

June Miscellany!
In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut: Book 4 of #20booksofsummer22
Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room is difficult to categorise. Melding fiction, travel-writing, linked short stories and memoir, it is structurally fascinating and quietly powerful. The book is written in three sections of around 60 pages, which feature a self-contained story about a journey undertaken by the narrator, who, like the author, just happens to…

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No 372 The Missing by Andrew O’Hagan: Book 3 of #20booksofsummer22
Andrew O’Hagan’s fascinating debut defies simple classification. Ostensibly, this work of non-fiction is an exploration of missing persons however to call it just that would be to do it a disservice. It is also an autobiography, a piece of social history and a memoir of time spent travelling up and down the UK, in search…

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746 Books: The Halfway Point!
I felt it appropriate during all my 20 Books of Summer madness to take a moment and mark the momentous occasion of me reaching the halfway point of my 746 books challenge! A well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view halfway up is better than the view from the base, and it steadily…

No 373 The Hours by Michael Cunningham, Book 2 of #20booksofsummer22
The Hours was the original working title which Virginia Woolf used for Mrs Dalloway and in this beautifully affecting novel, Michael Cunningham uses this as a springboard to explore a day in the lives of three very different women, all of whom are linked in some way to that book. In 1923, Virginia Woolf is…

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No 374 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower: Book 1 of #20booksofsummer22
Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read in a long time. His unsentimental, often brutal yet always brilliant stories lay bare the lives of ordinary people, all trying to do the right thing is a world of alienation and hopelessness. Written with a…

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It’s 20 Books Of Summer Time!
May Miscellany!
