This comes hot on the heels of my notes about what I read at the cottage, so expect some duplication! FICTION The Feast, Margaret Kennedy I started listening to a podcast called “Backlisted” and even though I was listening to episodes about books I had already read, somehow NEW books kept sneaking on to my […]

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For various reasons, rather less reading got done this year, though much fun was had despite that. I only read/finished/started 9 books. In my defense, several of them were long! Several of my faves below. Fiction: Fellowship Point, Alice Elliott Dark. I ended up liking this rather more than I expected. The prose was lovely […]

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And one of my dearest friends. David Keyes is a gifted musician, artist, writer, poet, cocktail concocter, gentleman, scholar, cat lover, and all-round wonderful human. He created this gorgeous video for one of his wisest poems. I hope you like it. P.S. You can get his writing and the forgotten classics of magic and mystery […]

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I actually did a fair bit of reading on the trip (or listening, in the case of my major audiobook project). There’s not much else to do on the plane and even I can only look out a train window for so long. Here’s the best of what I read. FICTION MIddlemarch, by George Eliot. […]

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I am still getting reading done, in between flamenco practices! Here are some of the things that have stuck with me. FICTION There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak. A beautifully-written novel about stories, how they shape us, and how they connect us to the past. One of those books where I promptly have […]

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Thanks to anyone who bought any of the reissued books in 2024. And, of course, thanks to the fine folks at Open Road Media for reissuing them. I made enough in royalties to cover the ridiculous cost to relicense the Shriekback lyric for THE NIGHT INSIDE, which I really didn’t expect would happen. After so […]

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This year’s total was 143 (give or take a few physical books I may have missed), of which 48 (33%) were non-fiction. The non-fiction percentage is down from 2023, but I maintain that Tony Judt’s Postwar and Caroline Elkins’ Legacy of Violence both count as at least two books. As always, here are some of […]

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I’ll be posting my list of top reads and final tally of books read later this week, but earlier this year I’d already decided on my favourites for the annual “Best Books of 2024” list for the Shepherd.com book recommendation site. The great thing about this list is that it doesn’t focus only on what […]

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The wonderful book recommendation site Shepherd.com once again asked me to contribute my best reads for 2024 (read in 2024 vs published in 2024, which is why one of my recommendations was published in 1959. At least the other two came out in 2023…. You can read my list here, but be sure to check […]

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Time for the reading update. FICTION The Shamshine Blind, Paz Pardo. California noir set in a world in which Argentina defeated the US thanks to the use of psychopigments, colourful chemicals that produce emotion on contact. Our heroine is a the classic downtrodden detective hero – a Psychopigment Enforcement Agent caught up in a tangled […]

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