I asked people what they enjoyed reading most in 2017. Their combined list is below, and the variety bears testament to their wide range of interests. The books listed under fiction are about refugees, women power, slavery, dictators, relationships between women and between families, and a take on Sherlock Holmes. The authors are from around …
Month: December 2017
Keeping company with ghosts
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories published by Penguin / Jonathan Cape, 1983, 308 pages. Today is Christmas Eve: the perfect time for pulling our chairs closer to the fire, virtually speaking, and telling stories about ghosts. Ghosts have fascinated me ever since I was a child and was on the lookout for beautiful churels …
An evening (or two, or many) with the Bloomsbury Group: Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar
Published by Bloomsbury, 2015, 368 pages.Review by Usha Raman E M Forster, Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant, Clive Bell, and most importantly, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf... a bunch of undeniably privileged, smart social and cultural radicals who gathered over pastries and coffee most evenings in [what is now] Central London to discuss art, …
Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch—Nick Davies
Published by Chatto & Windus / Vintage, 2014, 448 pages. “If you shut up truth and bury it in the ground, it will grow and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.” Emile Zola Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. …
Continue reading Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch—Nick Davies
The Sad Part Was: Prabda Yoon
Translated from Thai by Mui PoopoksakulPublished by Tilted Axis Press, 2017, 192 pages. Original version published in 2000. A man is intrigued by the spaces between the words a schoolgirl is writing in her diary, a couple discover a corpse on the roof crushed under the fallen letters from a neon sign, a group of …