Category: Book Musings (Page 29 of 32)

Monthly Muse – May

12/06/2017 / Paul / 3 Comments

Where are the days going? I though at the end of May, I’ll write this in a few days after the 31^st and bang we are all of a sudden on the 11^th June! Anyway here we are again. Managed to read 16 books in May. The majority of what I read was natural history, two or three travels books some memoirs and the odd fiction and science fiction thrown in for good measure. These are the quite beautiful covers:

For me best of the bunch was Wild Kingdom by Stephen Moss. Written in his engaging style he takes us around the UK looking at the state of the wildlife and the success stories and where things hang in the balance. Chris Packam’s memoir was a very intense read indeed, as an Asperger’s sufferer he was never really fully understood, which made for a sometimes traumatic childhood. Petley had a very different childhood growing up in post-war Kent, one that formed the person that he is today. Gurdon was a seventies child, and his obsession was with cars of any colour make and type, it did make for very funny reading though.

The Clocks in This House all Tell Different Time is Xan Brooks debut novel. Reading it was a surreal experience as you get further in you realise just what is happening to the main characters and was set in Epping Forest, tied in nicely to Strange Labyrinth which I read last month. Empire Games was one of those books that messes with your head, as all good sci-fi should do, with parallel worlds and sophisticated spy agencies. I also finished my second Anne Dillard book that I had been kindly sent by Canongate. She is a wonderful, perceptive and eloquent author and I cannot wait to read more of her work. Norman Lewis was a discovery too, I had not read any of his, and this one provided by Eland was quite special. Really enjoyed Pedal Power, a summary of all things cycling, and the Swordfish and the Star provided a very different perspective on the Cornish coast.

Where Poppies Blow was a different take on the horrors of World War One as Lewis-Stempel writes about the comfort that the soldiers took from the natural world around them. The Nature of Autumn is the second of Jim Crumbly’s books that I have read, he is a fine author as also Matt Merrit is as he takes us around the country in search of the spectacular bird displays that we have in the UK.

Favourite covers were Island home and A Sweet Wild Note, both beautifully done and stunning foil blocking to make them sparkle. Overall a great month of reading, not a single bad book amongst them.

Big Green Bookshop

11/05/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

I follow a bookshop on Twitter called The Big Green Bookshop who are in Wood Green in London. A couple of weeks ago Simon tweeted that he was seriously skint and needed to sell a whole pile of books to pay the bills that week. His post went viral and his online orders jumped from 1 or two a day to around 100! This is also the same guy who after a spat between Piers Morgan and JK Rowling decided to tweet all of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to him. 800 tweets later Morgan blocked him…

Today he had a page about him and the bookshop in the Times. He is a great guy, I’m sure he find a book to sell you 🙂 

Monthly Muse

01/05/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Even though it is only a day shorter than March, April just seemed to zip by. Managed to read 16 books somehow and they are here:

Best of the bunch was Bee Quest by Dave Goulson. This is his third book, and probably the best so far. His enthusiasm for his buzzy subjects is infectious and he writes with wit and a bone-dry sense of humour. Others of note were Strange Labyrinth, Hidden Nature, Floating and Mend the Living and The Otters’ Tale. Miss-Adventures was a blast and Havergey was an unusual book, Little Toller have a fine range of natural history books and this was their first venture into fiction. It was good, and a bave move for them. The only one that I was not so struck on was Everything that I Never told You, it was beautifully written, but really didn’t work for me plot-wise.

Blog Tour

I was honoured to be asked to take part in the blog tour for the Wellcome prize shortlist of books, along with other experienced bloggers! The book that I was allocated was The Gene, a story of our discovery of the essence of life and also of Mukherjee’s story of his family woven within it. Sadly, I couldn’t make the prize announcement but it was won by Maylis de Kerangal with Mend the Living. My post is here.

Lounge Books

Sam Missingham has been with Harper Collins for a while now but as of a week ago, will be parting company with them. She had this idea about a place for book lovers to congregate and find new books and this was the opportunity for her to launch Lounge Books. Anyway, on there she had posted a list of 36 book bloggers that she would recommend that people should follow right now, and I was included on that list. To say I that I was flabbergasted would be an understatement, genuinely please to be forging my own path in this online world, and to be counted alongside stars of the blogosphere such as Simon Savage.

Who knows what May will bring?

Lounge Books

27/04/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Just found out that I am on this list of 36 bloggers. Staggered, to say the least

http://www.lounge-books.com/award-winners-we-lov/2017/3/12/20-book-bloggers-to-follow-right-now

Blog Birthday

13/04/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Just realised today that it is just over a year since I started blogging. I have posted just over 300 times, and have had over 8000 page views.

