Book Club

A few weeks ago I blogged about Jen getting me a copy of The Complete Far Side.  I just mentioned in passing to her that I was hankering to read some of my old comic book collections that I had when I was a kid and bam, she orders them the next day.  She’s pretty great like that. Not longer ...

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen tells the story of a decrepit old man in a nursing home named Jacob who can’t quite remember whether he is ninety or ninety three.  Although Jacob has many children and grandchildren, he feels lonely and abandoned.  Through Jacob’s narration we flash back to his life in prohibition-era America where, in the span of ...

When I was growing up I was a huge fan of newspaper comic strips.  I remember reading those massive broadsheet weekend papers where you would have a double page of comics stuffed somewhere in the middle.  Those papers were so big you could unfold it and lay it out on the floor in the lounge like a map when you ...

When I was visiting some friends in London last year, a boyfriend of a friend recommended an author to me by the name of Malcolm Gladwell.  At the time, I was appallingly drunk and had to ask him to repeat the name of the author no less than seven times.  After that, it must have stayed in some dormant part ...

I started reading A Season With Verona a couple of months ago when it was handed to me by a friend.  Written in 2001, it follows a season with relegation-battling Seria A football club Hellas Verona FC from the perspective of a British author who has lived in Italy for a number of years. It’s a well written book and ...

Now that I’ve finished off Stephen King’s Under the Dome I’m now going to head in a completely different direction for my next book.  Next up is Tim Park’s football journal A Season With Verona which details the British author’s experience of spending a season following the club Hellas Verona and its supporters. I can’t say I know much about ...

Domo arigato, Mr King.

It has been a long time since I last picked up a book and was instantly hooked. But after the reading the very first line of Craig Clevenger’s 2003 debut The Contorionist’s Handbook that was exactly the case. The story introduces you to John Dolan Vincent, a man born with an extra finger on his left hand. Not only does he struggle ...

I’ve just finished reading Jose Saramago’s Death At Intervals.  I don’t really know what to make of it.  It’s about the strangest thing I’ve read all year and thats including a book that has KFC’s Colonel Sanders appearing as a pimp in Japan. So in Death At Intervals, an unnamed country discovers the complete absense of death one New Years ...

I was saddened to hear about the recent passing of the author Jose Saramago. Saramago was a Nobel prize-winning writer who was hugely popular in his home country of Portugal where it was reported that some 20,000 people attended his funeral (!) when he was buried last week.  He had a good innings, living to the ripe old age of ...