".... Connie lined up the scalpel and cut. At first, a gentle shifting, nothing more. Then the tip of the blade pierced the skin, and the point slipped in." Kate Mosse returns to her native Chichester for the setting of her new novel, The Taxidermist's Daughter. The year is 1912, a time of mackintoshes, umbrellas, …
Category: Book Review
Going Dutch
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton "The funeral is supposed to be a quiet affair, for the deceased had no friends. But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded." My daughter gave me The Miniaturist as a Christmas present and when I began …
Banks Don't Change!
A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett Banks and bankers are in the news a lot. Usually it's bad news: the directors and presidents get obscene bonuses; they manipulate the tax system; they crash and leave millions of people out of pocket. Rarely do the newspapers carry stories about the honest bankers and their shareholders - …
An Appetite For Wonder
The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins Professor Dawkins is one of the few dedicated scientists who can write about the most complex subject and make it both interesting and comprehensible. In An Appetite For Wonder, the first part of his intended two-part autobiography, we do not …
The Cuckoo's Calling
I knew before I even opened this book that the author, Robert Galbraith, was actually JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame. I think everyone knew that, almost from the day it was published. My hesitation and delay before reading it stemmed from my disappointment with The Casual Vacancy. That just wasn't my thing at all. …
Just an ordinary guy …
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel) Straight off, I will say that I loved this character-driven story. Tazaki is just your average guy but he carries a lot of emotional baggage. He likes railway stations, he likes music, he plays sport and (we'll come to this …
Hypatia of Alexandria
The Beautiful Mathematician "The greatest loss of all, however, is the absence of your divine spirit. I had hoped that this would always remain with me, to conquer both the caprices of fortune and the evil turns of fate." (Syrenios of Cyrene to Hypatia) I wrote recently in a post of how history and historians …
Witches and Castles
"There shall not be found among you anyone who practises divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or necromancer.' The Secret Diary of Eleanor Cobham by Tony Riches History and historians have been unkind to women, giving them at best a minor role, at worst demonising them and even, …
Now you see him, now you don't!
The Invisible Man by HG Wells 'His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness ...' I drew this novella - number 13 on my list of classics - in the Classics Club Spin #8 from November, to be read and reviewed …
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett A Review My choice of title has nothing to do with the Robert Wise classic sci-fi film of 1951, or indeed the inferior remake of 2008. Instead, it refers to the day - 22nd November 1963 - when the world was rocked with the news that US President John …
Magda Green Books 