Read seven steeples by Sara Baume ★★★★★ 📚
October mornings peeled the night cloud back to its subcutaneous lilac tissue.
The leaves earned their name by leaving the trees.
A couple drop out and slowly dissolve into nature. Dreamy poetic prose.
Tag: ★★★★★
Read: Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig ★★★★★ 📚
Scottish History the 1570s, a period I am ignorant of. Glad to get an entertaining education & hints of what to search Wikipedia for. Fair bit of Scots, a tale of a furniture dealer, poet, scholar & courtier. Exciting as Stevenson.
Read: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel 📚★★★★★
Amazing multi viewpoint story. Writing had me invested in each of the diverse characters as they came into focus. Then their stories slowly fitted together. Beautiful. Really catches the way people imagine different lives.
Read: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚 ★★★★★
A beautiful wee book that drew me in quietly & has stuck in my mind. Ireland 1985, A gentle slightly troubled man digs deep. “Hunters in the Snow” on the cover seems fitting as the village approaches a snowy Christmas.
Read: The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang ★★★★★ 📚
Really loved this engaging & exciting book. Set in a Midwest family run Chinese restaurant using The Brothers Karamazov as a template in a brilliant way. Food to die for, familial murder, racism & the American dream.
Read: Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn ★★★★★ 📚
The book travels to places abandoned by people & recovered to varying degrees by nature. It evokes the ‘islands’ weirdness powerfully. The last chapters go further, reaching into deep time, climate crisis & even faith. Marvellous.
Read: Blank Pages and Other Stories – Bernard MacLaverty ★★★★★ 📚
Quite spare stories, filled with details. Mostly around loss, grief or difficult lives.
Read: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead ★★★★★ 📚
Great book, story of fictional woman aviator who circles the globe, embedded in family history & film of her life. Covering a lot of ground, in all senses, it pretty much all fits together.
Read: O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker ★★★★★📚
2022 off to a good start. Brilliant fun. Short strange life of Scot’s girl. Gothic home, weird family, horrible school. Laugh out loud & touching.
Read: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead ★★★★★📚
Lighter than The Nickel Boys.I was expecting something akin to Chester Himes but this was gentler, more thoughtful & a more absorbing read. Politics handled lightly. I hope Ray, keeps out of trouble, if not I want to read about it.