TSS: Sweet-toothed indulgences

This talk of lemon polenta cake and cream teas is addictive and reminds me that I never reviewed the book I read for dessert as part of the Well-Seasoned challenge. Let’s put that right now. It is now two months since I read the book and the reason why this review is so delayed is [...]

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The Earth Hums In B-Flat – Questions For Mari Strachan Here

Hopefully my 3 giveaway winners now have their books in hand and are busy reading to their heart’s delight. Questions on the book / the writing life are invited from everyone. No need to be a blogger. No need to have read the book. No need to be UK-based. Please enter your questions in comments [...]

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Molly Fox’s Birthday – Deirdre Madden

I was delighted when Molly Fox’s Birthday appeared on the 2009 Orange Prize longlist.  The book had been languishing in the TBR for some months – ever since last year’s Edinburgh Book Festival in fact.  My TBR is now so huge that books have somehow to get themselves noticed all over again before I start reading them.  Anyway so [...]

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TSS: Cream Tea with Michael Kimball

Author Q&A’s can be quite surprising.  When I ask Michael Kimball which refreshments he would like during our interview, he replied “My wife introduced me to cream tea on one of our visits to London and I have been partial to it ever since.”  Cream tea is high tea in Central Scotland and so I [...]

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Dear Everybody – Michael Kimball

From the title page: DEAR EVERYBODY A Novel Written in the Form of Letters, Diary Entries, Encyclopedia Entries, Conversations with Various People, Notes Sent Home From Teachers, Newspaper Articles, Psychological Evaluations, Weather Reports, a Missing Person Flyer, a Eulogy, a Last Will and Testament and Other Fragments …. The  sum total of all that is [...]

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Me and Kaminski – Daniel Kehlmann

After the Rushdie experience, I was in need of a good palate cleansing.  Usually I turn to crime!  However, Daniel Kehlmann of Measuring The World fame was winking at me from the midst of the all things Germanic TBR.  Yes, a good clean comic read would hit the spot quite nicely. First things first, however.  The title.  Is it grammatically correct [...]

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TSS: Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

There’s nothing more annoying than knowing the book you’re reading is a work of genius and that your antennae are simply not attuned; Rushdie’s magmun opus feeling like incoherent nonsense; sublime humour, magical realism and historical allegory notwithstanding.   I was struggling to read  a chapter a day by the end of chapter 3.  Normally I’d bail out but this is allegedly the [...]

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You read. You ask. Mari answers. (Including giveaway.)

Exciting developments here at Lizzy’s bit …. You may remember that I was enchanted by Mari Strachan’s The Earth Hums in B Flat.   The novel has since made its way onto Amazon’s rising voices list.  One to watch, obviously.  Mari has now agreed to a blog interview – one with a difference.  This time you get to ask the [...]

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TSS: March Violets – Philip Kerr

And so my Year in Books reading  project brings me to the city, where I shall be holidaying in July.  4 months early it is true but there is a multitudinous amount of fiction set here and the advance notice  may allow me to make a dent in it.  That city is Berlin. Perhaps the title is a little misleading.  March [...]

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