Ann Morgan considered herself well read — until she discovered the "massive blindspot" on her bookshelf. Amid a multitude of English and American authors, there were very few books from beyond the English-speaking world. So she set an ambitious goal: to read one book from every country in the world over the course of a …
The Decagon House Murders: Yukito Ayatsuji
Translated from Japanese by Ho-Ling WongPublished by Pushkin Vertigo, 2015, 228 pages. Original version published in 2007. The island of Tsunojima holds a dark secret. A year ago, the main house on the island burned down, killing four people—the architect, Nakamura Seiji and his wife, Kazue, and the couple working for them. Except that when …
The Books in Our Lives
As those of you who continue to buy paper books know, there is a point you reach where you run out of space to store them. My husband and I are both holdouts against electronic books. But that comes at a price. Our bookshelves (all 12 of them!) are so packed that there isn’t the …
Simon Schama on the London Library: Financial Times
Simon Schama writes eloquently about libraries, at a time when they seem to be under threat. When I was a child, I was left one afternoon a week at the British Council library. It was the highlight of my week, and the smell of a library still evokes hours of contented browsing and reading. And …
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Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death—Christopher Frayling
Published by Faber & Faber, 2000, 592 pages. I hesitated about writing this review because you have to be a real fan of Sergio Leone films to enjoy this book, and I wasn’t sure how many of the readers of this blog are. But you know that I can be a bore about films I …
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Novels in Translation: The Guardian
Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh international book festival, complained that British "parochial" reading habits were "something of an embarrassment". In response, Alison Flood, former news editor at The Bookseller, came up with a list of her 10 favourite novels in translation. However, it does look like Barley was wrong—according to The Guardian, translated fiction is …
The Buried Giant: Kazuo Ishiguro
Published by Knopf, 2015, 317 pages. England, a few years after King Arthur’s death. Dragons, ogres and knights roam the land. There is a sort of peace after a fierce civil war—the opposing sides, the Britons and Saxons, coexist. But a mist lies over the land, a mist that clouds people’s minds, taking away their …
Beyond Our Means—Why America Spends While the World Saves: Sheldon Garon
Published by Princeton University Press, 2011, 488 pages.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes The key question Sheldon Garon, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Princeton, tries to answer is why are some countries thriftier than others, and in particular, why is the US saving so little? Through a comparative historical analysis, Garon tracks thriftiness …
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Koestler’s Kafkaesque Nightmare: Parallels Beyond Perception
The Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler Published by Eland, London, 2006, 253 pages. Originally published in 1941 by the Left Book Club.Review by Tom Peak Arthur Koestler was a curiosity. So often spent rowing against the tide, his life personifies the experience and aura of the twentieth century intellectual more than any other. So …
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V for Vendetta: written by Alan Moore, illustrated by David Lloyd
Published by Vertigo, 1995, 288 pages. Written in the 1980s, this graphic novel is set in another one of Alan Moore’s dystopian alternative futures. It’s the late 1990s in Britain. A war and a near-miss nuclear conflict has led to the takeover by a fascist government, with Adam Susan at its head. The government is …
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