The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald is a novel disguised as a travel book, recording a walk along the Suffolk coast and inland to Norfolk but also documenting local culture, the interplay between people and landscape, and how transient life is. I read Sebald’s Vertigo a few years ago and loved it, and have wanted to read more by Sebald since.
Continue readingTag: Germany
Six Degrees of Separation: From Notes On A Scandal to Ladies in Lavender







October has begun with a Saturday, which means yesterday was Six Degrees of Separation in the literary blogosphere. The Six Degrees meme is hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite And Best and you can find the rules here.
This month, the starting book is Notes On A Scandal. I haven’t read it, but I’ve seen the film.
Continue readingPicture Prompt Book Bingo

Back at the start of the year, Mayri at Bookforager set up a Book Bingo challenge complete with bingo card. I decided that I would give it a go.
Continue readingSix Degrees of Separation: From Postcards from the Edge to Brooklyn







Summer is on its way out, because here comes August, and I’m a day late for this month’s Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.
August is holiday month for many, so no surprise that Kate’s book choice to start this month’s chain conjures holidays with its title.
Continue readingGhosts on the Shore: Travels along Germany’s Baltic Coast
Read 23/11/2020-06/12/2020
Rating 5 stars
Ghosts on the Shore is a travel book partly inspired by family history. Paul Scraton is a British writer who has lived in Berlin since the early 2000s. His wife grew up in the GDR and spent her early years on the Baltic Coast. Scraton became fascinated by this part of Germany, in part thanks to his wife Katrin’s family photographs and her childhood memories, but also because of the Baltic Coast’s place in the wider history and mythology of Germany. And so he decided to take a trip. Continue reading
Stasiland
Read 15/11/2020-23/11/2020
Rating 5 stars
Stasiland has the subtitle Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. In it, Anna Funder shares the experiences of a number of East Germans to build a picture of life under an oppressive regime. Her interviewees range from people who tried to escape, people separated arbitrarily from family overnight, and people who worked for the Stasi. There are amazing people between these pages who survived unimaginable horrors, and there are also the people who supported the use of those horrors. I found it a very moving book. Continue reading
Summer

Read 28/10/2020-09/11/2020
Rating 4 stars
Summer is the final book in Ali Smith’s ambitious Seasonal Quartet. It’s about change; the necessity of it so that things can be made new; the opportunity it offers for us to redefine ourselves in response to it; the choices we make and the consequences they hold. It’s also a drawing together of threads that travel through the other books, with returning characters and crossing themes. Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation: from Stasiland to The Milkman in the Night
It’s a weird old time. I’m no longer sure what point in the year we’re at. It feels as though March was a long time ago. I missed the start of April somehow. And so I’m very late to the April Six Degrees of Separation. Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation: from Daisy Jones and the Six to Revolutionary Road
Happy New Year! And I’m starting 2020’s book blogging with 6 degrees of separation because I haven’t quite finished the book I started before Xmas.
I don’t do New Year resolutions, so it’s untrue for me to say I’ve resolved to do all of 2020’s 6 degrees of separations. I’m going to try my best to remember to, though.
January’s chain begins with a book I haven’t heard of. Continue reading
Wayward Girls and Wicked Women
Read 17/07/2019-02/08/2019
Rating 3 stars
Read as part of the 20 Books of Summer readathon.
I accidentally started Women in Translation month early with this collection of short stories. I should have known that Angela Carter would include a few women whose first language isn’t English. After all, being a woman who doesn’t conform to the artificial notion of femininity isn’t an exclusively Anglophone thing.
Carter introduces her selections as being about women who aren’t really wicked or wayward, at least not all of them. Continue reading