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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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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Here’s the best of what I read in the first three months of this year. Sadly, the ‘to read’ list gets no shorter. FICTION The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton. The Wharton-fest continues (I’m currently working on The House of Mirth). This edition just has the actual Wharton text, without the later happy ending. And yes, I […]

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Another year, another 140 books (or so) books read. Of these, 44% were non-fiction on topics from science to politics to history to biography to (of course) ‘how to write’ books. Because hope springs eternal on that front. Here’s a quick summary of some of my favourites. Climate (yes, it’s bad): Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell. […]

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A while ago, I did a list of my favorite books featuring female vampires for Shepherd, the book discovery site. They’ve just published a new featured called “Favorite Reads in 2023”, featuring the selections of almost 900 authors. We were asked to choose our three favorite books from our reading over the last year, with […]

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I didn’t keep a close record of cottage reading, but did get through a few books between July and the end of the September. Here are some of my favourites. FICTION The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic, R.F. Kuang. I motored through the first two parts of this trilogy and finished the final book […]

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*once a business manager, always a business manager! Another period heavy on the non-fiction, so we’ll start with that. Fire Weather, John Vaillant. Valliant’s previous book, The Tiger, is one of my favorites so I jumped on this one. It’s a vivid and dramatic recounting of the Fort McMurray fire, a science lesson on the […]

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