This Sunday we celebrate Father’s Day here in the UK. Depending on your point of view it’s either the ideal opportunity to thank our Dads for everything that they have done for us over the year or a Hallmark Holiday….
Calls for The Diary of Anne Frank to be banned
8 May 2013 by Leave a Comment
My idiot klaxon has been sounding loudly this morning at some book news from the US. Apparently there is a call in Michigan to have Anne Frank’s Diary (or to give it its real title The Diary of A Young Girl) banned from schools because of inappropriate content…
X-Men: First Class
6 September 2012 by Leave a Comment
I have a bit of a strange relationship with the X-Men films. I loved the first one, thought the second was good enough and the third was a big steaming pile of…
The Best Of Men
29 August 2012 by Leave a Comment
I can officially declare that my post-Olympics slump is over. No more mooching about looking for sporting events on the TV, no more crying because Team GB hasn’t won a gold medal in the past five minutes. The 2012 Paralympics start today. I haven’t been this excited since, well since the Queen dropped into the Olympic Stadium…
Top Ten: Books To Read This Summer
25 May 2012 by Leave a Comment
One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to read at least 75 books, that works out at about one and a half a week and it seemed perfectly achievable. But unfortunately I’m not quite keeping up to speed…
Skokie
26 January 2012 by Leave a Comment
January 27th marks Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering 67 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet forces in 1945. Here in the UK the aim of the Day is to remember all of the victims of Nazi persecution….
Top Ten: Books On My Christmas List
18 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
Christmas is coming, Santa’s nearly here. Hooray. I’ll try not to get too excited too early and frustrate everyone but it’s mid-November, perfect timing to start thinking about the festive season. I’m now getting daily text messages from my mum updating me on her shopping…
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
14 November 2011 by Leave a Comment
Holocaust Memorial Day is coming up in just a couple of months and across the country schools, libraries and community groups are already planning how to commemorate this important day. I know that in a lot of places John Boyne’s novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas will be used….
The Book Thief
29 September 2011 by Leave a Comment
When I was planning the first meeting of #BookTwub, the new Twitter based book club, I knew I wanted a novel that was powerful, popular and would appeal to a wide audience. It seemed obvious to me fairly quickly that The Book Thief was the perfect choice…
The Plot Against America
25 August 2011 by Leave a Comment
One of fiction’s most fascinating questions is What If? What If a character didn’t exist? What If a lie was discovered? What If history was different? Many books and films have explored this question from different viewpoints ….