Kaggsy's musings

Over the years; I’ve read a lot of Muriel Spark‘s novels; mostly pre-blog although some have appeared here on the Ramblings. However, I’m aware that there are still a good number of her titles I’ve not read and recently an Instagram reel on the subject of Scottish Gothic books sent me off in the direction of a novella of hers first published in 1971 – “Not To Disturb”. What the reel said about it…

“London Under” by Peter Ackroyd was one of the titles mentioned in Nicholas Royle’s wonderful book, “Finders, Keepers“, and I made a note at the time to explore it a bit further. I’m a fan of Ackroyd’s writing and my enjoyment of his Ezra Pound biography made me realise it was time to read more of his non-fiction. As “London Under” was apparently all about what lies below our great capital, it…

Books lead on to other books… When I was offered the chance to review Denis Johnson‘s “Jesus’ Son” for Shiny New Books (I’ll link when this is live), I was reminded that I had also intended to read his “Train Dreams” for some years. As I mentioned previously, Johnson’s “Already Dead” was a book I read and loved when it first came out in the late 1990s (and it’s still on the shelves) but for some…

May has been another interesting month of reading, although it has been dominated by some bigger volumes which will be covered on the Ramblings next month and which tie in particularly with June! Here, however, is the pile of books I read, and I have had a blast with all of these! As always, in case the titles aren’t clear, the books are: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes – Various Not To Disturb –…

May sees a very special event taking place, and that’s the release of the 150th title in the British Library Crime Classics series. These have been a massive success, bringing back into print some wonderful, lost Golden Age crime mysteries, and I, for one, am a huge fan (as you’ll no doubt realise from the amount of titles I’ve covered!) The celebratory book is a good one, too – it’s by the…

I am nothing if not a very easily influenced reader; mention an interesting sounding book, and I’m off to see if I have it in the stacks or if I can pick up a reasonably priced copy somewhere. And recently, Chris over at Calmgrove Books happened to write about a couple of the stories in the “Black Venus” collection by Angela Carter – “Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream”…

The second of the two recent released from Old Street Publishing, in their ‘Great Events’ series, is the intriguingly titled “Art-Quake 1910” by David Boyd Hancock. Subtitled “The Manet and the Post-Impressionists Exhibition’, it takes a look at another controversial exhibition of artworks; one which took place in Britain and had a different intention to the Nazi one. Boyd Haycock specialises in…

Old Street Publishing is an indie press which I only came across relatively recently, but I’ve loved both of the books I’ve read from them, each by Sheila Fitzpatrick: “The Death of Stalin” and “The Shortest History of the Soviet Union“. That first title came from a series they’d launched called ‘Great Events’ which they describe as ‘short, lively books of narrative history, written by experts…

The books of indie publisher Michael Walmer have featured here on the Ramblings a number of times; he releases a wide range of interesting fiction, poetry and non-fiction, and since his relocation to the Shetland Islands (he was previously based in Australia), his focus has turned to writings from that area. Specifically, he launched an imprint called Northus Shetland Classics, and I’ve covered a…

Back in 2024, I read the classic book “The Woman in the Dunes” by Kōbō Abe for Japanese Literature Month and was very taken with it, if a little unnerved by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the story. At the time, I thought I’d like to explore his writing but I’ve somehow never got to any of his other books. However, a comment on a recent post by Tony about Abe’s work mentioned “The Ruined City”…

I have a new review up at Shiny New Books today and it’s of a fascinating and absorbing book – “The Village on the Edge of the World: Writing and Surviving Ceaușescu’s Romania” by Nobel prize-winner Herta Muller. In “Village…” Muller explores her past, from her time as a child living in a remote village, with all the harshness that lifestyle brings, to her attempts to work and write within a…

There’s been a run of books recently which have arrived at the Ramblings and not even skimmed Mount TBR; and for once, I can remember where I heard about this recent arrival! The book is “Kafkaesque” by Maïa Hruska, translated by Sam Taylor, and it was featured in one of the regular newsletters I get from bookshops; it sounded right up my street so I had to send off for it straight away, and it…

Memo to self: you really should start making a note about where you’ve heard about a particular book as it’s rare that the information remains in your head!! The book I want to share my thoughts about today is one I picked as long ago as 2015 and I have no idea where it or its author first appeared in my sight-line. The title is “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings” by Nellie…

Having spent a good amount of time in an infinite, never-ending library inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, it was kind of inevitable that I would want to go on and read some of that author’s work. I have been gradually making my way through a beautiful volume of his “Collected Fictions“, translated by Andrew Hurley, and I realised when checking that I was nearly at the end. Only two collections still…

My love of Russian writing is well-known, so when I saw that a newly-translated book from a 20th century author I’d never heard of was coming out, I confess to being very intrigued! The book is “Cynics” by Anatoly Marienhof, translated by Bryan Karetnyk, and it’s been issued by Penguin in their classics range. “Cynics” is a satirical yet moving look at life during the early days of the Soviet…

It’s funny how sometimes your reading seems to connect, with one book leading naturally onto the next, albeit with no previous planning. That’s been happening to me lately, with the Eliot/Pound adjacent books, and now appears to be starting again! After finishing the Barnes I wasn’t sure what to read next; however, a recent arrival was a book I’d stumbled across online and found the concept…

Back in March BBC4 showed a couple of interviews with Julian Barnes, an author whose work I love and who I’ve been reading since my twenties. One was a repeat of an older programme and one a new interview, and they reminded me that I still have some of his books on the TBR. I was in the mood for some non-fiction, and so I decided I would take a look at his “Nothing To Be Frightened Of” from 2008.…