees by Rowan Beaird ★★★★★The fifties in a "divorce ranch" in Reno. I did not expect to love this, but I did. Felt a bit like a B&W movie. A feeling of things going awry builds. Great characters, interesting 'history' & some surprises. …
37. Midnight & Blue 01/07/2025 tagged: Ian Rankin, ★★★ - Read Midnight & Blue by Ian Rankin ★★★★☆ 📚Given the unlikely idea of old Rebus in jail. I was surprised that this recent one kept me interested & engaged. …
38. Lone Wolf 29/06/2025 tagged: Adam Weymouth, ★★★★★ - Read: Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth ★★★★★ 📚 In 2023 there were sixteen fatal dog attacks in the UK alone, not to mention the approximately 15,000 sheep killed by dogs off the leash each year. In 2022 The author follows the 2012, 1200 mile journey of a radio collared wolf from Slovenia to Italy. The… …
39. Highway Thirteen 23/06/2025 tagged: Fiona Mcfarlane, ★★★★★ - Read Highway Thirteen by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚A series of stories surrounding a serial killer's crime that is never fully described. Instead the tangential echos and sources of the crime are explored. …
40. Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld 10/06/2025 tagged: Curtis Sittenfeld, ★★★★ - Read Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld ★★★★☆📚Midlife stories from mostly well educated, well off American (USA) women. Often looking back as well as moving forward. Despite being set in such a different world, I was both absorbed & entertained. I might have enjoyed it even more if I had staked time between the stories. …
41. Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter? 01/06/2025 tagged: Nicki French, ★★★★ - Read: Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter? By Nicki French ★★★★☆ 📚30 years cold case, investigative podcast, police procedural and a twisting plot in which I never got near to guessing. …
42. the Catch 26/05/2025 tagged: Mick Herron, ★★★★ - The catch by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚 Amusing slough house adjacent spy story. Unguessable, by me, twists and turns. John Bachelor Is a sad character, looking after retired spies and making a mess of things. …
43. Bitter orange 14/05/2025 tagged: Claire Fuller, ★★★★ - Read Bitter orange by Claire Fuller ★★★★☆ 📚I really enjoyed this hothouse of emotion between unlikely characters. An unmoored older Francis is enamoured by her younger glamorous neighbours living a temporary life in an old house in the sixties. …
44. A Red Death 08/05/2025 tagged: Walter Mosley, ★★★ - Read A Red Death Walter Mosley ★★★☆☆📚Solid Easy Rawlings, lots of details around the time & place. …
45. The Blazing Heather 21/04/2025 tagged: Colm Tóibín, ★★★★★ - Read The Blazing Heather by Colm Toibin ★★★★★📚Éamon an Irish judge, is quite & extremely reserved, not too likeable, distant from family. The book goes back and forth between his older self & upbringing. I really felt from him later, quietly heartbreaking. …
46. Purple Hibiscus 16/04/2025 tagged: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ★★★★ - Read Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ★★★★☆📚The story of a girl from a wealthy Nigerian family. Without being at all preachy the book covers colonialism, politics, feminism, family & religion. …
47. Close to Home 12/04/2025 tagged: Michael Magee, ★★★★ - Read Close to Home by Michael Magee ★★★★☆ 📚Sean, returns to his Belfast roots after uni. Joins in with pals drinking & drugging. Drags himself out to be a writer. Trauma from violence, class, the troubles echo through everything. You're stuck in this hole with the same three or four faces for the rest of… …
48. The Last Days of Kira Mullan 08/04/2025 tagged: Nicci French, ★★★ - Read The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French ★★★☆☆ 📚Tricksy whodunit, lots going on. A long story even though I raced through it. Side trip to asylum, with very unpleasant staff. Plenty of detail & red herrings. Gaslighting, mental health& murder turn out to be a good holiday read. …
49. The Ecliptic 28/03/2025 tagged: Benjamin Wood, ★★★★ - Read The Ecliptic Benjamin Wood ★★★★☆ 📚Strangely framed story of an abstract artist, from Clydebank, in a Sixties London art world. I was completely absorbed by the central section describing her life & art. The frame, a colony for troubled artists on a Turkish island not quite so much. …
50. The Exhibitionist 21/03/2025 tagged: Charlotte Mendelson, ★★★★ - read: The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson ★★★★☆ 📚Probably the most horrible character I've read about for a while. Ray, old artist with faded reputation, more talented wife & screwed up children. Lots of fun, though Ray didn't get the complete metaphorical kicking he deserves. …
51. The Land in Winter 16/03/2025 tagged: Andrew Miller, ★★★★ - Read The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller ★★★★☆ 📚Set in the beautifully described big freeze of 1962. Two odd couples misunderstanding their partners. Echos of the war, class, everything is changing. The book ends with a tangle of unfinished threads. the flakes skittered, twisted, seemed briefly to rise rather than fall, then fell decisively,… …
52. The Drop & The List 27/02/2025 tagged: Mick Herron, ★★★★ - Read The Drop & The List by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚 I enjoyed these more than most of his books, and they fill in some backstory to the slow horses. …

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