Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby

Hornby often writes about men and their obsessions (Fever Pitch, High Fidelity for two), and in this he's doing it again. Duncan is obsessed with reclusive 80s singer/songwriter Tucker Crowe and it's slowly eroding his relationship with the ever-patient Annie. But this isn't really Duncan's story, it's Annie's and Tucker's. I liked it, I quite like Hornby, it's a quick read and the characters are fairly likeable, even Duncan, and he isn't always the nicest of people. If you like Hornby's previous books, then you'll enjoy this.

10 Books Everyone Should Read*

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

Nation - Terry Pratchett

If This Is A Man/The Truce - Primo Levi

Of Love And Shadows - Isabel Allende

The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories - Angela Carter

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich

The World's Wife - Carol Ann Duffy

The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall

Wild Swans - Jung Chang

This is by no means a complete and definitive list. That'd take forever.
*According to me!

The Divide - Nicholas Evans

Evans wrote The Horse Whisperer, but don't hold that against him. I really enjoyed The Smoke Jumper, and The Divide is once again set in the wide open spaces in the Northern US, in this case Montana mostly. It's the story of Sarah and Ben Cooper, and their daughter Abbie, an eco-terrorist on the run after someone dies in an act of vandalism and arson. The story jumps back and forth in time, and between the four Coopers (son Josh is the fourth), showing the perspective of each character and also placing them all in different parts of the action. The story opens with Abbie's body being discovered frozen in the snow by two skiers. As it unfolds you learn of the things that split the family and led to Abbie's tragic death. The Divide is both a place, and a metaphor for what has happened to Sarah and Ben's relationship. At times, this novel was quite sad, and slow, but the way it unfolds is clever and rather lovely. When it reaches the manner in which Abbie meets her end, it wasn't quite what I expected or how I'd been led by the narrative to believe she died. If you like Jodi Picoult style novels, then you'll like this one.

Shortcuts

Zadie Smith on the death of the novel.

I write about my love of books, once more!

The wonderful Tamora Pierce sums up her year in books.

Terry Pratchett talks about his latest book, Unseen Academicals

Speaking of, there's a really good review of Nation by Sir Terry, which I highly recommend everyone reads if they haven't already, and if you have, read it again!

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."

I agree, sometimes reading is like this, when books reference another, or there's an echo of something that sends the reader to the shelves (or more likely now Google), hunting for where it came from and leading to another book to add to the pile.

The Evil Seed - Joanne Harris

This is, technically, Joanne Harris' first book. It's been reissued since it was first published, and has been tidied up, as the author explains in the foreword because what you write first is never as good as you would like it to be later. It's a departure from the novels that made Harris famous, including Chocolat and Five Quarters of the Orange. It is instead something that should be far more popular in the current climate, a vampire novel, set in Cambridge. It's similar in feel to her other ghost story Sleep, Pale Sister. Darker than Blackberry Wine or The Lollipop Shoes (which I preferred to it's predecessor), but with that familiar feel of being drawn into something a little unusual, Harris' novels have a tingle of the occult and magic to them, often in her novels (and short stories) characters have unusual gifts or strange things happen. The Evil Seed is quite gothic, and has an interesting structure, slipping back and forth in time as the story (or should that be stories) unravel. If you've been reading any of the recent flurry of vampiric books or are a fan of the gothic, I'd recommend this.

The Brightest Star in the Sky - Marian Keyes

Guilty pleasure time. Marian Keyes is funny, clever and probably ever so lovely in real life. I've read all of her books. I try to avoid 'chick lit', and not just because I can't stand calling it that. Often it's not very well written and derivitive, easy to predict and well, boring. Keyes' books aren't like this. Ok, so some of them might drift into this territory, but this latest steers clear of being too predictable. Set in a converted house, it looks at the lives of the inhabitants of the different floors, there's Katie at the top, whose life seems to revolve around her job, Lydia, am "evil pixie" who shares with two fed up Poles, elderly Jemima, who seems to see the future and Matt and Maeve whose apparently happy marriage isn't so. The narrator is a bit mysterious, and although there are clues to who it might be, it's not as obvious as all that.
Like all of Keyes' books it has a happy ending, and a sense of magic. It's also funny, a bit silly and quite lovely. Perfect for these cold winter nights. Happy Reading!