books, books, books

• Jamrach’s Menagerie – Carol Birch
• The Inheritance – Nicholas Shakespeare
• The London Train – Tessa Hadley
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
• The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
• The Betrayal – Helen Dunmore
• Mrs Bridge – Evan S. Connell
• A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English – Shappi Khorsandi
• The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey

• Less than Angels – Barbara Pym

• Double Fault – Lionel Shriver (ugh, hard slog)
• A Room Swept White – Sophie Hannah
• The Radleys – Matt Haig (hahahah, kindle)
• Rough Music – Patrick Gale
• The Understudy – David Nicholls (kindle)
• Smut – Alan Bennett (pah)
• The Descendants – Kaui Hart Hemmings
• How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran (kindle)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
• Results not Typical – Catherine Ryan Howard (free on kindle, one sees why)
• Little Girl Lost – Brian McGilloway (kindle deal of the day: always useful to have a crappy Krimi on your kindle)
• Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – Elizabeth Taylor
• Sunset Park – Paul Auster
• The Crossing Places – Ruth Galloway
• The Impossible Dead – Ian Rankin
• Love in a Warm Climate – Helena Frith-Powell (again, as-good-as free kindle dross. this must stop.)
• Before I Forget – Melissa Hill (ok, so i have an excuse to be stuck in the easy.reading aisle at the moment, but NO MORE DROSS!)
• The Analyst – John Katzenbach (seems almost brainy compared with the above)
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (aged 13 3/4) – Sue Townsend (found on freddy lecks book sofa and returned after reading. It was gone again when i headed home.)
• The Whole Day Through – Patrick Gale

Nonfiction
Various medical stuff, gah.
(N = about 4) 16 months ago

• Remarkable Creatures – Tracy Chevalier (new world alert!)
• The Woman in Black – Susan Hill (scary!)
• The Einstein Girl – Philip Sington
• Breath – Tim Winton
• The Unnamed – Joshua Ferris
• Whatever you love – Louise Doughty (pah, stupid fecking narrator. i have nothing but contempt for her and would like to push her off the fecking boring cliff.)
• The White Woman on the Green Bicycle – Monique Roffey

• Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively (fecking brilliant!)
• The Glass Room – Simon Mawer
• The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver (i love BK)
• The Widow’s Tale – Mick Jackson

• Sister – Rosamund Lupton (ace!)
• Charlotte Sometimes – Penelope Farmer (blast from the past)
• Attachment – Isabel Fonseca
• The Point of Rescue – Sophie Hannah
• A Matter of Fat – Sherry Ashworth (hehe)
• Notes from an Exhibition – Patrick Gayle (ace!)
• Saving Caravaggio – Neil Griffiths (bleurgh)
• The Breaker – Minette Walters (needed sth easy—and it’s set in Purbeck!)
• A Patriot in Berlin – Piers Paul Read (i must really stop reading crap i find in pubs)
• Molly Fox’s birthday – Deirdre Madden
• Bridget Jones’s diary – Helen Fielding (wahahah, still brilliant)
• Afterwards – Rosamund Lupton (not nearly as ace as Sister, imo)
• The Other Side of the Bridge – Mary Lawson (again, in preparation for her reading. oh, i love that book.)
• The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova (that god that’s finished. 700 pages of stodge.)
• The Next Thing on My List – Jill Smolinski (much needed easy read. mentions 43t!)
• HappinessTM – Will Ferguson
• Noah’s Compass – Anne Tyler
• The Commitments _ Roddy Doyle (again)

• Bird by Bird – Anne Lammot (ace!)
• Switch: How to change things when change is hard – Chip & Dan Heath

Plays/screenplays

Poetry2 years ago

• An education – Lynn Barber
• Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
• The comforts of a muddy Saturday – Alexander McCall Smith (guh)
• The rain before it falls – Jonathan Coe
• Brooklyn – Colm Tóibín
• One day – David Nicholls
• The other side of the bridge – Mary Lawson BRILLIANT! I LOVE THIS BOOK WITH ALL MY SOUL!
• Love and summer – William Trevor (also ace)
• A lesson before dying Ernest J. Gaines (wow)
• The diary of a nobody George & Weedon Grossmith (whahahaha!)

• The ninth life of Louis Drax – Liz Jensen
• Miss Garnet’s angel – Sally Vickers (bah, didn’t like that AT ALL)
• The Welsh girl – Peter Ho Davies
• We are all made of glue – Monika Lewycka (naja)
• The palace of strange girls – Sallie Day
• Invisible – Paul Auster

• Hurting distance – Sophie Hannah
• Little face – Sophie Hannah
• The complaints – Ian Rankin
• Isa & May – Margaret Forster
• The cryptologist – Tobias Hill (ugh, amazed i even bothered to finish that. totally unbelievable and i really didn’t care anyway.)
• Liza’s England – Pat Barker (enjoyed that!)
• Everything you know – Zoe Heller (yay!)
• The very thought of you – Rosie Alison (i have no idea how this book got shortlisted for the orange prize. i found it cringingly dreadful from start to finish. read it purely as a how-not-to. there were several great stories in there somewhere … but none of them moved me in any way. invisible thread here, invisible thread there. oh, and would it not have been a better idea to cut 90% of the rhetorical questions?)
• Return to Akenfield – Craig Taylor (had been languishing on my shelves for years. BUT WHAT AN EXCELLENT BOOK. i loved it. and have ordered the original Akenfield. yay.)
• Keeping the world away – Margaret Forster. (yay)
• Juliet, naked – Nick Hornby. (also yay: perfect holiday reading)
• Crow Lake – Mary Lawson (i love Mary Lawson!)
• Started early, took my dog – Kate Atkinson (i love Jackson Brodie!)
• Blaming – Elizabeth Taylor (oooh, ace new discovery for me!)
• People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks

• A question of attribution – Alan Bennett
• Airswimming – Charlotte Jones
• In Flame – Charlotte Jones
• Das weiße Band – Michael Haneke
• Tissue – Louise Page 3 years ago