more august 2026 books…

The Water Table (Philip Gross): I’ve only recently come across Gross’s writing and was particularly drawn to this book as it includes several references to the Bristol Channel - “with shoals and channels that change with the forty-foot tide” – which I know well. Overall, I found his works hauntingly vivid and elegant… but have to admit that there were some sections that I found difficult to read aloud (the words felt somewhat awkward) and to fully appreciate - but perhaps that’s just me! I’ll continue to explore his poetry over the coming weeks/months.
A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess): Hard to believe that the film is more than 50 years old (1971). The novel (first published in 1962 – SIXTY-FOUR years ago!) tells the confessions of a 15-year-old delinquent, Alex, who – with his three friends – goes about creating violent mayhem in his wake. I bought the book second-hand a few years ago… started it, but didn’t finish it. I recall being put off by the ‘nadsat’ dialogue (eg. “Alex and his three droogs tolchock an old veck, razrez his books, pull off his outer platties and take a malenky bit of cutter”!). This time, I persevered (a little like attending a Shakespeare play and finding the first 5 minutes incredibly confusing and nonsensical… but then the words just suddenly start to make sense?). Brilliantly written and conceived – but a frightening portrayal of human choice between good and evil… and breathe!
Dog Day (Sarah Hayes): I appreciate that including a children’s book in my book blog might be regarded as cheating somewhat, but (thanks to Moira) I re-read this rather wonderful 2008 (blimey!) book – written by our good friend Sarah (Hannah’s mother-in-law!) and beautifully illustrated by Hannah to coincide with Hannah+Fee acquiring a dog (their cat Kitsu may have other ideas!). Goodreads described it thus: “Ben and Ellie have a new teacher. But wait a minute – the new teacher is a dog named Riff! With Riff in charge, reading, writing, and arithmetic are abandoned in favour of lessons in barking, scratching, and digging holes…”. I still think it’s a rather delightful book and re-reading it brought back lots of memories of doing so with our various grandchildren. Once again, it made me smile!
1989 (Val McDermid): Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, this was the first McDermid book I’ve read. Why has it taken me so long? As the title suggests, it’s something of a snapshot of a by-gone era – a time of Lockerbie, Hillsborough, when AIDS was ravaging the UK and when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. McDermid’s fictitious crime story is set against this genuine history… featuring investigative journalist Allie Burns battling against the gutter of the UK mass media. She stumbles over a story about HIV/AIDS that ends up taking her into a world of “skullduggery in the medical research labs and seismic rumblings behind the Iron Curtain”… including murder. It’s a page-turning thriller and I found it utterly compelling!
Good Work (EF Schumacher): I first read this book in 1981 (45 years ago!) and, on a whim, decided to re-read it – essentially to reflect on what Schumacher said about the plight of businesses all those years ago (and whether his views had proved valid or way ‘off beam’). What I’d forgotten was that, ‘in those days’, I used to highlight paragraphs and scribble notes all over the text (something I would never dream of doing today!). Reading the book was a reminder about how much has changed in the intervening years. Schumacher frequently used his Coal Board experiences to illustrate his points; emphasis is placed on the ‘battles’ between the coal and oil industries – and, for example, very little reference to environmental concerns… and, of course, all this was well before the world of the internet and AI. Fascinating to reflect on that very fact alone. Schumacher was clearly a very intelligent man, with lots of sensible and insightful opinions but, for me, much of the time in this book, he failed to keep my interest (eg. he frequently used too many examples – sometimes more than four - to illustrate his points!)… I wouldn’t have wanted to meet up with him for a beer! 

the summer book…

Moira and I escaped the heat and disappeared to the cool of the Watershed cinema to see Charlie McDowell’s adaptation of Tove Jansson’s 1972 book ‘The Summer Book’.
An elderly artist, her recently-widowed son and her 6-year-old granddaughter (Sophia) while away a summer together on a tiny island off the gulf of Finland.
The bulk of the film, like the book, is an account of the relationship between the old, cantankerous, cigarette-smoking woman (rather delightfully played by Glenn Close) and her grandchild… Frequently funny and full of candid, sometimes argumentative, conversations between them. The location is beautiful and their simple, isolated, summer lifestyle enviable. Nothing much actually happens but, in many ways, that’s the film’s charm.
Fundamentally, it’s a film which conveys thoughts about passing time, memory, wisdom, loss and nature and, like the book, I really enjoyed it.
PS: I first read this book more than 50 years ago and re-read again it last year (Jansson – who died in 2001, aged 86 – spent several summers living on the island). Jansson wrote the book a year after her mother’s death and she drew on the things that were most precious to her.  When I re-read the book last year, I was struck by the fact that, when I first read it, I wasn’t a grandparent… and now there are 6 grandchildren – three of them are adults!).

august 2026 books…

A House In Flanders (Michael Jenkins): I first read this book 32 years ago(!)… where did the time go/how did that happen? It’s set in the early 1950s (but was not published until 1992): a 14-year-old English youth is dispatched to France to live for a long summer with the ‘French side’ of his family. It contains the following lovely note from the author (who, incidentally, went on to study at Oxford, become a British diplomat, receive a knighthood and was made a KCMG in 1989): “This book is based on a real period in my boyhood, but the telling of it owes much to my imagination and any resemblance between the characters and persons now alive is both accidental and coincidental”! I’d long forgotten much of the book, but am so pleased to have re-discovered it. I really enjoyed reading about Jenkins’ coming-of-age experiences in Flanders and thought his elegant descriptions and portraits of the people he came across were really rather wonderful. A very pleasurable read.
Scratch City (Philip Gross): I’d not previously read any of Gross’s poetry, but was really impressed with this collection. As the title implies, these poems relate to city life (as it happens, he lives in Bristol!)… the everyday things that you see, but don’t notice perhaps? Gross’s words are frequently funny, challenging, haunting and unsettling… and I was duly impressed. I will definitely be seeking out more of his poetry.
The Ferryman And His Wife (Frode Grytten): I came across this book purely by chance, read it and really enjoyed it… and now my bookgroup has chosen it for its monthly book (theme: women in translation). No pressure then! It’s a tender, poetic, and meditative Norwegian novella. The ageing ferry driver Nils Vik wakes up knowing it is his final day alive and takes his boat out onto the fjord one last time. As he sails, deceased passengers - including his talking dog (I absolutely LOVED their conversations) and figures from his logbook - board the vessel to prompt reflections on his life… including Nils quietly waiting for his late wife, Marta, to join him on the boat. I thought it was quite, quite beautiful… a lovely treasure of a book.
Night (David Harsent): Yet another book of Harsent poetry… which, again, I read out loud to myself in my early mornings. There’s something about the way Harsent uses words that really works for me. The first part of the book is a sequence about a garden “in which the sureties of daylight become uncertain: dark, unsettling narratives about what wakes in us when we escape our day-lit selves to visit a place where the dream-like and the nightmarish are never far apart”. Powerful and thought-provoking.
The Rossettis (ed Carol Jacobi+James Finch): I bought this book (which accompanied the 2023 exhibition at Tate Britain) at the £5 Bookshop. I knew a fair amount about the art and writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), but far less about the work produced by Christina (1830-94) and Elizabeth, born Siddal (1829-62). The book explores the ‘ground-breaking careers’ of these three influential individuals in a series of new essays and illustrations surveying their work. A fascinating book of a fascinating time.