January–March 2019 Reading
March Hamlet William Shakespeare Still the greatest play, and then I had to go back to reading… Will in the World Stephen Greenblatt ….the essential book on Shakespeare....
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June The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith A classic. A young man of almost no morals, virtually borderline, escapes his low key tax fraud scam, by being sent to Italy to rescue Dickie...
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December Agent Running in the Field John Le Carré Interestingly he seems to be writing a corrective to Nick Herron’s Slough House series…also it seems to be about the agent runner being seduced....
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March The Splendid and the Vile Erik Larson A terrific read. About Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940, replacing Chamberlain as Prime Minister with the country in imminent danger of...
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May Until the End of Time Brian Greene I read this in a hurry as I was about to join him on The Infinite Monkey Cage, but now I find myself going back and dipping into some of the fascinating things...
View ArticleSummer Lockdown Reading. June, July, August.
August Trust Exercise Susan Choi I thought this book had a magnificent opening. The first chapters were clever and brilliant. A fictional memoir of young actors at a Performing High...
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My favourite Book of the Year 2020 It seems obvious that lockdown has encouraged a thriller binge, reading for fun and escape, so it should be no surprise that my favourite book of the year is: Broken...
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2021 January thru March Sun King David Ignatius An elegantly written, modern take on Gatsby. A hedge fund billionaire attempts to buy his way into Washington and woo his dream girl....
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Philip Roth. Blake Bailey. The Biography. I wonder if the biography of a novelist is ever as interesting as his books. I doubt it. This one certainly isn’t and now I find...
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Frostquake Juliet Nicolson I well remember the winter of 1963. So bloody cold. Snow till May. Inside Comedy David Steinberg Me too. Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow...
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Silverview John Le Carré A posthumous novel completed by his son. Camino Winds John Grisham Ok. The Deer Park Norman Mailer Re-reading this book always gives me...
View ArticleThe Year so Far. January thru May
I have to confess I haven’t written my reading blog for ages, though I have been reading. Of course. I have been bingeing Patricia Highsmith. She is quite wonderful. I think what she gets is...
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Regeneration Pat Barker 1917 Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart. What to do with one of theirs who protests the war. With Wilfred Owen. The Eye in the Door Pat Barker The next in the series. I don’t...
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2023 This was the year of Downsize Abbey. We pack up and leave our old home.. The library of 4,000 books goes to a bookshop in Covina. We move to a temporary rental round the corner. Sadly,...
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2024 Ok I’m still playing catch up. Many of these I read some months ago. I’m unsure in which order but I start off as usual with a re-reading of: Tender is the Night F. Scott...
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