Thank you everyone!

Monthly Muse

08/04/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Bit late getting to this for March, had a manic two weeks, then underwent an operation and two weeks off of work. Back now and it has been insane this week… Anyway, reading wise, March was pretty productive. The two weeks at home meant that I could speak to the contractors that we need to quote for our kitchen revamp over the summer and I managed to make some inroads into my backlog of review copies. In all I read 21 books. It could have been higher, but social media does get in the way. And they were these:

Quite a varied collection this month. One of the best was The Art of Neil Gaiman, a behind the scenes look at the way that he creates his masterful works. Walking the Americas was really good too; will be watching the TV series soon, now I have finished the book. I bought the Wildlife Trust Series after I had some book tokens last year, and I am making point of starting each one of the first day of that season. This month was Spring, which I started on the 20^th March. Harrison has a knack of finding some absolute classic texts as well as some promising new authors.

I was vaguely aware of Anne Dillard, but have never read any of her work. Canongate had kindly arranged for me to get to of her book that were being re-printed for their Canons series. Teaching a Stone to talk was the first of Dillard’s book that I had read, well worth it, and I have the Abundance to read soon. How to Survive a Plague was worth reading, though it is an immense book full of detail and people with the fight that the gay community had to go through to get AIDS research on the agenda. Kapp to Cape was enjoyable too, an attempt at setting a record cycling from the very north of Norway to South Africa. Read (more inhaled) one graphic novel, but it was Gaiman so it had to be done and was partially mesmerised by Falling Awake.

Read more fiction this month that I would normally do, there was the disturbing Roanoke Girls, the creepy Behind Her Eyes and the out of this world Stars are Legion. Sealskin was a worthy retelling of the ancient legend of the selkies, Sleeping Giants was a sci fi book set on our planet and the new fantasy world that Terry Goodkind had created. The no fiction I had read was interesting too, from the quirky Adventures in Stationary, the future thinking Homo Deus, a lovely book on the fox and learnt how to make a hit. Paul Kingsnorth’s new book on his thoughts on how the green agenda is losing its focus was interesting too.

I have been asked by Rebecca at Bookish Beck to be a member of the shadow panel of readers who will make our way through the six titles shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. We will be choosing our own winner shortly before the official prize announcement on Monday, April 24th. We are also joined on the panel by Amy Pirt who blogs at This Little Bag of Dreams. I will also be on the Wellcome Prize blog tour on the 19^th April. Never participated in one of these before so slightly nervous!

This coming month I will be ploughing through the backlog of review copies that I have.

London Book Fair 2017

18/03/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

After last year’s successful trip to the fair, I had the opportunity to go up again to Olympia to visit the London Book Fair.

The conference centre is full to bursting with publishers large and small, as well as associated book related industries like printing, distribution and all things digital to do with books. Most of the fair is centred around the rights sales so British publishers offerings can be sold to many countries around the world.

Even though you are not able to get onto the big four publishers stands there is still so much to see for the reviewer thankfully. I got to visit some of the publishers who produce the sort of books that I like reading and meet up with some of the people that I have been corresponding with over the past 12 months or so. Even met the Queen of Twitter, Sam Missingham.

The place is huge as it covers the Grand Hall, the National Hall and all the upper galleries. It felt like I had walked for miles, and in all honest I probably did. I managed to collect an enormous pile of catalogues to scour over the coming weeks for interesting titles in the autumn releases, and secured some lovely review copies from a few publishers too:

So thank you to Summersdale, Head of Zeus, Angry Robot, Profile Books, Granta and Duckworth Overlook for the books. The lovley people at Literature Ireland gave me two poetry books and a pile of other goodies. When I arrived home I found two more from Mel at Nudge!

Great day out. Will definitely be attending next year too.

Monthly Muse

03/03/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Monthy Muse

I know February is a shorter month, but that went past in a flash! This is what I had managed to read:

Four were outstanding; Good Omens, The Apple Orchard A Tale of Trees and The Rule of the Land. All very different books that show how rich and varied our publishing industry is. Pete Brown writes with such wit and aplomb about these little parcels of land that have such an autumn bounty. Garret Carr teases out the stories from a troubled border, and Good Omens is an insane romp at the possible end of the world. I really enjoyed Hidden Histories too; it is a guide on the lumps and bumps that appear in fields all-around the country, and how to interpret what they mean.

