Category: Books

One Good Turn is the follow-up to Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. I like it better than that book so far; the characterisation is great, and there’s plenty of action, again delivered with a real sense of place (Edinburgh, rather than the former book’s Cambridge). That is all, I have no grandiloquent insights to offer,…

(Part Two of this Present Tense Book Review.) In the last third of the book we hear from Ines, the young African whose story has been unravelling through the testimony of others. It’s interesting to have multiple points of view in the narrative, but they’re a bit too far apart for my (admittedly ropey) memory.…

(Part One of this Present Tense Book Review.) My initial concerns about the book remaining fragmented have mostly been allayed; the middle chunk of the book concentrates on a few central characters, and you can comfortably settle yourself behind their eyeballs. The literary device of the (partially) unreliable narrator comes to the fore here, with…

This is a book by Lloyd Jones, a Christmas present from Mrs. Monkeyshines, bought because Amazon recommended it after she bought me Nemesis, by Philip Roth for my birthday. I’m about a quarter of the way through, and it’s quite good rather than amazing. In terms of subject matter, it reminds me of a book…

Again I have failed to write a present tense book review, although this time it’s more because I didn’t really have anything to say until I got to the end (although my slothfulness played a part too). If you’re not already aware of this book, then you probably won’t be interested in it. If you…

This was going to be one of my incredibly popular (i.e. read by Mrs. Monkeyshines and/or Binky) present tense book reviews, but a) I’ve been too busy doing nothing over Christmas to faff around on my website, and 2) it’s quite short, and also superb, so I rattled through it in no time. It’s by…

(Part Three of this Present Tense Book Review.) Ok, so there is a bit of a twist at the end, and I didn’t see it coming; but still, as I whinged about in the last instalment, the end of this book sags badly. If the last 120 pages were condensed into 20 pages, it’d be…

(Part Two of this Present Tense Book Review.) Lumme, the third quarter of this ‘ere book ain’t ‘alf draggin’ guvnor, and no mistake. It’s even caused me to lapse into the argot of my youth for no good reason. The book was originally published serially in magazines, and it feels like the author is stringing…

I was a big fan of the majestic film of the same name, directed by the author of the books (Katsuhiro Otomo), when I was a pimply youth. And if I’d ever been bored (boring?) enough to write a list of “X things to do before I’m Y”, reading the original comic books would certainly…