The Children Act - Ian McEwan

I’m going to admit something from the start here.  I don’t like Ian McEwan’s books.  I have nothing against him personally, in fact I have some admiration in how he manages to put pen to paper when his head is so stuck up his backside.  I find his writing style overly pretentious for the kinds of books that he writes.  Prose will be peppered with laboured metaphors and unnecessary...

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The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

One can judge a book on a number of different levels (plot and characterization to name just two), but writing I find is often the most contentious of all of them.  Some believe that for a book to be considered well written it must be full of complex literary devices, or it should utilise language that is alien to all but the most verbose and lexically gifted readers.  Others think that...

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The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

The release of David Mitchell’s book The Bone Clocks was quite possibly the most eagerly awaited of the year.  Bibliophiles the world over could be found champing at the bit to dig into the latest offering from the author of the brilliant Cloud Atlas as well as the acclaimed Ghostwritten and number9dream.  Having dipped his toes into science fiction in the past with visions of a dystopian...

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GUEST BLOG: Wolf in White Van - John Darnielle

As many of you will know, I never studied English beyond GCSE level and thus my reviews are not so much a literary criticism as a stream of feelings.  I thought it only fair therefore to expose you all to someone who is probably a lot better at this than I am.  Kaitlyn Kane, noted cravat enthusiast and Art blogger with a questionable taste in men, has written about the latest book that...

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The Best Thing That Never Happened to Me - Laura Tait & Jimmy Rice

We’ve all been there.  Two people that we know who clearly are itching to get in each other’s pants but who have the situation reading skills of Louis XVI (anyone? French Revolution metaphors? Look it up).  No matter how close they get to actually going out, they get a vibe or cosmically overanalyse and decide that the other person is giving them the romantic stink-eye, and so they bottle...

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Landline - Rainbow Rowell

Is it reasonable to be disappointed by the quality of a book that thoroughly engaged you?  Find lacking something that you devoured in a single sitting?  Can a book, which elicited a huge variety of emotions from laughter to tears and many in between, leave one feeling a tad let down?  Confused as I am? The source of my jumble of assorted views is Landline, the new book from...

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Black Box - Cassia Leo

The comfort zone is so-named for a reason. It’s secure and familiar – a cosy place to relax to escape from some of the nasty things going on in the world. The problem is that really good literature should draw us away from this happy place. It should challenge our world view and show us new perspectives that make us feel decidedly uncomfortable. It should be free to take on societal taboos...

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The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

This year has been the Year of Reading Really Long Books for me.  I’ve ploughed through Les Misérables and The First Man in Rome so far and this has continued with Donna Tartt’s 784 page work The Goldfinch. The Goldfinch has received almost universal acclaim and has been long awaited – Donna Tartt can rival George R.R. Martin in the field of procrastination. ...

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Snowdrops - A.D. Miller

This year has so far been for me a year of reading really long books, so it was really nice when my new book club selected something nice and short for the next meeting, A.D. Miller’s Booker Prize nominated Snowdrops. Miller is a journalist working at The Economist newspaper and spent many years reporting from Russia.  This experience inspired him to write Snowdrops, a book set in the early...

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The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

The second book in a series can often be where a series trips up.  The first book has the excitement of introducing something new, and later books have the complexity built up from those previous works.  Second books often come across as stepping stones; things to get past so as to reach the more exciting bits.  This is, however, entirely not the case with Robert Galbraith (aka J.K....

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