Nigella Lawson has embarked on another of her celebrity cook series on television this season at the end of 2015 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/b06nvzkg). Her opening remarks in the first episode of ‘Simply Nigella’ gushed to the effect that life is worth celebrating in every single meal that one prepares. It’s as easy as popping round to your local […]
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester Read More »
Nan (Anna) Shepherd (11 February 1893 – 23 February 1981, http://www.slainte.org.uk/CILIPS/publications/scotauth/shephdsw.htm) was a Scottish novelist and poet who was born and lived most of her life in the Aberdeenshire village of West Cults. She became an early Scottish Modernist writer, producing three stand alone novels set in small, fictional, communities in the north of Scotland. The Scottish
The Living Mountain Read More »
John Grisham (http://www.johngrisham.co.uk/) has sold more than 275 million copies of his thriller fiction worldwide since 1989, and has been translated into 42 languages. He’s obviously struck on a winning formula. If you’ve never tried his entertaining witty style which drives forward a fast paced gritty narrative, how about giving the latest, Rogue Lawyer, a go?
Isabel Allende ( http://www.isabelallende.com/en/home/8 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Allende) is arguably the world’s most widely read Spanish language author. She has had a long and fascinating life which reflects so much of the history of our times. This magical realist novel catapulted her to literary fame, and it was in virtue of this and her wider oeuvre that she
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende Read More »
Antonio Tabucchi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Tabucchi) was an Italian academic deeply interested in Portuguese culture, which he taught at The University of Sienna. His novel ‘Sostiene Pereira’ (translated as ‘Pereira Declares’, and sometimes‘Pereira Maintains’) has received international recognition. The novel is set in Portugal in the summer of 1938, during the dictatorship of Salazar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_de_Oliveira_Salazar). The summary is as
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi Read More »
Bestselling Australian author Kate Morton (https://katemorton.com/) is gaining an appreciative following. See if you agree with the buzz in the bookselling press and fiction world by trying her latest mystery novel. The plotting is nicely done, and the atmosphere well conjured. The summary, as follows, revolves around a missing child. In June 1933 the Edevane
The reclusive German writer Patrick Süskind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Suskind) produced one internationally acclaimed bestseller. This was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. The novel examines what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion, his sense of smell, leads to murder. The summary is as follows. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind Read More »
For as long as humans have thought deeply about existence there has been an intuition that there must be some universal principle of natural order. This would be a background reality to which even the gods as imagined in human culture would be subject. It has been conceived as the Indian Vedic ‘Rta’ and ‘Dharma’,
The Wisdom of the Taoist Mystics by David Howard Smith Read More »
Perhaps life hasn’t turned out entirely as you’d hoped? Your car is less prestigious than the BMW Series 7 next door. You’re holidays are not exotic, your marriage has not endured as a lovestruck dream, your children’s behaviour is disappointing. You’ve been overlooked in the race for promotion. In your early 20s your ambition was
Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed Read More »