Wellcome Prize

This is a prize that focuses on a common theme centred on medicine or health issues. But rather than just a non-fiction remit, it encompasses a wide range of fiction genres too, including science fiction. This year’s longlist was:

How to Survive a Plague by David France

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal trans. Jessica Moore

The Golden Age by Joan London

Cure by Jo Marchant

The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss

The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

Miss Jane by Brad Watson

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong

I had agreed to read and review for nb Magazine the seven non-fiction books on the list; thankfully I had already read two of them and had others at home. The library came up trumps once again, and I managed to get hold of the three missing books very quickly. So far they have all been good. I am halfway through the penultimate one, but so far my favourite is I Contain Multitudes.

World From My Armchair Challenge

So far I have read eight books towards this, helped by some of the books from the Stanford Dolman shortlists. Countries ‘visited’ so far are Bhutan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Iran, Ireland, Peru and the USA and I have crossed the Pacific Ocean in the company of Sarah Outen. It is good to see another people’s perspective. I am currently reading the new book by Reza Pakravan, Kapp to Cape which will add another country in this month. On target to do my 45 or so this year.

I have been trying to catch up on the review copies that publishers have kindly sent me, and failing mostly. So I am aiming to make serious roads into my backlog in March. Oh, and I am off to the London Book Fair on the 16^th. Looking forward to it; it is going to be good to meet some people that I have corresponded with over the past year.

Monthy Muse

31/01/2017 / Paul / 2 Comments

A New Year always offers new possibilities with regards to books, and this year was no exception with the release of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year shortlist. They have expanded the scope of the whole awards and the Stanford Dolman is the premier prize with six other shortlists highlighting different aspects of travel writing.

Specsavers Fiction (with a sense of place)

Wanderlust Adventure Travel Book of the Year

National Book Tokens Children’s Travel Book of the Year

Food and Travel magazine Food and Travel Book of the Year

Destinations Show Illustrated Travel Book of the Year

London Book Fair Innovation in Travel Publishing

Having promised to read them for Nudge I found that there were six books on there that I hadn’t read (!) and a couple I hadn’t heard of either. I had read some from the Wanderlust prize though so started with the ones on there. The ten books I ended up reading were all good, but there were some outstanding ones too; in particular Deep South for the Dolman and my money is on that one to win. The Wanderlust prizes is a little harder to pick. I really liked Climbing Days by Dan Richards and was fortunate to meet him last October. Bravest, or most foolhardy prize, should go to Mike Martin and his battle to drive a Landrover across the Congo. but I think that Sarah Outen may just pip them all with her account of circumnavigating the world by bike, kayak and rowing boat.

Faber were kind enough to send me a review copy of The Disappearance of Emile Zola. It is a fascinating story of his flight from Paris after writing a letter criticising the Government and the military after the Dreyfus affair. It was a fascinating story of Emile Zola and his enforced stay in London, Weybridge and Addlestone. Strangely enough, I walked past a hotel where he stayed a day or so before I started the book. Nicholas Brealey kindly sent me the Evolutionary Ride by Lois Pryce of her motorcycle trip around Iran. An excellent travel book, and a bold trip around a country that has strict Muslim ideology and a liberal sector of the population. Great stuff.

No real duffers this month, but was not overly enamoured with the Sparrow; shame really, as the first book was excellent. Managed to finish 18 books, so overall a good month of reading.

Received eight books last week and a few in the first couple of weeks of January. As I was finishing the shortlists for the deadline I am so behind with my review copies!! My TBR in February has scared me a little.

2017 Reading Intentions

03/01/2017 / Paul / 0 Comments

Some of my aims for 2017

I have decided to set myself something that I am calling The World from My Armchair Challenge. My intention for this challenge is to read a travel or non-fiction book from every country, ocean and a number of the seas around the world. I have taken the list of countries from the UN (192) and each sea and ocean bringing the total to 212 books! Not all in one year I hasten to add.

I have a number of Terry Pratchett books from his Discworld series that I have not yet read, so want to finish those next year.

Will still be working my way through the Summersdale travel catalogue, and also discovered the Stanford Travel Writing awards

Will be reading the longlist from the the Wainwright Prize again, as this is something that I am now doing for Nudge / nb Magazine

Not reading as much Sci Fi as i would like to. Managed one from the Arthur C Clarke Award. I have sorted out the books I have at home and intend to read those in 2017, as I didn’t in 2016; including steampunk!

My Good Reads Challenge is set at 190. Same as last year. It is a fair amount of books, but I know that is well within my capability to achieve.