Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Amazon link This is book three in my attempt to read fifty books in 2005. Now this is more like it. I was getting a bit jaded after the first two books, but this is much more to my taste. Strong hints of transexuality (or is that transexualism) in the first sentence followed by incest… Continue reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Amazon Link This is number two in my attempt to read fifty books this year. It was certainly a very simple read. The prose is very plain. I’m told that this is part of its charm, but I find it hard not to see it as a limitation of the author. It’s not that I… Continue reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

Amazon link Guess what? Life in Afganistan under the Taliban was a bit shit. Particularly if you were a woman. And since the Taliban have gone it’s only got a little bit better. Seierstad spent a few months living with a family in Kabul soon after the Taliban were removed and this is her interpretation… Continue reading The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

BOYBN

Every 10 years the literary magazine Granta publishes a list of the “Best of Young British Novelists”. It’s a list of what their panel of judges consider the 20 most interesting novelists of the time. By “young” they mean 40 or under and by “British” they mean having a British passwort. In 1983 the list… Continue reading BOYBN

The Salmon of Doubt

I’ve just finished reading Douglas Adams’ final book The Salmon of Doubt. It’s not really his last book. Or rather it’s not how his last book would have been if he had been around to finish it. It’s actually a dozen or so chapters from various drafts of the book that were found on his… Continue reading The Salmon of Doubt