Sugar and Slate

Read 15/03/2022-29/03/2022

Rating 4 stars

Sugar and Slate is a memoir about growing up mixed race in North Wales. Paula chose it as this year’s Dewithon book and I managed to find a library copy. It’s partly fictionalised and the author’s reminiscences about her own life are punctuated by poetry and dramatic scenes that tell the story of her parents and the broader stories of nationality, race and belonging. Divided into three sections, Africa, Guyana and Wales, the book examines how these places have impacted and influenced the author’s life, and how their presence as points in the slavery triangle explain how the author came to exist.

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.

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.

Notebook

Read 27/02/2021-28/02/202

Rating 5 stars

I was all set to start a different book when Tom Cox’s Notebook arrived in the post. This is a book I’ve been waiting for, delayed by the pandemic, pledged for in 2019. Cox is an author who does his own thing, publishing through Unbound since 2017, and a writer whose work fits the contours of my brain so perfectly that I don’t think twice about pledging for his books.

Before I even opened the cover, an extract on the back sleeve made me laugh.

Permafrost

Read 21/02/2021-26/02/2021

Rating 5 stars

Permafrost is the first novel by Catalan poet Eva Baltasar. It’s a thing of beauty, visceral and uncompromising. It’s about depression, and being cared about but not loved; it’s the story of someone who tries not to let others in because being self-contained is safer. It’s also deeply, dryly funny.

Ghosts 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.

Random Thoughts on Lockdown 6

I thought I’d finished with these random rambles about not going out, but July is a long time ago. Much can change in these weird old times between breakfast and what you probably call lunch but I call dinner. Since my last post in this accidental series, I’ve been reading, obviously, and working, mostly from home with the occasional trip into work. I’ve had a couple of trips out of the house, and a bit of a meltdown.

Summer Book Reading Challenge – How did I do?

I did alright, as it happens. I managed ten books, seven of them from my original list.

Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing: Life, Death and the Thrill of the Catch

Read 31/08/2020

Rating 4 stars

Book 10 in my 10 Books of Summer reading challenge.

Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing is a companion book to the BBC series of the same name. You don’t need to have watched it to enjoy the book (although I hope you do watch it, it’s quite the antidote to much of the rubbish on the box). Nor do you need to be an angler or interested in fishing. You don’t even particularly need to be a fan of either Bob Mortimer or Paul Whitehouse. The book is more than the sum of its parts.

The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons

Read 28/08/2020-30/08/2020

Rating 4 stars

Read for Women in Translation Month.

Goli Taraghi is a popular Iranian writer, a best seller in Iran whose stories have appeared in a number of anthologies. The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons is a collection of her short fiction, her first collection published in English. The translation is by Sara Khalili. It brings together ten stories about Iran under the last Shah, and life in Tehran and in exile after the Revolution.