The good, the bad and the bookish

As is evident from this blog, I generally read populist fiction rather than Literature, and despite the commercial success of Tyler ( The Ac...

Subtitled Short stories about teenagers making tough choices , this ten-year-old collection includes some of the best YA writers then around...

A family lets a house for the summer in an idyllic seaside town not knowing it is supposed to be haunted. Soon the daughter starts to hear s...

Every week Guardian writer Crase composes a 500-word-or-less summary of the book that has garnered the most media attention, written in the...

Lynn and I share a taste for ‘freak’ books, so titled because of both their content and the contribution to the field by the work of the apt...

The first instalment in the five book Pendragon Cycle, Taliesin tells the story of an Atlantean princess and the famous seer and druid prin...

I’ve been sorting through my book boxes, cavalierly (or bravely) selecting a good third, so far, for dispersal among the populace at large –...

Thyme Gilcrest is one of The Twenty – the students with the school’s best GPAs. Without her academic track, Thyme is nothing, but she’s just...

Nine-year-old Bruno lives with his mother, prestigious soldier father, older sister Gretel (“a Useless Case”) and Maria the maid, in a quiet...

I think I enjoyed the conclusion even more than the rest of the series. In Lost Truth Alissa’s dreams of a young girl named Silla – a stude...

In the third Truth novel Useless is teaching Alissa how to locate a septhama point (a spot where emotional resonance creates distress – in ...

I finally found the second book in the series about Alissa Meron, the young girl who, with piper Strell from the plains, was drawn to the Ho...

Bill Bryson is best known for his travel books, which are a fascinating blend of subjective experience and objective facts, wry humour and s...

The sequel to Moon Called continues the story of were-coyote mechanic Mercy Thompson. Woken at three in the morning by vampire Stephan, to ...

This book has been on my Amazon recommended list for ages; I was pleased to discover it at my local FSF bookshop recently and, despite my vo...

I have come late to this insightful and somewhat radical text, which has quotes of praise front and back from no less a notable than Malcolm...

Rediscovered before I instituted my no-rereading policy, Raskin’s 1978 YA novel combines mystery, adventure and character drama. Barney Nort...

When an amateur fossil hunter finds the caves in which she digs being used as storage by thieves she sends for the landowner for help. Littl...

I haven’t read anything else by Piercy, and can only imagine I bought this novel because of the blurb. Melissa Dickson is the third, and uns...

I hereby vow: 1. I will alternate new, unread books with older, unread books; 2. I will not buy any more books (except where absolutely, de...

For a long time I thought my favourite dystopic-future novel (and indeed one of my all-time favourite books) was Aldous Huxley’s classic, Br...

I really need to read the unread books I’ve got sitting on my shelf, but as I sort through my boxed books I keep finding gems I want to read...

While I was reading Stotan! a few days ago I kept being reminded of another Crutcher novel when the stotan principle was raised. I couldn’t...

I am ever in search from source of procrastination – at the moment I’m avoiding both things for school/work and making my way through by lit...

I remember really enjoying this first anthology when I first read it in 1995. Part of what I liked was the strength of the women and the div...

A woman’s body is found drained of blood and cut in half. One of the investigating police officers become obsessed with finding out who she ...

Set in Australia, The Olive Sisters intertwines two stories - the contemporary journey of Adrienne, a Sydney marketer at odds with her colle...

Also published as A Mortarboard for Priscilla , this is another find from the read boxes, in this case from my childhood. I lost the origina...

In 1994, while still in his early forties and only recently married, Faber & Faber editor Robert McCrum had a serious stroke which left ...

I had such high hopes, after so unexpectedly enjoying Ridgeway's other novel, that the direness of The Thrill of It All came as an even...