I Read and I Review
Scientists in Georgia, USA, are testing a machine to provide a 'doorway' to parallel universes. Amazingly, they find one first time, but the people in the other cosmos warn them to close their doorway immediately because of the danger of the 'Devil Bird' (providing the story title), which is capable of eating large animals, and... Continue Reading →
Cuthbert of Farne, A novel of Northumbria’s warrior saint, is probably my best read of 2022 so far. I would love to show you the cover art but I cannot do so without infringing copyright, so to the left is a painting of the man himself. I have long been fascinated by Celtic saints. I... Continue Reading →
What are you supposed to do? You're running a murder mystery weekend at your hotel and the actor playing the victim calls in sick… but there's this rather good-looking man is standing at the end of your checking-in queue, begging for a room. Obvious, really. He can have a room if he's prepared to be... Continue Reading →
If only... Characters get themselves into sticky situations and the reader would normally expect a suitably uncomfortable ending - but not here. A suicidal seaman finds a book by his lost love and... (The Bench). A wheelchair-bound young woman, terrified to leave her own flat, plucks up courage to negotiate lifts and pavements to answer... Continue Reading →
This book won the Booker Prize in 1996. 'Here We Are' is short (195 pages in medium font size) and gentle. The setting is Brighton and the summer of 1959, immediately before the whirlwind that was the 1960s blew in and 'modern life' begun. Magician Ronnie and his assistant Evie are performing in variety on... Continue Reading →
This book took me a long time to read, about two months, although I read others in between. From that, you can deduce that it didn't set me on fire - and certainly didn't scare me - but, like Magnus Magnussen, I started so I finished. M R James's Ghost Stories are regarded as a... Continue Reading →
An anthology edited by Debz Hobbs-Wyatt and Gill James. This work contains 76 pieces, mostly very short but some longer, featuring the first three months of the Covid Pandemic, some short stories, some flash, some poetry and others where the author just described how he/she was feeling and what he/she was experiencing during March, April,... Continue Reading →
Last week found me reading two very different French detectives: Maigret and the Lost Girl by Georges Simeon and The Dying Season by Martin Walker. What had they in common, apart from their Frenchness? Nothing, except that these books were chosen for the September meeting of the St Andrew's Book Club, which I missed through... Continue Reading →
I thought I had posted this some time ago. I'm ready to do the next post now... but better late than never! One of the things I’ve been doing, instead of reviewing, is making jam. The jam above is blackberry and apple jam. Today I made apricot jam and plum and apple jam. As I’m... Continue Reading →
It is difficult to review a book like ‘The Shack’ which has been the subject of so much hype since its publication in 2007 and has been made into a film. Interestingly, it was initially self-published. Many of my Christian friends find it gobsmackingly amazing. God is portrayed as a black African woman? Am I... Continue Reading →
Dear Reader 