Last night I finally finished reading ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’ by Hermann Hesse. This enormous 600 page book, which English readers may know in translation as either ‘The Glass Bead Game’ or ‘Magister Ludi’, has taken me a little over two months to get to finish. That said, I have chiefly been reading it only at weekends, and I have deliberately been reading slowly in order to get as much as possible out of the German. (more…)

I resolved over a month ago that I was not going to enter the Fish One Page Story Prize this year. I entered it last year, with this in fact, and got both a complimentary critique and my name on the short list. I then got tempted into entering the Microfiction competition over the summer, and two of my efforts were runners up. So now I have a bit of a compulsion to keep entering Fish Competitions in the hope that one day I might do just that little bit better and win some money. (more…)

Over the last five or six years I have accumulated a ridiculous amount of book tokens from various sources. Some have been birthday presents from colleagues, some were prizes from school awards evenings, others are so old that I have simply no idea how I acquired them. The problem is, much as I read, I never ever buy books for myself. Well, I buy German language books when I am abroad out of the sheer excitement of being able to obtain them, but as a rule for English books I rely either on presents or the local library. I enter bookshops chiefly to buy presents for other people, or to use the travel section as a reference library, and so for ages these vouchers have lurked in the bottom of my sock drawer and gathered dust. (more…)

I read this book simultaneously with the Odessa File and was intending to review it here before virus problems got in the way. ‘The House at Riverton’ by Kate Morton is without doubt the best novel I have read this year (in fact, the best modern novel I have read for a very long time), and cheered me up considerably after a month spent struggling to find the motivation to wade through mediocre Christmas presents. (more…)

I have read two incredibly good books within the last week or so. I read them simultaneously, but the first one I got to the end of was ‘The Odessa File’ by Frederick Forsyth. My boyfriend lent it to me, having himself read it from cover to cover in a very short period of time, and so I was intrigued to see what it was like given that he was singing its praises despite not normally being fiction’s biggest fan. (more…)

I finished two books this weekend, both of which were set in the former Soviet Union, and both of which were a severe disappointment.

The first, which I confess I have been reading disjointedly over a period of several weekends, was “Pelagia and the White Bulldog” by Boris Akunin. For the past few years, Boris Akunin has ranked without doubt as one of my favourite authors. Well known in Russia (possibly under a different name) as a prolific writer of detective fiction, over the last four or five years his works have gradually begun to be translated into English. As a rule, I have to say that I’m not a fan of translations into English, because it annoys me if something doesn’t flow well, but on the whole I have found the Akunin translations to be excellent … with the exception of the fact that his first series of books has been translated in the wrong order (how did the publishers allow this to happen?!) with the result that I accidentally read the third book first, then moved onto the first book, and then had to wait twelve months for someone to fill in the gaps and translate the second.

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Neither my boyfriend nor I have a car, and so we are condemned to spending vast quantities of our private lives marooned in the centre of Birmingham with nothing to do. In an attempt to stop us eating each other through boredom, I suggested that this week we go to the cinema. It seemed like a good idea; I like watching films, but I don’t get chance to very often. (more…)

As already noted in Esperanto, last Monday was the first anniversary of me and my extraordinarily annoying boyfriend being a couple, and in honour of the momentous occasion he bought me a book. It was very sweet of him to buy me a book, seeing as I hadn’t expected him to get me anything at all, and it was a great relief to me when I actually took it out of the envelope, because he had built it up by explaining it was something I wasn’t going to like. Quite what the rationale behind buying me something I wasn’t going to like was I’m not sure, but that’s men for you :ninja: (more…)

This afternoon I finished reading a remarkable book called ‘The Music of the Primes’ by Marcus du Sautoy.  It was actually a Christmas present from my boyfriend, and a rather sweet one at that, because I told him he didn’t need to buy me anything else, yet he still did :)  I am very glad he ignored my protestations and went ahead; otherwise I would have missed out on a real treat. (more…)

 Today I reached an important milestone in my life.  I finally got to the last page of Thomas Mann’s ‘Der Zauberberg’.  I purchased this book at least eighteen months ago, and have been reading it on and off for what I genuinely believe to be the best part of the last nine months.  It is without doubt, at just over a thousand pages in my edition, the longest book I have ever tackled in my life.  Reading it has truly been an ordeal and there were times over the summer, when I was too caught up with other things to get through more than a handful of pages a week, when I despaired of ever finishing it.  I have, I hasten to add, read a multitude of other books simultaneously, otherwise I might have gone stir crazy.  There were some days when the temptation to just admit defeat and fling the accursed volume, if not into a burning fire then, at least, into my paper recycling box was overwhelming.  However, I am proud to announce that I succeeded in overcoming such weak and sinful urges and the Lord gave me the strength to see the novel through right to the bitter end. (more…)