Well, that’s it for another year – 20 Books of Summer ends tomorrow and what a blast it’s been. Although I didn’t finish my challenge this year I am still counting it as a win. I read 17 of my original 20 choices and swapped two books for others. The Anita Brookner I had chosen,…
Read more Goodbye to 20 Books of Summer and hello to autumn reading plans!
Brian Moore’s 100th birthday was this week and I’m continuing my centenary read-along with his 1981 novel The Temptation of Eileen Hughes. The Temptation of Eileen Hughes is another of Moore’s lean character studies, with a tight focus on a few characters and a moment of crisis which upends several lives. It lacks some of…
Read more No 407 The Temptation of Eileen Hughes by Brian Moore Book 19 of #20booksofsummer
A character in the opening story of Like Life muses on how lost she feels, wondering ‘How did one get here? How did ones eye-patched, rot-toothed life lead one so cruelly, like a trick, to the middle of the sea?’ It is a question that many of the characters in these perceptive and poignant stories…
Read more No 412 Like Life by Lorrie Moore Book 8 of #20booksofsummer21
There is something I find comforting about novels that explore the intricacy and detail of everyday life. I enjoy books that are no less eventful than the lives of the majority of people, but which shine a light on the universal truths hidden inside. What strikes me most about Anne Tyler’s writing is the extent…
Read more No 413 Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler Book 7 of #20booksofsummer
Brian Moore published No Other Life in 1993 when he was at the height of his writing career. The Booker nomination for Lies of Silence in 1990 had raised his profile and No Other Life was a great critical success. William Trevor in the New York Review of Books claimed that ‘Moore has written nothing…
I’m sure at some point Ira Levin has written a bad book, but so far, I haven’t read it yet. Following on from my enjoyment of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives comes another crime classic, made all the more impressive by the knowledge that this was his debut novel, published when he was just…
Read more No 414 A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin Book 5 of #20booksofsummer
In the last few years I have read two books by Gwendoline Riley – First Love and My Phantoms – and have been incredibly impressed by both. My Phantoms was in my top books of 2020. Cold Water is Riley’s debut novel, published in 2002. While it is in no way as impressive as her…
Read more No 415 Cold Water by Gwendoline Riley Book 4 of #20booksofsummer
By Crooked Cat author, Val Penny
There is nothing more satisfying than reading a book while sipping a hot cup of tea.
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. – Italo Calvino
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