Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK Writers of the Global Majority

Read 29/04/2022-30/04/2022

Rating 5 stars

My friend Dipika has a story in this anthology, which gathers together poems and stories of maps and mapping from UK writers of global majority communities.

These are tales of place, covering diaspora, exile, identity, childhood and family. The writers are all based in the UK and are from a wide range of communities. After finishing The Good Immigrant, I wanted to sink my teeth into more writing from communities that are underrepresented in the literary world, and this offering from Arachne Press gave me the opportunity to do just that.

The Book of Disquiet (A Factless Autobiography)

Read 19/02/2022-15/03/2022

Rating 3 stars

The Book of Disquiet is Fernando Pessoa’s factless autobiography written under one of his ‘heteronyms’, Bernardo Soares. Constructed from fragments of writing on scraps of paper, it is a diary of sorts in which Soares attempts to understand who he is.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Second Place to Unreliable Memoirs

September already and time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

This year’s Booker Prize shortlist is announced in a couple of weeks. Kate’s choice of starting book, Second Place by Rachel Cusk, is on the longlist. I wonder if it will go the distance.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Eats, Shoots and Leaves to six other books for which life is too short

Is it July so soon?

I knew instantly what direction my Six Degrees chain would take this month when I saw that Eats, Shoots & Leaves was the starting book chosen by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Shuggie Bain to The Way We Live Now

April’s starting book for Six Degrees of Separation is Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Kate, who hosts the meme at Books Are My Favourite and Best, chose this recent Booker winner to set us off with a chain of six more books that are somehow linked together.

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Read 15/03/2021-21/03/2021

Rating 5 stars

In Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris explores a place that had deep personal meaning to her. I picked it from my local library as my second book in this year’s Dewithon, hosted by Paula at the Bookjotter blog. It is my first experience of Morris’s writing. I thought it would be a travel book. It is, but it’s also a number of other things.

Random Thoughts: All Creatures Great and Small

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I’m still struggling to get my reading head together, so I thought I’d put together some ponderings on a series of books I haven’t read that are the basis for two tv adaptations that I’ve watched and loved. Just a bit of randomness to while away a moment. I’m also going full ‘blocks’ with this post, rather than relying on the safety of the ‘classic block’. Hopefully it will look okay when I post it.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Redhead by the Side of the Road to Snow Crash

February is six days old, and here’s the first Saturday of the month and Six Degrees of Separation. Check out the meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best if you want to join in. This month, in a return to normal things, we’re starting with a book I haven’t read, Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Handmaid’s Tale to Red Dust Road

I’m a day late for November’s Six Degrees of Separation. I’m blaming my anxious refreshing of the Presidential election count page on The Guardian website yesterday. This month, Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best has given us a sort of free pass on the starting book. We’re starting our November chains with a book that ended a previous chain. For anyone new to Six Degrees, the general concept is explained here.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Rodham to Hag-Seed

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Hello September. You’ve come around quickly, and almost a week old already. That means it’s time for Six Degrees of Separation, in which Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best chooses a book and we all add six more in a chain. The concept is explained here.