I have three published novels and might write/publish more someday. Now I'm more of a reader – welcome!
This is a novelisation of the Trojan War from the perspective of a female slave inside the Greek camp. I’m not well up on Ancient Greek history or mythology, but other reviewers on Amazon says it’s pretty true to the Iliad and other texts. If I’m honest, I was quite bored by it and found it a slog to get through.
I read/listened to 77 books in 2021 (down from 103 in 2020, but then I wasn’t furloughed this year!). For me I think the stand out book I read on kindle was Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, and my favourite audiobooks of the year were Hail Mary, by Andy Weir and Lycanthropy and other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal.
I’m only realising now that I had read this book before. Only because when I was trying to save the book cover image, my computer already had it saved from 2018! That aside, it’s the third book by Caimh McDonnell that I’ve read in a row, and I’m starting to think you can get too much of a good thing, because I found myself getting a bit annoyed, or maybe bored, by it. It could just be that this book wasn’t to my taste as much as the others by the author, which could explain why I abandoned the trilogy back in 2018 and promptly forgot all about it!
It’s another murder mystery set in Dublin and I’m maybe being unfair, because it was pretty good, just not for me as good as his others.
Having loved The Stranger Times so much, I revisited Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy with this prequel. It gives you some backstory to Bunny McGarry and I couldn’t help but fall in love with his character – the epitome of gruff heart of gold beat up the bad guys to save the vulnerable type of person, and even though that is kind of a cliché, when it’s done this well you don’t care. The book was funny and heart wrenching and intriguing and I enjoyed it very much.
This is just the kind of book I love (in a guilty pleasure kind of way, although, there’s nothing to feel guilty about!). It’s set in a failing newspaper company that produces paranormal stories. The head editor is a grumpy Irishman (like your man in Black Books who owned the shop and shouted at customers) and we see things unfold through the eyes of a young woman who comes to work at the paper. There is humour, and magical realism and murder and mystery – a good British urban fantasy. I don’t think I realised when I bought it that C. K. McDonnell is in fact one and the same as Caimh McDonnell who wrote the Man With One of Those Faces Dublin Trilogy comic police murder mystery books. I liked it so much, I got my daughter to read it on my kindle when she came home at Christmas and she really liked it too. I can’t wait for the sequel which I have pre-ordered as an audiobook.
This is a nice happy little book. I really like Bill Bailey’s quirky observational humour and he seems like a likeable person who finds joy in the little things and this book brought me joy – in fact I laughed out loud several times while reading it. Nothing ground breaking, just a look at some of the theories about happiness and some anecdotes from his life to illustrate his experiences with them.
This was my bookgroup read for December, and to honest, I found it quite a slog to get through. I know that Jane Austen was quite radically feminist for her era, and yet the book does seem to be all about who is marrying whom, which I found a bit tedious. I’m aware that at the time, women’s lives were difficult whether they were married or not, and yet the social norm was definitely towards marriage as the fulfilment of a woman’s role and therefor to be unmarried was to be unfulfilled and a failure.
I did quite like how she pointed a finger at the snobbish classist ways of society in that era and showed their absurdity.
Obviously it’s a classic, and lots of people love it, but not for me.
The main arc of this audiobook is that the keys of hell have been given to Morpheus and he must decide what to do with them. Many interested parties descend on him to threaten, promise, cajole or bribe him to try to get the keys for themselves.
Also, the one love of Morpheus’s existence has been trapped in hell for millennia after he abandoned her there when she spurned his devotion, and he wants to rescue her and make amends.
There are many side stories of course, ranging through time and dreams and the cast is full of famous and fabulous actors bringing the stories to life.
I found it thoughtful, compelling, funny and at times frightening, but for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as The Sandman Act 1.
This is the fourth book set in the fictional town of Malbry and the third set at St Oswald’s, proceeded by Gentlemen and Players, Blueeyedboy and Different Class. I’ve read and enjoyed all the books in the series, in fact, it was the shocking denouement in Gentlemen and Players that inspired the plot of my second published novel, The Trap. Rebecca Buckfast, the ambitious teacher who as the hero (or anti-hero) of the previous books is now the head teacher of St Oswald’s (the first female in the post) and she is making changes.
When demolition begins on the old school building human remains are disturbed and Rebecca (or ‘The Buckfast’ as she is referred as by others) is forced to relive traumatic childhood memories about her brothers disappearance.
We learn of her backstory as she recounts it to her colleague Roy Straitley and I found myself getting increasingly more gripped by the ominous feel of the storytelling, like not being able to look away from the scene of a car crash.
I love Neil Gaiman’s books and this is one of my (many) favourites. I felt like reading something I love after a few duds and even though I’ve read this at least once before, my memory is so bad that I almost get the experience of reading it for the first time again! This is a beautiful story about memory and family and magic and love. It’s rich with layers of meaning and beautiful writing and characterisation, like all of Gaiman’s work. It’s one of those ‘young adult’ books that truly resonates with readers of any age (at least the right kind of reader – which I hope is not me being snobby or judgmental, I just mean that everyone has different tastes and different types of book that get to them). I look forward to it being long enough in the past that I can have the experience of reading it ‘for the first time’ again!
Sarah Wray Writer