tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10817112562321970742024-02-21T05:01:05.418+00:00Books to Furnish a Room - a guide for collectorsBibliography and book recommendations for collectorsTrapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.comBlogger295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-9430077601580235782012-09-01T22:12:00.000+01:002012-09-01T22:12:57.316+01:00Review - The Yips, Nicola Barker
I approached The Yips by Nicola Barker with a certain amount of caution. It is a large book (almost 550 pages) from an author with a reputation for experimental writing and from its title seemed to be set around the game of Golf, or to be more precise on a Golfer. When I finished it, I felt significantly more positive – it was an entertaining read which seemed shorter than its page Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-33210926745916780922012-08-30T09:13:00.002+01:002012-08-30T09:15:15.411+01:00Review - Dark Lies the Island, Kevin Barry
Short stories have a strong place in Irish writing, and many Irish authors of literary fiction have turned their hand to the genre. Kevin Barry is a very fine addition to the list. Dark Lies the Island is his second volume in this format and maintains a superb standard throughout, ranging from the touching, romantic and poignant through the humourous to the threatening. There Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-65403214991270336632012-08-20T00:51:00.001+01:002012-08-20T00:52:43.129+01:00Book of the Week - Will Self, Umbrella
I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, so there may be a few posts over the next week or so as I catch up with my blog. First up is Will Self’s Booker longlisted
novel, Umbrella. I haven’t had a chance
to read this and I suspect it will be very much an outsider for the prize, but
Self is always an interesting writer if an uncompromising one. I have had the pleasure of meeting him Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-13348757732810080032012-07-29T12:47:00.002+01:002012-07-29T22:59:33.793+01:00Book of the Week - Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
The Teleportation Accident is Ned Beauman’s second novel and has
just been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In a year when the judges made a
point of focussing on a new generation of authors, Beauman seems very much part
of that trend. He is 27 years old and lives
in London. He studied philosophy at
Cambridge University and is the son of Nicola Beauman, who runs Persephone Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-53807637358186206692012-07-25T22:18:00.000+01:002012-07-25T22:26:42.859+01:00Man Booker Prize Longlist 2012
The longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize has been announced. Not a particularly good year for me. Three of the twelve have yet to be published,
and one just appeared this week (The Teleportation Accident by Ned Bauman,
whose debut novel Boxer Beetle I recommended previously). Of the remaining eight, I have featured three
but missed five. I will now be trying to
Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-44487646173446337632012-07-22T22:05:00.002+01:002012-07-22T23:55:41.234+01:00Book of the Week - Nicola Barker, The Yips
Nicola Barker is an author who tends to push the boundaries so far as traditional plot and structure are concerned. She writes big books brimming with ideas and intelligent humour, but frequently leaving loose ends and unclear plot elements in her wake. The Yips is in some respects typical of her work - it is a large book full of unrealistic chaos, but with engaging ideas, very funny storiesTrapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-26877174880116230662012-07-15T09:33:00.001+01:002012-07-29T22:43:25.045+01:00Book of the Week - Nikita Lalwani, The Village
The Village is Nikita Lalwani’s second novel. I enjoyed her previous book, Gifted, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. She also won the Desmond Elliot Prize which to her considerable credit she donated to human rights organisation Liberty. Gifted can still be picked up for close to the original price, and I think is well worth Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-63948016187626124552012-07-14T18:04:00.000+01:002012-07-14T18:04:01.147+01:00Review - Madeleine Miller, The Song of Achilles
Almost all readers have some vague knowledge of the Greek myths. At one time they would have been a core component of a rounded education, but that era for most people has now gone and for many their awareness will come mainly from films or increasingly from video games. The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller is a novel which retells part of the Iliad, from the perspective of Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-8220444035075678502012-07-12T17:12:00.000+01:002012-07-12T17:12:33.667+01:00Review - Every Contact Leaves a Trace, Elanor Dymott
Every Contact Leaves a Trace is Elanor Dymott’s first novel, and is best described as a literary whodoneit. The setting is the University of Oxford. The main characters are students or academic staff, or closely associated with the University. The story is narrated by Richard, now a lawyer in early middle age. At the start of the novel he meets, apparently by accident, Rachel, with whom Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-1331740510848823082012-07-09T22:12:00.004+01:002012-07-09T22:12:58.619+01:00Review - Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days
The Last Hundred Days is set in Bucharest just before and during the fall of the Communist regime led by Nicolai Ceausescu. I read it during a recent trip to Romania, as one of the few books I was aware of with a Romanian setting (apart from various vampire novels!). It is the first novel of Patrick McGuinness, poet and Professor of Literature at Oxford University, who lived in Romania in Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-5054181295440097282012-07-08T22:42:00.001+01:002012-07-08T22:42:43.388+01:00Book of the Week - John Banville, Ancient Light
I have been travelling a lot over the last few weeks, so my time for the blog has been limited. I hope to catch up this week since I have a few days off. John Banville is one of my favourite writers, and his new novel Ancient Light looks well worth picking up. It is the third book in a lose trilogy featuring Alexander Cleave, who was also in the earlier novels Eclipse and Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-55476514847378897082012-06-25T08:14:00.000+01:002012-06-25T10:14:15.648+01:00Review - Railsea, China Mieville
Imagine a world in which the ocean has been replaced by a
complex system of railway tracks overlying a hostile & mysterious
subterranean world, a world where ships are replaced by the trains which ride
the tracks & mariners by the train crews.
