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  So. Booksta:  Patrick Freyne?  Never heard of him, so why would I want to read a collection of essays about his life? Me: It's very well written.  Funny even. Booksta: Maybe if I'd heard of him..... Me: He would be a great man to have sitting next to you on a long haul flight.  A wealth of amusing anecdotes about his childhood and mis-spent youth in a band. Booksta: In a band? Does he know Bono? Me: Probably not, but he mentions him once.  I bet he has a lovely speaking voice.  He comes from Cork you know.  Same place as Graham Norton. Booksta:  Oh, I've heard of Graham Norton.  Does Patrick know Graham? Me:  No.  Booksta:  You're not really selling this. Me: I know, but I liked it and now I like Patrick.  Sometimes it's just nice to spend some time with someone who tells a good tale.  I think that talent comes in the DNA if you're from Cork.  It's the home of the Blarney Stone after all. Booksta: Does he ...

  It's true what they say about improving with age.  By the time we get to the Third Age, we've been round the block a few times and we get to know where to pick our fights.  This is how it is with Olive Kitteridge.  The one-time obstructive, argumentative woman gradually settles down into someone who simply speaks her mind and has the courage to confront anyone's elephant in any room she might find it in.  We first meet Olive in Elizabeth Strout's earlier novel, Olive Kitteridge, and this book picks up the threads and continues to follow Olive with her friends and family as she grumbles her way into old age.  The writing is superb in both novels and knowing how much Olive rubbed everyone up the wrong way in the first book, I was pleasantly surprised at how much empathy I felt for her in this one. As I have entered the foothills of old age myself, there were several moments in the book where I had to stop and think about my own life spanning backwards and f...

  Name five things you would expect to be included in a story co-written by Dolly Parton. Score one point for any of the following: country music, guitars, pretty girls, handsome men, shiny things. Am I now going to pick holes in a book written by Dolly?  Absolutely not.  I love Dolly, and I can't have a word said against her.  So, moving on.... Right now I am a little distracted from Bookstagram as I have been caught up in all the political discussion surrounding the selection of our new Prime Minister.  I have to confess I have a great fascination for politics, so I have been glued to my Twitter feed, and I have spent a lot of time reading opinion pieces written by political journalists.  However, as with chocolate biscuits, there comes a point in the day when I realise it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and need to turn to something a little more wholesome to settle my stomach. That's how I came to select Dolly's book for this week....

The Lincoln Highway burnt my Sunday lasagna.  It kept me awake at night and then called out to me to pick it up again at 05.30, when even the sparrows were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, because this is a heck of a story.   It's a big book at 576 pages but I don't think I have ever read that much book in such a short space of time.  As you know, I'm a slow reader.  The voice in my head reads at the same speed as me reading a book out loud, and I would never want to skim-read a book as good as this because there is much joy to be found in the use of the language.  Having binge read my way through almost all of it, I then slowed down even more as I didn't want it to end, and I saved the final two chapters until my husband was safely out of the house to ensure I could read the conclusion without interruption.  It's that kind of book. It's an all-American story, but mercifully without the baseball.  Set in the early 1950s, it's a t...