Browsing Category
Books
Find the latest Books News, Books Excerpts, The latest books to read, new books reviews and news, along with books, and novel reviews at Technoblender.com
The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov – droll detective work in revolutionary Kyiv | Crime fiction
Andrey Kurkov’s latest novel to be translated into English, The Silver Bone, has begins in dramatic fashion. Its hero, Samson Kolechko, is walking in the streets of revolutionary Kyiv. It is the spring of 1919. Suddenly, two Russian Cossacks appear. They chop off his ear with a sabre before riding off. “Hot blood poured down his cheek and seeped under his collar,” Kurkov writes. Samson’s unfortunate father is cut down and killed.The severed right ear – recovered and placed in a tin – plays a central role in Kurkov’s…
Easter baking recipes from the Hebridean Baker
Breadcrumb Trail LinksLifeEating & DrinkingCultureBooksIn his third cookbook, Coinneach MacLeod (a.k.a. the Hebridean Baker) shares recipes for nostalgic Scottish treats and stories of Hebridean culture, folklore and history Get the latest from Laura Brehaut straight to your inbox Sign Up Published Mar 15, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 12 minute read Clockwise from top left: Scottish author Coinneach MacLeod, fern cake, toasted Selkirk bannock with marmalade syrup and spiced carrot hot cross buns. PHOTOS BY…
Book Box | Mary Beard spills the tea (and rose petals) on Roman emperors
Mary Beard is everybody’s favourite poster girl. A classics don from Cambridge, Beard is revered for rescuing Roman history from a dusty discipline, elevating it to a primer on personality and power. Beard is erudite and entertaining; she writes expansively on ancient Rome – everything from laughter to shoes to sex in the swimming pool.A good place to start reading Mary Beard is It’s a Don’s Life. This memoir began as a blog on her life as a don (a lecturer) in Cambridge. I found it zippy and sparkly; it talks about…
Joanne Harris: ‘Some of us don’t see the line between the books and the world’ | Joanne Harris
When Joanne Harris wrote Chocolat, her novel of morality and magic set in a cloistered French village, she did not expect it to be published, let alone succeed. Her agent thought that it was “very unfashionable writing” and “wasn’t at all the kind of thing he felt would be commercial”. Now, 25 years later, after more than 1m sales and an Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Johnny Depp, Harris is writing a prequel.In the original novel, protagonist Vianne sets up a chocolaterie – selling champagne truffles,…
Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin review – tales of the country | Fiction
A decade ago, Armistead Maupin boldly declared that it was over. The Days of Anna Madrigal, the ninth in his illustrious queer novel cycle Tales of the City, was, he claimed, the last outing for the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. But ever since the first of the Tales was published in 1978, the lure of the “logical family” has proved irresistible. Maupin is back with a tenth instalment. How tuneful is this unexpected encore?This iteration of the Tales is set in the early 1990s, and helmed by Anna Madrigal’s daughter Mona…
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson review – rich literary reading of the first book of the Bible | Religion
The award-winning novelist and social critic Marilynne Robinson has turned the focus of her literary intelligence on to the first book of the Bible. Genesis, the foundational imaginative text of western culture, has permeated our art and literature, as well as shaping a whole understanding of life, including politics. Its stories remain at once compelling and mystifying. Some of the stories, most obviously that of a great flood, resemble others from Mesopotamia, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, but…
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman review – acid comedy of precarity | Fiction
The post-1945 American novel was usually in some deep way about anxiety: the anxiety of living in America, with its enormous postwar wealth and its correspondingly enormous social pressures and opportunities. The great hope of its characters, like the great hope of America generally, used to lie in social mobility: up, up, and away! But in the 21st century, to hear young writers tell it, the social pressures have won. Anxiety, in the contemporary American novel, has given way to defeatism and pointillist satire: finely…
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler review – the gender theorist goes mainstream | Society books
For the purposes of this review, I read a work by Judith Butler. That might seem like a banal statement, but it already sets me apart from almost everyone who has an opinion on the US philosopher.It’s not quite a joke to say their latest book could have been called Who’s Afraid of Judith Butler, because many people are; all the fears and fantasies poured into the idea of “gender”, which this new work explores, are also poured into its author. Butler’s work has been defined as diabolical, and the professor as some sort of…
Don’t Look Left by Atef Abu Saif review – in the line of fire | Politics books
It is hard to describe the cumulative effect this devastating chronicle has over 280 pages. It describes a mounting toll of death and destruction, with each day bringing more heartrending news of homes demolished and relatives and colleagues killed. Gradually, it makes it clear that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip. Danger is everywhere, like the low hum of a mosquito.Atef Abu Saif is an acclaimed Palestinian author and journalist as well as being minister for culture in the Palestinian Authority. On 7 October he…
The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes review – Gainsborough’s girls | Fiction
Many parents wish they could freeze a moment, preserve their children just as they are, but few have Thomas Gainsborough’s miraculous skill to achieve it. He painted his daughters Mary and Margaret – Molly and Peggy – with adoration, pride and sometimes anxiety, capturing, as Peggy, the narrator of The Painter’s Daughters puts it, a “closeness so thick you can feel it, our gaze always steady”.It’s ambitious to draw fiction from such beloved and well-known portraits, but Howes’s fictionalised Molly and Peggy don’t pale in…