This is the world of Railsea, the most recent novel by China Mieville,
his second novel aimed at young adults, but a book which makes fewTrapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-36259421814344453472012-06-22T16:47:00.000+01:002012-06-22T16:47:01.343+01:00Review - The Chemistry of Tears, Peter Carey
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey is a novel for the mind rather than the heart. I have read nearly all of Carey’s novels, but if you are coming to him for the first time I would probably not recommend The Chemistry of Tears as your starting point, although it is a very fine book. It is engaging, intellectually challenging and thought provoking, but not a book to grab the emotional Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-13769884322706720592012-06-10T19:39:00.002+01:002012-06-13T15:33:48.988+01:00Book of the Week - Emily Perkins, The Forrests
The Forrests is Emily Perkins’ fourth novel, a family saga set in New Zealand where she grew up and currently lives, teaching creative writing at The University of Auckland and hosting TV New Zealand’s book programme The Good Word. Perkins grew up in Auckland and Wellington. She left school to act in the TVNZ drama Open House, and trained at the New Zealand Drama School. However, her Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-23582095963101372232012-06-09T01:16:00.000+01:002012-06-14T08:53:00.388+01:00Powell and Murakami in the Auctions
Anthony Powell and Haruki Murakami are two authors in whom I have a particular interest, both as a reader and a collector. In many ways they are at opposite ends of the spectrum of literary fiction in terms of their focus and style, though both like to use a rather neutral/passive central male character who observes and sometimes comments on often extraordinary events around them. I have Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-9091620167266767302012-06-05T23:58:00.002+01:002012-06-05T23:58:51.849+01:00Book of the Week - Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker
Now that June is upon us, my thoughts begin to turn to the summer reading list. Of course, there will be some literary fiction, but during the summer months I prefer to leaven the more serious stuff with a few books from other genres. Angelmaker is the second novel from Nick Harkaway, son of John Le Carre, but an emerging and interesting author in his own right. His first novel, The Gone-AwayTrapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-74361090434853448292012-06-04T23:35:00.000+01:002012-06-04T23:35:01.989+01:00Review - David Park, The Light of Amsterdam
David Park is a well established author of literary fiction from the North of Ireland, who deserves to be better known than he currently is at present. For instance, he seems to lack an entry in Wikipedia, something which I may attempt to remedy in the near future! The Light of Amsterdam is his 8th novel, published by Bloomsbury to generally good reviews. It starts and finishes in Belfast, Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-9964511601339786752012-05-31T19:09:00.001+01:002012-05-31T19:16:12.839+01:00Orange Prize 2012
The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller was announced as the winner of the 2012 Orange Prize last night. Miller is a Latin teacher in the US and The Song of Achilles is the only first novel on the shortlist. I should confess at this point that I have not read it as yet, although I have a copy which I was looking at last night. This is the signed, numbered limited UK edition of 500 copies Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-53705557064933807872012-05-28T22:52:00.002+01:002012-05-28T22:52:58.186+01:00Prize Updates
Several literary prizes have announced their shortlists in the last couple of weeks, and books which I have featured previously have been doing well.
The Desmond Elliot Prize has only been running since 2007, but has quickly established its importance as an award for the best first novel written in English and published in the UK. The shortlist of three novels includes The Land of Decoration Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-338474058734793512012-05-28T01:18:00.001+01:002012-05-28T01:21:13.163+01:00Book of the Week - China Mieville, Railsea
China Mieville is one of my favourite writers in any genre. He prefers to call his writing “weird fiction”, though most people would classify it as science fiction or fantasy. He is also a very interesting and highly political writer, as I highlighted in an earlier article. His most recent novel, Railsea, has just been published and is my second book of the week this year to take Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-8858466947384431662012-05-20T14:16:00.000+01:002012-05-20T16:00:50.957+01:00Book of the Week - Adam Thorpe, Flight
Adam Thorpe is an unusually versatile writer, with success as a poet, dramatist and novelist in a number of different genres. There is something refreshing about the breadth of his scope, but it has probably worked against him at times when it comes to the main literary prizes. Flight is his tenth novel and is described as a literary thriller, a class of book which has achieved a modicum of Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-33305434155705649392012-05-19T11:28:00.001+01:002012-05-19T11:28:17.181+01:00Oak Tree Fine Press - Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Oak Tree Fine Press have just issued the tenth book in their First Chapter Series – Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. Each book in the series consists of the first chapter of a novel which has won the Booker Prize, presented in a signed and numbered edition. Each book is illustrated, in some cases by a leading contemporary artist (Gilbert &George and Antony Gormley, for example), Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-38899984865751456782012-05-18T14:56:00.000+01:002012-05-18T14:56:00.436+01:00Review - HHhH, by Laurent Binet
HHhH is Laurent Binet’s first novel and won two major literary prizes in France. It tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during the second world war, the events leading up to it and some of its aftermath. It is, therefore, a work of historical fiction, telling a story which I knew in outline, but in a way which made it seem fresh. Heydrich was the number two Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-10288528510828228652012-05-15T02:34:00.001+01:002012-05-15T02:34:15.202+01:00Book of the Week - Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was the best selling Booker Prize winner of recent years. You could have picked up a signed first edition when I recommended it in 2009 for cover price, and the cheapest online copy is currently around £300. Bring up the Bodies is the sequel to Wolf Hall, the second novel to feature Thomas Cromwell with a third in the pipeline. Reviews seem if anything to be Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081711256232197074.post-45503813293029292322012-05-13T10:19:00.002+01:002012-05-13T10:19:56.023+01:00Review - Pure, by Timothy Mo
Pure by Timothy Mo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It is over 10 years since Timothy Mo’s last novel, but Pure has been worth the wait. Mo has written an effervescent novel overflowing with verbal ticks and tricks, addressing some serious topics in a most unusual way. The book is set in southern Thailand, where a small but vigourous Islamic insurgency, vaguely linked with global backers, dreams of Trapnelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06528630111268345089noreply@blogger.com0