Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy Book 15 of #20booksofsummer20
No 474 The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler Book 14 of #20booksofsummer20
Set in a Jewish retirement home in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1978, The Prince of West End Avenue is a haunting yet often hilarious novel that follows Otto Korner, an Auschwitz survivor who is directing his fellow retirees in a retirement-home production of Hamlet. Despite their age, the staging of the play features all…
Read more No 474 The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler Book 14 of #20booksofsummer20
Six Degrees of Separation from How To Do Nothing to Lincoln in the Bardo!
July Miscellany
No 475 Larry’s Party by Carol Shields Book 13 of #20booksofsummer20
“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house With a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here?” Talking Heads ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Larry…
Read more No 475 Larry’s Party by Carol Shields Book 13 of #20booksofsummer20
No 476 Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music & Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro Book 12 of #20booksofsummer20
In ‘Cellists’, the final, and the best story in Nocturnes, an American woman pretends to be a world-famous cellist and tutors a talented young Hungarian in her hotel room in an unnamed Italian city. Under her tutelage, his playing soars – both technically and emotionally – but he soon realises that she cannot play the…
A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson Book 11 of #20booksofsummer20
No 477 Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor Book 10 of #20booksofsummer20
Ghost light. An ancient superstition among people of the stage. One lamp must always be left burning when the theatre is dark, so the ghosts can perform their own plays Joseph O’Connor’s novel is teeming with ghosts, both imagined and real. Ghost Light, which was published before his critically acclaimed Shadowplay, also focuses on the…
Read more No 477 Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor Book 10 of #20booksofsummer20
No 478 Cooked by Michael Pollan Book 9 of #20booksofsummer20
Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is a hard book to categorise. It is not a cookbook, although it contains recipes and Pollan is not a chef, although the book details his cooking exploits. Cooked is a fascinating look at how we approach the food we eat and encompasses economics, history, philosophy, anthropology…
Read more No 478 Cooked by Michael Pollan Book 9 of #20booksofsummer20
