I love Christmas, as is probably evident from the fact that I’m running a 12 Days of Christmas series. I love the gifts, the sentimentality and the sheer corniness of the whole season. I cry at films like Miracle on 34th Street and White Christmas…
Delia Smith’s Christmas
8 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
It’s coming up to Christmas and I’m starting a new series – The 12 Days of Christmas. There’s going to be book reviews, movie reviews, thoughts on the best Christmas movies and some Christmas present suggestions. Up until about two weeks ago I hadn’t really started …
The Ghost
6 December 2011 by 3 Comments
There are some authors whose books you take to straight away – for me those authors include Jilly Cooper and John Grisham. There are others that can take a little more time to get used to. It took me a while to get into Ian Rankin, now I count him as one of my favourite crime writers so I generally find it worth persisting….
The Greenhouse
1 December 2011 by Leave a Comment
Last year, along with my husband and a couple of friends, I embarked on a challenge we called EuroFifty. We intended to visit all 50 countries in Europe within one year. Unfortunately we didn’t quite manage to visit the entire continent…
The Reluctant Detective
29 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
I was first drawn to Scottish crime novel The Reluctant Detective by the tweets of its author Sinclair Macleod who uses social media to promote this book and its follow up The Good Girl. He claims that his novels are as “Scottish as Irn-Bru and Haggis” and offer “Crime with a Scottish accent” …
Working it Out
23 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
I’ve been quite good with my reading recently. There’s a lot of serious books in my To-Be-Read pile and I’ve been reading classics like Pride and Prejudice and Phantom of the Opera as well as highly acclaimed new books such as Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing
And Still I Rise
17 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
I didn’t realise when I started to read Doreen Lawrence’s autobiography a couple of weeks ago that the trial of two men accused of her son’s murder would be starting this month, making the events described in And Still I Rise seem very recent and frighteningly relevant once again….
Pride and Prejudice
15 November 2011 by 2 Comments
It is a truth universally acknowledged that book reviewers in need of a quirky and unique opening always turn to Jane Austen thinking they are being oh so funny and clever. Thank God I would never stoop to such cheap cliches….
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
10 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
My favourite genre of fiction is, without a shadow of a doubt, crime. I love a good, gory murder and a hard-bitten detective who’s out to solve the crime. The bloodier the better as far as I’m concerned. I’m not averse to something a little gentler either – I adore Agatha Christie …
You Deserve Nothing
8 November 2011 by 2 Comments
It’s always difficult to get to know new authors. With so many books released each year it’s impossible to pick through the hundreds of unknown names. Often I end up just reading novels by the authors that I already know and love. It can’t be easy for new authors faced with the task of breaking down barriers and reaching readers like me…