Life’s sentences

I have several books of poetry on my shelf...and now, on my Kindle. I leaf (or swipe) through them in the spaces between fiction, when I am recovering from an intense or troubling story or when the weather puts me in the mood for contemplation rather than escape. There are some I return to periodically, …

Continue reading Life’s sentences

The Long Way Home: Louise Penny

Published by Minotaur Books “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There's power enough in Heaven to cure a sin-sick soul.” On the surface, this seems like a regular whodunit. But it is more than that—a story about losing and finding yourself, about art and landscape, and escaping from your past. …

Continue reading The Long Way Home: Louise Penny

A Parrot in the Pepper Tree: Chris Stewart

Published by Sort of Books Many of us dream of giving up the rat-race and living the simple life in a community far removed from the hustle of cities. These remain dreams for most of us, but not for Chris Stewart and his wife Ana. In 1988, they moved to Alpujarras in Andalucia, Spain, and …

Continue reading A Parrot in the Pepper Tree: Chris Stewart

All the Light We Cannot See: Anthony Doerr

Review by Thomas Peak and Susanne Gjønnes Set during the darkness of World War II, All the Light We Cannot See is a powerful and emotional novel. It follows a young boy and a girl caught up on each side of the whirlwind of Nazism and war. Werner, a poor orphan drafted into a special …

Continue reading All the Light We Cannot See: Anthony Doerr

Saying goodbye to an iconic bookshop: Imran Ali Khan

The Strand Book Stall in Mumbai has been an icon for readers. Books of all sorts piled everywhere, where readers were encouraged to browse and get into conversations with like-minded people. It was one of my favourite places: a trip to Bombay (as it was called then) was incomplete unless I had been to Strand. …

Continue reading Saying goodbye to an iconic bookshop: Imran Ali Khan