It’s Snakewood launch day :)
Edited 26.08.22
This page contained a link to the soundcloud audio for chapter 1 of Snakewood.
You can get that and more here.
Theo Decker, the protagonist of Donna Tartt’s brilliant novel The Goldfinch contemplates the way Carel Fabritius’s painting of the same name has dominated his life, a complicated connection beginning with the shocking opening as his mother is killed in a terrorist bomb blast in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in their hometown of New York. …
The title of David Mitchell’s marvellous book almost fully encapsulates it, as all its characters, deathless or otherwise, serve its dominant theme: the misery of ageing.
Hopefully all China MiĆ©ville’s novels are as original and engaging as this one. The City & The City is on one level a standard ‘detective investigating death of girl uncovers big conspiracy’ story, but MiĆ©ville has decided to weave the tale into a quite unique milieu.
Where do I begin? While this is not my favourite book, it is the best novel I’ve read. Pynchon, for me, is the most accomplished writer in English alive. Here is my impossible benchmark.
I’ve written here about my miserable realisation I wouldn’t read more than a couple of thousand books in my lifetime, if I really went for it. I thus struggle to read more than one or two books by any author because there are so many more authors to read. How could I read another Philip…
With the third book’s first draft completed and no more deadlines at this point in time, I’ve begun recharging after years of frantic scribbling. The first book I chose to read after coming up for air is a book I wish I’d read before starting writing at all. I’ve read one previous book by Robert…