My new stash of books

Stash of new novels/Kimberly Sullivan

On my summer holidays back in New York, I picked up lots of great novels. My autumn and winter reading is secured… Lots of great novels I’ve had in my sights for some time, and I look forward to reading these. While I do buy online sometimes, I much prefer browsing and buying directly in…

Read More

My 2022 in books

2022 Goodreads

I always love the Goodreads end-of-year round-up. It’s always so much fun to look back at your year in reading. I overshot my 2022 Goodreads Challenge by quite a bit, pledging to read 45 and instead reading 59. And I read a whopping 18,835 pages. You can see My 2022 Year in Books here. As…

Read More

Book review: All the Lonely People

All The Lonely People book cover

I so enjoyed reading my first Mike Gayle novel, Half A World Away, earlier this year that I decided to also read his newest, All the Lonely People. It didn’t disappoint. This story opens as we observe a grumpy, old man, Hubert Bird, speaking from his London home with his daughter who works in Australia.…

Read More

A good writer should be able to fool his readers

“What is important is to invent a story and to make the spectators believe it.” —Tahar Ben Jelloun I like this quote from contemporary Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. This is exactly how an author creates a successful novel – by creating characters, a story and an environment that draws us in immediately and has…

Read More

Author Mark Tedesco’s love affair with Rome

She Seduced Me

As an unabashed Italophile myself, one who is lucky enough to have called Rome home for over 20 years, I was bound to be fascinated by a newly released book entitled She Seduced Me: A Love Affair with Rome, written by American author Mark Tedesco. Here’s a bit of background about the book: “I resisted,…

Read More

Book review: Half a World Away

Half A World Away book cover

Loved, loved, loved this book. So pleased it was my first novel of 2021, and that I discovered author Mike Gayle through this highly enjoyable tale. The cover blurb says it best : Same city. Different streets. Same mother. Different lives. The story of Kerry Hayes and Noah Martineau is the story of fate, the…

Read More

Another year, another Goodreads Challenge

In 2020, I truly took my Goodreads Reading Challenge down to the wire – only reaching my goal of the 45 novels I’d set out for myself in a more optimistic January of 2020 on the next-to-last-day of 2020. Even so, it was still a nice feeling to have met my goal. I love the…

Read More

A 2020 in books

2020 reads

I usually finish my annual Goodreads Reading Challenge with plenty of breathing room, but 2020 has been anything but a usual year. So I’m still uncertain if I’ll meet my annual goal as the year rapidly comes to a close. Chances are – with yet another government-mandated shutdown (because science), I will. Nevertheless, I’ve read…

Read More