I live in Hoylake, on the north-western tip of the Wirral peninsula. I used to spend an hour or more on trains each week travelling to work and if possible would read for the entire journey, which is how this blog came into being. I changed jobs a few years ago and don't travel to work by train anymore but I'm sticking with reading and blogging. Old habits die hard.
So: another year over and another about to begin. But however 2025 has treated us and whatever 2026 has in store for us, there will always be another book to read! My favourite read of 2025 was American Pastoral by Philip Roth – you can access my review here – so it’s perhaps unsurprising that … More Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026!
If it wasn’t for my friend Sara, I might never have discovered this gem of a writer. Sara loaned me Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain by Roger Deakin. Deacon’s journey was inspired by Cheever’s short story ‘The Swimmer’. I wasn’t that fussed about Waterlog but was instantly captivated by the idea behind ‘The Swimmer’, … More ‘Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor’ by John Cheever (from his Collected Stories).
In July, Hubby and I spent a week in the city of Cork, Ireland’s second-city (though with a population of only 300,000 it feels more like a large town). I love exploring new places. Aside from the joy to be had from the main sights, there’s the thrill of simply wandering around a strange city, … More Fools of Fortune by William Trevor
If you follow my blog you’ll probably realise that I mostly read prize-winning books. That’s not because I think prize winners are the only books worth reading (sometimes I don’t even rate them all that highly). No, I read the prize winners because I get to read books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up – … More Heart Lamp Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq translated by Deepa Bashti
Earlier this year I was on a walk with my friend Hal when he brought up my blog post on Orlando. If you read my post, you might remember I confessed to not liking Woolf’s major novels, Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931). (I did acknowledge I might have been … More To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
If you’ve read my blog post about Bart Van Es’s biography The Cut Out Girl, you’ll know that during World War Two, The Netherlands (Nazi-occupied at the time) was so efficient at rounding up its Jewish population, that the death rate was the highest in Europe, higher even than in Germany. I highly recommend Van … More The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
A couple of months ago (at the time of writing) Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer made a speech about how Britain risks becoming an “island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together” due to uncontrolled immigration. He later said he deeply regretted his choice of words, but it got me thinking about the … More American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The ancient Greeks had a theory about soul-mates. It was said the first humans were spherical and twice the size of present-day humans, and were cut in half by Zeus as a punishment for misbehaviour – literally cut down to size – splitting their souls between two bodies. A variation of the same myth said … More Normal People by Sally Rooney
A couple of months ago I was in Madrid with my friend, Cath. It was a joy to visit Spain with her not least because she’s a fluent Spanish-speaker and knows a lot about the culture. In the Prado we lingered over the museum’s most famous artwork Las Meninas (the Ladies-in Waiting) by Velazquez, which … More Orbital by Samantha Harvey
During the COVID lockdown, with all swimming pools shut like many others I took to the sea. I didn’t have to go far: only a few miles along the coast from my home there is a lovely, sheltered bay. Immersion was gloriously cold and exhilarating, and I loved it…but having a healthy respect for tides, … More Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain by Roger Deakin
whatcathyread 