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Published: 2014, unbound Genre: Fiction Themes: historical, norman invasion, fens, fighting My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤ I have finished reading The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth and it was worth the effort.   This is a book written in a made up language based on old English.  At first glance it seemed to read like Chaucer's Prologue from the Canterbury Tales, and I almost abandoned it without getting further than the first page.  Luckily, Mark Rylance's recommendation stopped me. I kept thinking that Mark Rylance wouldn't encourage me to read something that I wouldn't get something out of so, with my thumb in the glossary, I pressed on.  The first few pages were slow going as I got my head round the rhythm of the language, but its surprising how quickly you become used to it and start to read at a normal pace. The tale is set in England just after the Norman invasion of 1066, and the main character, Buccmaster of Holland, sees a 'haeric star' [hairy star or comet] th...

  I think there are two kinds of children's book.  The big glossy numbers that usually relate to a TV show, and are not very well written, and then there are the wonderful stories that children listen to with all their attention.  The Helen Oxenbury books about Tom and Pippo are like that, and the pictures are beautifully drawn.  I bought Tom and Pippo and the Bicycle when one of my grand daughters was about two, and she was enthralled by it at the time. My own children loved the books written and illustrated by Shirley Hughes, especially 'Alfie gets in first' and 'Dogger'.  Our copy of Dogger is so well read that the spine has disappeared, and the pages are falling out, but we can't possibly throw it away.  My younger son used to anxiously hold his breath when we got to the part where the toy dog gets lost at the school fete and ends up for sale on the toy stall.  Even though we had read the story a gazillion times, there was still that dreadful wait ...

  Published: 1973, Holt McDougal Genre: Fiction Themes: baseball, american culture, humour/farce My rating (out of 5): ❤ I finished reading Philip Roth's 'The Great American Novel' last night, so I went back to the library this morning looking for something to help me get over it. Roth's book was written in the dark ages of 1973, and I am surprised it has survived contact with today's woke generation and remained on the library shelves.  It is brilliantly written, but very, very offensive.  If you are female, black, disabled, Jewish or were born with dwarfism, this book will push all your buttons.  It is a satire about a baseball team that is bordering on farce, so I read it as it was intended to be read, but the language burns the eyes and I'm not sure anyone would touch the manuscript if it was presented to a publisher today. The story is very much about baseball but even I managed to follow along, even though I had no previous understanding of the game.  We f...

During the lockdown a great many current affairs programmes are having to conduct interviews with people directly from their homes, and it has been heartening to see how many interviewees are sitting in front of a full bookcase. When you look at all the interior design pictures on Instagram you might be forgiven for thinking that books are no longer required in a modern household.  The walls are all dove grey and white and only interrupted by a line or two of some uplifting quote in copperplate script.  Now we see the truth!  All sorts of real people still own books, and in many cases, quite a lot of books. My family always had books at home, and although I have seriously culled the quantity since moving to this house, I would never want to be in a house with no books on the shelves.  We have bookshelves in five rooms here and a tub of children's books waiting for the Great Grandbaby to be old enough to want to listen to a story. You can tell a lot about a pe...

So many little jobs are getting done during the lockdown that I'm sure the house and garden have never looked better or been so clean.  Today I took all the books off the bookshelves and gave them a little brush over and re-arranged them in a more logical order. The picture shows the shelves in the study but there are more in the dining room, my work room and the children's room. Part of my housekeeping process is to weed out anything that I don't love or need and I pass them on to local charity shops so that they can benefit other people.  Since my father died I have been quite strict with myself about this as while I was dealing with his book collection I realised it is possible to have too many books. To Dad, books were almost sacred objects, and once they entered the house they were never likely to leave, even if they got damaged or he didn't like them.  He actively built up many shelves of non-fiction books to make a library for himself, and for a while, this...

N ow and again you read a book that you realise will change the way you think and In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahmen is one of those books. I've just taken a copy back to the library after spending at least three weeks reading it and I was even tempted to keep it for a bit longer to go over a few sections again.   Take note of the title as events in the final chapters throw a different light on all the thousands of words that have gone before, much like the ending in The Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  The part of the story that you didn't know is never spelled out, but glimpsed as shadows flickering in a crowded room. Much of the book is set out in narrative memories and each chapter is preceded by excerpts from other books.  Ignore these at you peril as they indicate the direction of travel and are not simply window dressing.  One of them taken from John Donne (Meditation 17) provides the guiding light for 'what we know' at the end and Rah...

This is a beautiful edition of the first Harry Potter story illustrated by Jim Kay. My eyes landed on it in a second hand bookshop straight away as it was in such good clean condition and I don't think it has ever been read. This is one of those books that I consider to be a real treasure as the quality of the artwork is fantastic and even if you never read a word of the book you would want to look at the pictures. The illustrations are scattered through the book with some covering two pages for maximum effect. I read on the fly-leaf that Jim Kay has been commissioned to do other books from the series and after a quick look on Amazon I can see that he has already done three. If this volume goes down well I think I know something that will be included in Little Grandgirlie's birthday presents later in the year!  She can have this one when they pop over tomorrow - I've just finished reading it myself.