A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published on 17 December 1843 to almost immediate popularity and acclaim, is one of those books that is so happily ubiquitous that you feel as you must have read it. So intimately familiar with the story are we, thanks to countless reinterpretations on TV Continue Reading
Books
Festive book review: Five at the Office Christmas Party by “Enid Blyton” (really Bruno Vincent)
If you are of a certain age, and I mostly am, and spent your childhood reading the books of British author Enid Blyton, you will be more than a little aware of her Famous Five books which feature siblings Julian, Dick and Anne, cousin George (Georgette) and of course, Continue Reading
Book review: Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet by H. P. Wood
The world we live in is not kind to outsiders. For daring to look, act or be a thousand kinds of different, dissendents, deliberately, or usually not, to the sacred code of unspoken uniformity that governs the machinations of society, they are pilloried, mocked, discardeds wept aside and ignored. Continue Reading
Festively changing it up: The delightfully different tale of Santa’s Husband
Right let’s just get it out there then shall we? In Santa’s Husband, Daniel Kibblesmith’s delightful take on the person of Santa Claus who, you may recall, is a teeny-tiny bit central to modern celebrations of Christmas – for those of a religious persuasion, please note I’m not sidelining Continue Reading
Book review: The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard
Imagine for a second that you were plonked down in the middle of a foreign country with limited language skills and only a passing familiarity with the culture after a lifetime spent hidden away from the outside world. What would that feel like? How disorienting would it be? Would Continue Reading
Book review: The Lustre of Lost Things by Sophie Chen Keller
Walter Lavender Jr is a remarkable young man. Gifted with a preternatural ability to locate missing objects in a dazzlingly wide variety of circumstances the length and breadth of New York City, he lives with his mother Lucy at a bakery where the pastries and desserts come alive with Continue Reading
Book review: In Every Moment We Are Alive by Tom Malmquist
When someone very close to you dies, it’s entirely natural for people to extend their condolences, to offer their love and support in any way they can and to be present with you in your emotionally-enervating moment of grief and loss. It’s a brief bubble when loving arms envelop Continue Reading
Book review: The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne
When you think about characters as beloved as Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore and the rest of the residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood, it’s easy to assume that everything to do with them must be equally as bucolic and paradisaical as they are. After all, Continue Reading
Book review: The Last Days of Magic by Mark Tompkins
There is an immersive sense of otherworldliness that must be present in any fantasy tale worth it’s magical salt, if we are to truly buy into its escapist narrative. A sense that you are in a world completely and utterly not your own, and yet, and here lies the Continue Reading
Book review: The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray
Time is one of those concepts we like to think we have a handle on. We know we can’t stop its progress, it goes by too fast (usually; although it can also go by far too slowly when we’re at the coalface of work or on a particularly boring Continue Reading