What’s essential? Pandemic reading
July 20, 2020 at 12:27 pm | Posted in Blasket islands, Cli-fi novels, psychopaths | Leave a commentTags: Bradley J. Edwards, Cole Moreton The Lightkeeper, Colly Campbel, Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain, Hungry for Home, Jeffrey Epstein, Paedophilia court case, Relentless Pursuit, The Capricorn Sky, Tom Watson and Martin Hickman
Three outstanding books
In the early days of the pandemic a contents box on the front page of a newspaper stated:
‘WHAT’S ESSENTIAL
In France, wine
In the US, guns.’
For me, it’s books. (Hmmmm, maybe the wine comes a close second.)
Some people want to read books like Camus’ The Plague during this pandemic. If you’re the erudite Simon Schama you’ll of course be reading Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War with its evocative descriptions of plague and the detrimental effect on friendship.
Not me. I don’t want to re-visit those two fine works when it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the number of wonderful new books being published, specially when keeping up with them is done after small writing and editing jobs plus the big one of writing my next novel.
Three recent books, all very different from each other, stand out for me: Bradley J. Edwards’ Relentless Pursuit (co-written with Brittany Henderson), Colly Campbell’s The Capricorn Sky, and Cole Moreton’s The Lightkeeper. Continue Reading What’s essential? Pandemic reading…
Tenderly caressing sentences
June 13, 2018 at 8:22 am | Posted in Common Good, david gillespie, John Clanchy, K.a. Nelson, Poetry books, psychopaths, Short stories | 1 CommentTags: favourite books, Inlandia by KA Nelson, Six by John Clanchy, Taming Toxic People by David Gillespie
Three favourite books
I’m always driven by curiosity and apart from work these past few weeks I’ve been spreading my brain too thinly across a vast variety of stimulating books. In the time it takes to write a blog I could have read another book or two. With so many fascinating books piled up – and some jumping up and down, clamouring ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ because they’d be due back at the library soon – I just continued to read my way through the pile in my spare time instead of writing blog posts.
But no regrets and I’m in the Slow Blogging camp (after being one for some time, I discovered that there is actually a formal association for Slow Bloggers – see https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/fashion/23slowblog ). So I make no apologies and below I reflect on the three best of my recently read books, each of which deserves its own post: K. A. Nelson’s Inlandia (Recent Work Press, 2018); John Clanchy’s Six (Finlay Lloyd, 2014, and a La Muse Books E-book); and David Gillespie’s Taming Toxic People (Macmillan, 2017).
Inlandia by K. A. Nelson
‘Caress your sentence tenderly: it will end by smiling at you.’
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