16/09/2025tagged: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. …
12/09/2025tagged: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. …
11/09/2025tagged: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. …
07/09/2025tagged: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… …
27/08/2025tagged: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. …
25/08/2025tagged: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. …
23/08/2025tagged: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. …
21/08/2025tagged: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! …
16/08/2025tagged: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. …
10/08/2025tagged: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. …
10/08/2025tagged: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/ …
07/08/2025tagged: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. …
02/08/2025tagged: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… …
22/07/2025tagged: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… …
12/07/2025tagged: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. …
08/07/2025tagged: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. …
01/07/2025tagged: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. …
29/06/2025tagged: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… …
23/06/2025tagged: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. …
10/06/2025tagged: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. …
01/06/2025tagged: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. …
26/05/2025tagged: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. …
14/05/2025tagged: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. …
08/05/2025tagged:Walter Mosley, ★★★-Read A Red Death Walter Mosley ★★★☆☆📚Solid Easy Rawlings, lots of details around the time & place. …
21/04/2025tagged: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. …
16/04/2025tagged: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. …
12/04/2025tagged: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… …
08/04/2025tagged: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. …
28/03/2025tagged: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. …
21/03/2025tagged: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. …
16/03/2025tagged: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,… …
27/02/2025tagged: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. …
25/02/2025tagged:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ★★★★★-Read: Half of a Yellow Sun: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ★★★★★ 📚 First half about fairly privileged folk, second half how the horror of Biafran war played out. Everything was moving so fast. He was not living his life; life was living him. …
13/02/2025tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★-Read: Smoke and Whispers by Mick Herron ★★★☆☆ …
01/02/2025tagged:Colin Barrett, ★★★★-Read: Wild Houses by Colin Barrett ★★★★☆📚 Wild life among the low life. Very Irish. Drugs, crime & kidnap in small town Ireland. Nicely written and paced. …
18/01/2025tagged:Kate Atkinson, ★★★★-Read Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚Took a while for the strands to come together, each character drawn with detail. Once I was engaged the end came too quick. Slightly confused as I came in at 4th in the series, although I'd watch the tv one long ago. …
13/01/2025tagged:Stephen Moss, ★★★★-Read: The Starling: A Biography by Stephen Moss ★★★★☆ 📚A nice read about one of my favourite creatures. History, behaviour & plenty of murmuration. Lovely old pictures too. …
01/01/2025tagged:Claire Fuller, ★★★-Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller★★★☆☆ 📚Increasingly crazy survivalist father takes his 8 year old daughter to live in the German woods. Tells her it is the end of the world. Told from the girls POV with compulsive foreboding leading to a guessable horror on the last page. …
2024
31/12/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★★-Read: This Is What Happened by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚One nasty twist changes this in quite a surprising way. Not quite what I expected from Mick Herron. …
29/12/2024tagged:Emily St. John Mandel, ★★★★★-Read: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel ★★★★★📚A subtle & grownup take on the post apocalypse novel. I think I enjoyed everything about this. Flits between characters & time before & after the Georgian Flu which kills 99% of the population. None of the older Symphony members knew much about science, which was frankly… …
26/12/2024tagged:Victoria Mackenzie, ★★★★-Read: For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie ★★★★☆ 📚The thoughts of two medieval mystics moving through life towards a meeting. Very short alternate sections bring them and their differences to life. …
23/12/2024tagged:Richard Powers, ★★★★-Read The Overstory by Richard Powers ★★★★☆ 📚Several different stories & ideas around the importance of trees to the world weave together. Some resonated with me more than others.Many of the ideas are better known now than when the book was published. The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only… …
08/12/2024tagged:Benjamin Wood, ★★★-Read The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood ★★★☆☆ 📚 My theory is that hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same. Like an irrational superstition—broken mirrors and so forth—hope’s not based on any kind of logic, it’s just unfettered optimism, grounded in nothing but faith in things beyond… …
01/12/2024tagged:Samantha Harvey, ★★★★-Read: The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey ★★★★☆ 📚 Set in the 15th century, a priest tries to solve a "murder". More about the priest than the murder. Told in reverse it revels his character & the story in an interesting way. Hypocrisy, superstition & morality. …
