when I received a copy of Fan by Danny Rhodes I was a little bit sceptical. It’s a book about football, what possible interest would it be to me? How foolish I was – yes, there’s football, a lot of football, but this is far from a story about football…
Archives for 2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel
13 April 2014 by Leave a Comment
Normally I like to go and see films the week that they are released. It’s good for getting reviews up while the film is fresh in everyone’s minds and it means that I don’t have to actively avoid spoilers. It’s not always possible and the past month or so has been a bit of a nightmare in terms of getting to the cinema so I’m only now catching up with some recent releases…
The Dead Ground
10 April 2014 by Leave a Comment
Today sees publication of Claire McGowan’s The Dead Ground, the second novel in the Paula Maguire series of crime thrillers. As I mentioned in my review of Someone Else’s Skin I haven’t really read as many crime novels as I would like so far this year, in fact this is only my second….
The List
8 April 2014 by Leave a Comment
When I was at secondary school there was a specific kind of girl in every class. She was blonde (normally not naturally), loud, a bit thick and absolutely obsessed with sex. She, of course, claimed to be having lots of it with the kind of good looking guy who didn’t attend our school…
Look Who’s Back
2 April 2014 by Leave a Comment
When I’m reading a book for review or watching a film I usually have a good idea at about the midway point what my rating will be. Sometimes that changes – when I was watching Dark Shadows for example my patience got thinner as the film progressed and I started knocking points off its rating because it was becoming increasingly annoying. Usually though my gut reaction wins…
The Troop
26 March 2014 by 5 Comments
When I moved from Surrey to Somerset I was pounced upon almost immediately and asked if I would like to become a Beaver Scout leader. I was a little dubious – despite having spent three years as a Brownie Leader, Beavers were a completely different kettle of fish…
The Execution of Noa P. Singleton
19 March 2014 by Leave a Comment
I love living in Britain, for all of its faults I genuinely believe that it is a good country. Things do go wrong, but generally we have a just society and part of the cornerstones of that justice is our lack of the death penalty. I’m sure others would disagree but I’m not sure how a society can regard itself as fair when it is happy to kill people…
Zenith Hotel
17 March 2014 by Leave a Comment
I don’t like Paris. I like the Musee D’Orsay, I like Disneyland and I’d like to visit Versailles. The rest of it can jump in the Seine for all I care. I’m possibly the only person I know not to buy into the idea of Paris as the glamorous city of love. I think I’m resistant to the hype about the place…
Little Beach Street Bakery
12 March 2014 by 4 Comments
If you like romantic novels with wonderful settings, likeable characters and evocative descriptions of food this is the perfect book for you. Jenny Colgan is an author at the very top of her game and an undoubted master of her genre…
Someone Else’s Skin
10 March 2014 by 2 Comments
It’s been a while since I read a crime novel. Despite it being my favourite genre I hadn’t picked one up so far this year. Other books seemed to make it to the top of the to-be-read pile thanks to review schedules, book group and my desperation to catch up with A Song of Ice and Fire…