tmn The latest addition to my website is Joël Dicker‘s La Vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert (The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair). I hesitated about reading this novel as, though it got some good reviews and won the Goncourt Prix des lycéens, it also got some poor reviews. Some reviewers thought it brilliantly combined the … Read more
The Guardian has published a list of the most borrowed book from British libraries . I have only read one (the Mantel) and have no plans to read any of the others. I must admit there are many authors on the list whom I have never heard of. Meanwhile, ABE UK has a published a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Grazia Deledda‘s Elias Portolu (Elias Portolu). Deledda was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and she is still the only Italian woman to do so. This book, published in 1903, was set in Sardinia where Deledda was from and tells the story of Elias. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Stephen Schneck‘s The Nightclerk, a very funny and somewhat over the top cult novel, long since out of print, about a very fat man – he weighs at least 600 pounds – called J Spenser Blight who is the night clerk at the Travelers Hotel in San Francisco. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hans Scherfig‘s Den forsvundne fuldmægtig (The Missing Bureaucrat). This novel takes the form of a detective story, when two men in Copenhagen are found missing within a short while of one another. The first is a respected civil servant, working in the War Department, Teodor Amsted, a man … Read more
The new Folio Prize has announced an inaugural short list of eight writers, which is bound to cause some controversy. Five of the writers are from the US, one from Canada, one from England and one from Ireland. The prize was set up as something of a response to the Man Booker Prize, not least … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness, the first in Durrell’s Avignon Quintet. It starts with the apparent suicide of Piers de Nogaret, descendant of Guillaume de Nogaret, the man who, in 1307, arrested many of the Templars. Piers’ friend and brother-in-law, Bruce Drexel, a doctor in … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 猫と庄造と二人の女 (A Cat, A Man and Two Women). I read some Tanizaki many years ago so now is the time to reread those ones I read before and read those, like this one, I had not read before. This is certainly not one of his greatest … Read more
As we are completely out of the Nobel Prize for Literature season and, I would hope, no-one else is discussing the matter, I thought it would be time for me to put in my somewhat controversial proposal. When listening to rock music, I have now and then thought that some of the better songwriters would, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Marie Darrieussecq‘s Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes [You Should Love Men a Lot]. This book has not yet been translated into English but almost certainly will be. It tells the story of Solange, whom we met in her previous book Clèves (All the Way). She is now … Read more