22/11/2024tagged:Emily St. John Mandel, ★★★★-Read: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel ★★★★☆ 📚Gentle SciFi. Some of the characters from The Glass Hotel appear. When have we ever believed that the world wasn’t ending? And What if it always is the end of the world? …
10/11/2024tagged:John Banville, ★★★★-Read: The Drowned by John Banville ★★★★☆ 📚A who done it, that doesn't focus of the crime or solution. Follows on from the previous one in a series, nothing is really clear, characters uncertain about most things. Lots of moral ambiguity. …
10/11/2024tagged:Chantal Lyons, ★★★★-Read: Groundbreakers- The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons ★★★★☆ 📚The author's fascination with boar & belief in the good they could do to the environment doesn't stop her reporting on both points of view. The difference between European acceptance & Uk fears is telling. …
02/11/2024tagged:Ann Patchett, ★★★★★-Read: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ★★★★★ 📚A book around a famous (in the USA?) play I've never heard of. Compelling & mostly comfortable. Laugh out loud sometimes too. …
20/10/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★-Read Why we Die by Mick Herron …
19/10/2024tagged:Yangsze Choo, ★★★★-Read: The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo ★★★★☆ 📚 I exist as either a small canid with thick fur, pointed ears, and neat to black feet, or a young woman. Neither are safe forms in a world run by men Had me believing in a main character that was a fox god. Told from 2… …
12/10/2024tagged:Samantha Harvey, ★★★★-Read Orbital By Samantha Harvey ★★★★☆ 📚 Six astronauts and cosmonauts watch the earth roll 16 times in 24 hours. Plotless, thoughts ,observations & meditations. yet hard to believe in anything but that blackness, which is alive, and breathing and beckoning. If Nell had ever been afraid of nothingness, once she was in it she… …
12/10/2024tagged:Yasmin Cordery Khan, ★★★★-Read: Overland by Yasmin Cordery Khan ★★★★☆ 📚Unlikely, slightly unlikeable & possibly unreliable narrator Joyce tags along with two posh boys on the hippy trail. It feels like disaster is on the way. …
23/09/2024tagged:Sarah Moss, ★★★★-Read Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss …
11/09/2024tagged:Kathleen Jamie, ★★★★★-Read: Cairn by Kathleen Jamie ★★★★★ 📚 The common curlew, as the old books have it, Fragments, essays, poems & notes, following the natural world, and the mess we have made of it. Beautiful. …
08/09/2024tagged:Carys Davies, ★★★★★-Read: West by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚 There is something endlessly pleasant about the quick flurries of bats in the trees at this time of day, and the soft crepitation of insects all around: a steady in-out susurration as if the earth itself is breathing. Lovely book so brief & clear. A handful of characters,… …
01/09/2024tagged:Paul Murray, ★★★★-Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray ★★★★☆ 📚 Irish private boy's school. Some laugh out loud teenage dialogue, some horrible teenage drama. Multiple voices & pov weave towards a messy ending that didn't quite pay off for me, although that might be the point. Still kept me reading for nearly 700 pages. …
11/08/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★-Read: The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Heron ★★★ 📚 Effective Detective as you would expect. Maybe a bit too much physical action for me. Nice twist to end setting up further stories. …
08/08/2024tagged:Susanna Moore, ★★★★-Read: The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore ★★★★☆ 📚 Short but engaging fiction based on a real life memoir. Settlers & Sioux clash in 1855. The narrator, Sarah, has no self pity despite a troubled life. Felt like a realistic picture of the times both filthy & surprising. Characters are complex. …
03/08/2024tagged:Ian Rankin, ★★★-Read: Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin ★★★☆☆ 📚 I am reading more Rankin, not necessarily in the right order. This early Rebus is a wee bit different than the later versions. A nicely tangled plot woven across Edinburgh society from junkies to the higher reaches. Corruption all the way. …
29/07/2024tagged:Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, ★★★-Read: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah ★★★☆☆ 📚 Dystopia, prisoners fight to the death. Illuminating prisons & racism. Parallels with sport, advertising & reality TV. Quite a page turner, too much on weapons, technical details etc. great footnotes mix fact & fiction. …
27/07/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★★-Read: The Secret Hours by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚 I actually think I enjoyed this more than the Slow Horses books. There was some amusing civil service & government committee scenes, less over the top characters. Nice unobtrusive links to Slow Horses too. …
24/07/2024tagged:Fiona Mcfarlane, ★★★★★-Read: The Sun Walks Down by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚 A lost boy in the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century. The many searchers & their tangled involvement with each other, the land & the landscape weave in & out of the story. Great detail about each without losing momentum. This was… …
18/07/2024tagged:Michelle Gallen, ★★★★-Read: Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen ★★★★☆ 📚 Majella is autistic but might not know it. Her mum is a hopeless alcoholic, her dad one of Northern Ireland's disappeared. Her uncle had blown himself up & her grannie has just been murdered. Her house mostly filthy, her town pretty horrible too. This account… …
15/07/2024tagged:Colm Tóibín, ★★★★★-Read: Long Island by Colm Tóibín ★★★★★ 📚 Quiet, subtle and thrilling. Characters fail to communicate, wait too long for the right moment and miss and hit opportunities. …
