Annabel's House of Books II

I’m Moving…

Dear Readers,

I’ve decided to move this blog to my own domain!

The name will remain the same, but the new address for Annabel’s House of Books is:

http://www.annabookbel.net

It will take some time twiddling about with the site to get it how I want it and I’ve lost a few comments in the transfer (apologies if one of them was yours), but it is live NOW!

It will mean a lot to me if you’d travel over…

It’s a break-up novel…

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

Daniel Handler, best-known as the author of the Lemony Snicket series of books for children has also written several novels for adults; I reviewed one of them – Adverbs – here. Like Lemony Snicket, Adverbs was quirky and full of off-beat humour. Why We Broke Upis a little different in style. It’s still quirky, but its humour is more ironic and very bittersweet –…

Closer to Turgenev…

A theatrically based ramble for you today…

Yesterday I went to the theatre in London to see Patrick Marber’s new adaptation of Turgenev’s comedy of manners A Month in the Country.  Marber’s version takes place over a shorter period, so is called Three Days in the Country. I’ll come back to the play itself later.

I decided to make the most of my travelcard by going into London some hours earlier…

What did I read pre-blog?

I’ve been doing some maintenance on my master spreadsheet. It contains a record of every book I’ve read since 2007 and some from earlier. I used to write capsule reviews on it – I was able to refer back to my one on Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle just the other day during Shirley Jackson Reading Weekso they do come in useful!  Once I started my blog in September 2008 I…

Shirley Jackson Reading Week

It’s Shirley Jackson Reading Week – hosted by Simon, Jenny and Ana. I had been planning just to scan the posts as my pile of books I must read (e.g. Anthony Powell) is rather large, but what hey! Why not read a book too?  It’s not as if I didn’t have a Shirley Jackson novel ready and waiting on my shelves thanks to Simon who reviewed several of hers for the first issue of Shiny New Books.

I’m not…

Annabel’s Shelves: C is for …

Soulless by Gail Carriger

Well after the disappointment of my first try of Calvino, I had another go at filling the first ‘C’ slot in my Annabel’s Shelves project. And I was delighted to find an author that kept me so entertained – I romped through this book, the first in Gail Carriger‘s ‘Parasol Protectorate’ series, and will look forward to reading the others in due course.

The lazy way to…

A Sudanese modern classic …

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

This was our July choice for book group, picked by a new member to our group who is Sudanese and was keen to introduce us to what is regarded as a classic of Sudanese literature and one of the most important Arabic novels of the twentieth century.

This short novel didn’t have an easy journey into print. It was published in 1966 at a time of great…

Shiny New Books – Issue 6!

Lots of book reviews to come, but today I have to plug the new issue of Shiny New Books which has just been published.

As always you’ll find an eclectic mix of bestsellers and undiscovered gems from around the world of books within its pages. Please do go and take a look. I’ve been so busy that I’ve only contributed three reviews this time (although as the backroom engine, I did schedule over 70…

British Writing is Not All Grey

You’ll have seen this popping up around the blogosphere, originating from a call by Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize Director Sophie Rochester to celebrate contemporary British writing. People have been using it as a hashtag #britishwritingisnotallGrey on Twitter etc; Naomi blogged about it here and Susan here. So I’ve decided to join in and add my list of contemporary/living British writers I…

Just to say, I’m going to join in the Books on the Nightstand Summer Book Bingo along with Simon S and Simon T and surely many others.

Here’s my card:

Get your own card here and join in the fun!

Simenon’s most autobiographical roman dur…

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon

Last month I had the opportunity to meet John Simenon, Georges’s son at an event celebrating the prolific Belgian author and his work. Apart from all the Maigret novels, Simenon was famed for his romans durs (hard novels) which are standalone, and typically quite dark and noirish in character  – I previously reviewed one of them, Dirty Snow, here. At…

The One Version of Laura Barnett

The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett

Last night it was a balmy evening in Abingdon – perfect for an author event in the packed courtyard garden of Mostly Books during Independent Bookshop Week. Visiting was Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us, a fantastic novel featuring three possible versions of the life of a couple. Publicists have billed it as ‘One Day meets Sliding Doors’,and it’s an…

Annabel’s Shelves: C is not for …

If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino – DNF

Oh dear, I tried and tried to like If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino, but I fear it is not a book for me. So, sorry to Karen and Dark Puss who both championed this book.

It has a wonderfully inventive structure – being a novel of alternating strands. In the first framing narrative, written in the second person, the reader…

A case of the ‘sweats’ …

A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh

I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading this, the first volume in Louise Welsh’s planned Plague Times trilogy (the second was published earlier this month), for it turned out to be a taut suspense thriller combining a murder mystery with a deadly pandemic – just my kind of book!  Equally, I don’t know why I’ve never read any of Louise…

Two trips into London in one week (see here for the other), is going out a lot for me! I wouldn’t have missed last nights Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize at the Jerwood Space in Southwark for the world. Many thanks to the enterprising Simon Savidge, (I’m calling him that as he loves projects) who was not only one of this year’s judges, but was able to invite a group of fellow bloggers. So I…

A double helping of Maigret

One of the great things about Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels is that they’re short. Each features a story told in full, but achieved within 160 pages or so – in this he resembles Muriel Spark. No words are wasted and there is no flowery language. Indeed, Simenon was known for cutting out ‘beautiful sentences’, editing out unnecessary descriptives and adverbs – in this he also resembles Elmore…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a reception for bloggers to celebrate the legacy of Georges Simenon. It was hosted by the team that manage the Simenon estate in the UK, the venue was the Groucho Club, and this time I got to talk to everybody!

I was to have met Victoria there, but sadly trains didn’t work out and she was unable to come, however it was lovely to catch up with Sakura, and…