Tag Archives: Books
Review: The Versions of Us, Laura Barnett
What if you had said yes . . . ? Eva and Jim are nineteen, and students at Cambridge, when their paths first cross in 1958. Jim is walking along a lane when a woman approaching him on a bicycle swerves to avoid a dog. What happens next will determine the rest of their lives. […]
Review: Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to […]
Review: The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
There’s really nothing like dipping into a book feeling returning to an old friend. Comfortable, comforting, like it’s an old story you know and love. Reading The Wise Man’s Fear was like continuing on a long journey with people and places I was already very intimate with. It took a very long time (nearly 1000 pages), we got a […]
Review: On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
On a weekend trip to London when I had lent my Kindle to my brother and needed something to read, I picked up On Chesil Beach for sheer superficial reasons: it was thin and would fit into my already over-brimming backpack. Plus, you know, it’s so pretty. I had read it previously during my post-Atonement Ian McEwan phase, but […]
Review: The Maze Runner Trilogy, James Dashner
In which I describe my tumultuous relationship with this series, my love of the YA genre and the problem with the third book.
Some Call It Being Unemployed. I Call It Being A Writer.
Just a little public service announcement here to report a couple of life updates: namely that I’m back in the UK, that I’ve finished with my au pair job in Germany, and that I’ve decided now to take some time off to focus on my book and my writing. Yep, this is really happening. I have […]
The Truth About the Kindle
If you would like to see my previous long rant about the Kindle, please click here. Otherwise, please just accept that I am a hypocrite and that things have changed, ok? A year or two ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of ever getting a Kindle. To me there was nothing better than the sight of […]
Review: the Miniaturist, Jessie Burton
On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later […]
5 Problems All Writers Will Know
Or, at least, I hope I’m not the only one. When you think about it, writing creatively is one of the strangest things that you can do. Of course, it’s in equal parts terrifying, fulfilling and life-changing, but that transition from mind to paper can be a little tricky, can’t it? Here are the problems […]
Review: Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
I’m starting to become quite the Hardy fan now, having read and loved The Return of the Native and Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the last year or so. I’m going to pretend, however, that my desire to read this particular book wasn’t fuelled by a certain upcoming film adaptation starring Carey Mulligan, and a particular penchant for all […]
Bethany Wren 