Tag Archives: books

January 27

The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink

Happy 2025 Readheads. Good news is I’ve already read two books this month so am feeling chuffed with myself. Bad news (for me) is the hefty pile of books read last year which are not yet reviewed. They taunt me on the daily, but I am committed to sorting out this disaster lickety split, so […]

January 09

All Fours by Miranda July

Hold the HRT for this wild and wonderful window into the menopausal mind. In All Fours, a 45-year-old artist, wife and mother is planning a solo road trip from LA to NY for work. With a determination to prove to herself that she’s a steady and reliable person (and not the loose cannon she is […]

September 25

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Books about car dealers don’t often feature in the Booker Prize. In fact, I think this might be a first. Australian author, Peter Carey (himself the son of a car dealer) wrote two cracking books featuring car dealers but neither of them made it to the literary podium like The Bee Sting. In this case, […]

June 10

The Wager by David Grann

Steady yourself for this true story of ships, storms, starvation and survival.  Written by American journalist and author David Grann (who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon), and with a biggest bibliography I ever did see, The Wager is a stunning re-telling of a doomed British naval voyage that took place in 1741. The […]

May 15

What Happened to Nina by Dervla McTiernan

Having read this, I know what happened to Nina. I won’t tell you of course, but good news for you is that you don’t have to wait till the end of the book to find out if you do read it (and I think you should….all the bookshops clearly agree as they’ve got this one […]

April 25

Until August by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the Colombian, Nobel Prize winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, died in Mexico City in 2014. He had started work on Until August many years before but, with the onset of dementia, decided it wasn’t worthy of publishing and asked that it be […]

April 02

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

I think I injured my knee reading this book. That’s what happens when you find yourself immersed in a heavy book in the same awkward position for two hours at a stretch, especially when you are over 50. The irony of my reading injury is that the book was recommended to me by a doctor. […]

March 12

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

In his 2023 Booker Prize winning book, Paul Lynch imagines the Republic of Ireland slipping into totalitarianism.  Things kick off with a sinister knock on the door and it’s a slow but steady descent from there.  The door belongs to Eilish; a scientist, wife, mother of four and primary carer of her elderly father, who […]

January 02

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

Well happy 2024 Readheads. Let’s get to it. It is holiday time and if you are looking for a goodie to dive into, look no further. This book might be called Small Pleasures but it was a humungous pleasure to read. It’s the sort of book you can’t wait to get home too and I loved every […]

October 06

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

This novel is nothing short of a masterpiece. Pouring over it, made me want to read, review and even yearn to write.  Alas, few could write like Lauren Groff. It’s winter in the early 1600’s, and a young servant girl escapes the unspeakable conditions of a colonial settlement in the Americas into the wild.  This […]