07/07/2024tagged:Ross Macdonald, ★★★★-Read: The Drowning Pool by Ross MacDonald ★★★★☆ 📚 There the kelp-beds stopped me, a tangled barrier of brown and yellow tubes and bulbs floating low in the water. I hated the touch of underwater life. The best Chandler substitute I've found. …
06/07/2024tagged:Colm Tóibín, ★★★★★-Read: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín ★★★★★ 📚A re-read in prep for Long Island. This is a beautiful quiet read that lingers a long time. Really enjoyed reading it again. …
03/07/2024tagged:Michael Longley, ★★★★-Read: The Slain Birds by Michael Longley ★★★★ 📚 The ravens in conversation overhead might be Discussing us or that sheep dead in a hollow With its yellow ear-tag and delicate black feet. …
02/07/2024tagged:Louise Welsh, ★★★★-Read: To the Dogs by Louise Welsh ★★★★☆ 📚Glasgow crime, university prof, nearly brought low by his criminal son & family history. Twists, turns & some familiar locations. …
30/06/2024tagged:Carys Davies, ★★★★★-Read: Clear by Carys Davies ★★★★★ 📚 I loved this short tale, 1840, 3 characters, the split in the Kirk & the clearances. There was a word in Ivar's language for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something. …
30/06/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★★-Read: Bad Actors by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚Plenty of fun poked at our political leaders. Usual spy fun & shenanigans. …
26/06/2024tagged:Paul Murray, ★★★★★-Read: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray ★★★★★ 📚 A great read, multiple pov, full of surprises. Inside each character's head indecision jerks chains. The stories shift between characters, each enough for a novel of its own. At first I felt some were left hanging, but it all weaves together. …
15/06/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★★-Read: Slough House by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚 Best one in the last few I've read. Although the back & forth between different fields of action at a cliff hanger is predictably it works. Politically incorrect attitudes from Jackson still funny. More emotion & connection to the characters. …
10/06/2024tagged:Yiyun Li, ★★★★-Read: The Vagrants by Yiyun Li ★★★★☆ delicately written, horrifying account of lives in post Mao (just) China. There are very few moments of hope but my sympathy for the characters ran deep. …
19/05/2024tagged:S.J. Parris, ★★★-Read: Prophecy by S.J. Parris ★★★ 📚 Good fun trip to Elizabethan London. …
08/05/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★★-Read: Joe Country by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚Still amusing and engaging, but maybe lacking the surprise of earlier ones in the series. …
06/05/2024tagged:Barbara Kingsolver, ★★★★-Read: Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver ★★★★☆ 📚Maybe too many important issues for the one book & some "too good to be true" characters but I was thoroughly engaged. …
24/04/2024tagged:Octavia E. Butler, ★★★-Read: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler ★★★☆☆ 📚 Another Octavia E. Butler and again I felt it might be a young adult book. The slavery was a lot less horrific than say The Book of Night Women. The time travelling characters didn't seem too put out by suddenly being pulled into the past. Still story… …
13/04/2024tagged:Kate Atkinson, ★★★★-Read: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚 Lots of fun, I chuckled my way through. Somewhat confused by the time travel, alternative paths and possible hallucinations. Isobel is 16 in the 60s. Her mum and dad disappear mysteriously. All the characters are strange. …
01/04/2024tagged:Percival Everett, ★★★★-Read: The Trees by Percival Everett ★★★★☆📚 Racism, lynching, half detective, half horror. Also laugh out loud funny. What a strange book. Raced through it. The conclusion was a bit abrupt, but I am not sure how it could be finished with complete satisfaction. …
28/03/2024tagged:Mick Herron, ★★★-Read: London Rules by Mick Herron ★★★☆☆ 📚 Enjoyable, more of the same from the series. Laughing out loud. …
18/03/2024tagged:Moses McKenzie, ★★★★-Read: An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie ★★★★☆ 📚 Sort of Top Boy in Bristol. Once you adjust to the patois, it is an engrossing & exciting read. I felt quite conflicted by the resolution. …
13/03/2024tagged:Parini Shroff, ★★★★-Read: The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff ★★★★☆ 📚 A nice trip to a distant part of the world, funny too. The dramatic climax a bit too unlikely. …
25/02/2024tagged:Paul Lynch, ★★★★★-Read : Prophet Song by Paul Lynch ★★★★★ 📚 The epigram - “In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times. Bertolt Brecht” In the head of Eilish, mother of four, as she walks into hell, a small step at a time. Had me completely… …
18/02/2024tagged:John Banville, ★★★★-Read: The Lock-Up by John Banville ★★★★☆ 📚 Despite the fact I don't really like either of the main characters, and the crime solves itself, I enjoyed this. must be the writing. …
11/02/2024tagged:Sarah Moss, ★★★★-Read The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss ★★★★☆ 📚 Family life ruptured by child's illness. Touching quietly on lots of issues. Has not diminished my love for reading Sara Moss. …
29/01/2024tagged:Naomi Klein, ★★★★-Read: Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein ★★★★☆ 📚 Joining the dots around conspiracy, climate, indigenous rights and more. Occasionally strains the metaphor. …
14/01/2024tagged:Mick Herron-Read: Spook Street by Mick Herron ★★★★☆ 📚 Getting to be a comfort zone. …
Great collection of books … jotting down a few titles
Happy new year John. Is Display Posts a combination of ShortCode and code snippets added to your theme or just ShortCode? Also, is you books page created using Display Posts too?
Great collection of books … jotting down a few titles
Happy new year John. Is Display Posts a combination of ShortCode and code snippets added to your theme or just ShortCode? Also, is you books page created using Display Posts too?