The Top 100 Quotes from the Top 100 Novels (BBC Big Read List – #1-50)
I’M STILL MAKING my way through the BBC Big Read List of Top 100 Novels. I’m parked at To Kill A Mockingird. For some reason I expected an old stuffy, court-room drama but it’s really surprised me – full of colour and character. As some light relief, I thought it would be nice to visit […]
Jacqueline Wilson – The Story of Tracy Beaker (Book Review)
Opening Line(s): My name is Tracy Beaker. I am 10 years 2 months old. My birthday is on 8 May. It’s not fair, because that dopey Peter Ingham has his birthday then too, so we just got the one cake between us. Book Cover Blurb: Tracy is ten years old. She lives in a Children’s Home […]
Patrick Süskind – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Book Review)
Opening Line: In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. Book Cover Blurb: His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short […]
Reading for Writing
YOU CAN’T EAT an elephant in one bite. But you can eat it one bite at a time. So begins my quest to complete BBC’s Big Read Top 100 Novels list. The list is a little dated now, publicised in 2003 to find Britain’s best loved book. The top 21 are presented on this page, as […]
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men (Book Review)
Opening Line: A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. Synopsis: Streetwise George and his big child-like friend Lennie are […]
Louis Sachar – Holes (Book Review)
Opening Lines: There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry, flat wasteland. Synopsis: Stanley Yelnats has bad luck (which is all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather). When Stanley’s bad luck unfairly lands […]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Love in the Time of Cholera (Book Review)
Opening Line: It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Synopsis: Fifty-one years, nine months and four days have passed since Fermina Daza rebuffed hopeless romantic Florentina Ariza‘s impassioned advances and married Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead. During that half-centrury, Florentino has fallen into the arms of […]
The Chimp Paradox – Living Your Truth
I WAS A WHORE for the self-help books in my late teens and early twenties and amassed a horde of titles during that time as I searched for ways to piece the puzzle of life together. I’ve since drifted away from the self-help and motivational ‘ra-ra’ spiel, but every once in a while a book […]
How to Read a Book
I was a prolific reader in my late teens. Before the advent of social media and reality TV shows my addiction back in the noughties (how I despise that term!) was reading books. I was in the throes of a Degree at University that was not a fit for my ambition or interest and reading novels […]
Remembering BBC’s ‘The Big Read’
One of the blogs I follow is 101books.net written by the excellent Robert Bruce. In 2010 Time Magazine announced their definitive list of the 100 greatest English language novels (since 1923) and Robert decided that as an avid reader he would dedicate most of his limited free time to reading his way through the list. I […]
Stephen King’s Top 2 Tips To Becoming A Better Writer
I had hoped to write this post early this morning but I’ve been waylaid in my best made plans. Today is the day my cast would be removed from my fractured wrist. I’m currently in Buenos Aires, and had planned it so that I could go to an English speaking hospital to have, what I […]
