Christmas is a strange time of year for many families. By turns wondrous, magical and one-of-a-kind, a chance for far-flung and emotionally disparate members to come together in some form of togetherness, it can also feel like an endurance test, a trial of of sorts that begins at the Continue Reading
Books
Book review: A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser
You would be hard pressed to find an avid reader anywhere who doesn’t possess an enduring love affair with bookshops. They are a magical place, full of ripe possibility, opportunities without number to pursue lives wholly different from your own, to become a pirate, a 18th century tycoon of Continue Reading
Book review: Don’t Let Him Know by Sandip Roy
No matter how open someone may appear on the surface, the odds are that somewhere with them lurks secrets unspoken, some possibly even unacknowledged, that may never see the light of day, regardless of how close they may be to their loved ones. This idea, that we never truly know Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Deliciously twisted kids books covers
SNAPSHOT Many of these original books focus on life’s lessons, joys, and curiosities. Gackley cleverly takes the books’ classic covers and turns them into unforgettable, edgy, politicaly incorrect parodies that speak to the bad little kid in all of us. With a catalog of children’s book titles like Peeping Continue Reading
Birthday book review: Alberto’s Lost Birthday by Diana Rosie
(image courtesy Pan MacMillan) What must it be like to lose your birthday? For the aged titular protagonist in Diana Rosie’s debut novel, Alberto’s Lost Birthday, it has never really been an issue. As a young boy orphaned in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), his life has been one of survival, Continue Reading
Book review: The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
It has been said, quite possibly once too often, that all good things must come to an end. But what if, wonders the titular protagonist in The Heart of Henry Quantum, if they were never all that good to begin with? Of course Henry has always told himself that Continue Reading
Book review: Peggy & Me by Miranda Hart
It’s tempting to look at celebrities, even those from what Miranda Hart refers to as the “pretty earthy, budget-constrained variety of show business” (BBC sitcoms), and assume their lives unfold in some sort of gilt-edged ivory tower untroubled by the cares and concerns of our everyday world. But as Continue Reading
Book review: The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin
In the West, where sensitivity to free flowing spirituality often finds itself subsumed to logic and consumerism more often than not, the idea of reincarnation is often treated with outright scepticism and ridicule, or at the very least, benign neglect. For some reason, the idea that we are not wholly Continue Reading
Halloween book review: Stallo by Stefan Spjut
“If you go down to the woods today, You’re sure of a big surprise.” The opening lyrics to the “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” suggest that the worst thing you’ll encounter when you enter woodland are children’s much-loved playthings having a little too much tea and frivolity. But in Stefan Spjut’s Stallo Continue Reading
Book review: The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
Grief does strange things to people. And try as we might to predict how we will react in circumstances of great loss, you don’t really know how you will cope, or not cope as the case maybe, until the time comes. In the case of Arthur Pepper, the protagonist Continue Reading