Rob Reports: Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry at EdBookFest 2010
And so after weeks of bombarding you with uncontainable excitement, the day finally dawned when I would get to see one of my contemporary literary heroes ‘in the flesh’, along with another short story writer who has fast gained my respect. That’s right dear friends, Monday was the night that Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry came to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and now I present to you as thorough a rundown as I can offer, on what turned out to be an extraordinary evening (as if I thought it would be anything else but ‘extraordinary’ :)). ...
Bookshelf of the Week: Voltaire & Rousseau Bookshop, Glasgow
For two years now I've almost exclusively featured the photographs of others as my Bookshelf of the Week. So to mark the return of the feature after the absence of a month, I thought I'd feature a picture of my own, taken of the higgedy-piggedly interior of the world-famous 2nd-hand bookstore Voltaire & Rousseau (no website but there's a thorough review of the bookshop HERE), situated in the West End of Glasgow. I can't tell you how long I've waited to bask in the glory of this legendary bookshop, and last month I had the opportunity to make the ...
Afterthoughts: Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig
In a Nutshell: Written with pin sharp perception and translated by one of best in the business (Anthea Bell), Burning Secret is likely to give you one of your most incredible reading experiences ever. ***** A few years ago Vienna-born Stefan Zweig was largely unknown (the fact that he tragically took his own life in 1942 in Brazil alongside his wife, in despair at the rise of Nazi power, probably had a lot to do with this). But thanks to the industrious efforts of independent publishers such as Pushkin Press, and the applaudable first-class translating skills of intelligent minds ...
Forethoughts
From the outset I’ve got to admit that I’ve never read a single word...
EDIT: In these forethoughts I refer to The Secret Lives of People in Love as being...
Read More Forethoughts
Reading Journal
And so fellow reader we hit June, beautiful June. It’s the beginning of a...
Reading Journal: Monday 31st May 2010
Well folks it’s been a few days since I updated my reading journal I know....
Reading Journal: Tuesday 25th May 2010
While I’m managing perfectly to keep up with my shorter reading assignments,...
Reading Journal: Monday 24th May 2010
Well dear reader I really must apologise for my tail off in posts towards the latter...
Reading Journal: Monday 17th May 2010
The start of a new week and I was surprisingly upbeat about my reading after having...
Reading Journal: Remainder of Week 19, 2010
With no reading journal entry posted since Tuesday, you’d certainly be forgiven...
Read More Posts From Reading Journal
Afterthoughts
In a Nutshell: Written with pin sharp perception and translated by one of best in...
In a Nutshell: Dense and somewhat odd, Mysteries is a novel best suited to the more...
Produced by indy publishing house Present Joys, Extra Ordinary: Words by Supermundane...
Read More Afterthoughts
Book News
Bakewell ‘bigs it up’ for Montaigne (in parts) – Although you’ve yet to see a review on RobAroundBooks of Sarah Bakewell’s awesomely stupendous (and lengthily titled) How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer (Chatto and Windus), you’ll have seen me wagging my tail aplenty,... [Read more of this news article]
Melville House launch Moby Awards for Best and Worst Book Trailers – Love ‘em or hate ‘em book trailers are becoming more and more a common feature of our literary landscape these days. So much so that indy New York publisher Melville House have taken it upon themselves to host the world’s first Moby Awards for the Best and... [Read more of this news article]
Penguin launch luscious 75th anniversary website – So you all know that this year marks the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, right? Well, regardless of whether you or you didn’t, then might want to get yourself over to Penguin’s shiny new 75th anniversary website, to feast your eyes on a website that looks almost as good as RobAroundBooks... [Read more of this news article]
The shortlist for this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize was announced earlier today, revealing a rather eclectic final five in the running for the UK’s only recognised literary award for published single author short story collections. With the shortlist containing two screenwriters, an Irish short story specialists a literary ‘biggie’... [Read more of this news article]
Tomorrow sees the launch of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature as 150 top writers from 40 countries gather in New York City to participate in a week-long celebration of global writing. And this year’s Festival is set to be the biggest yet, as it also ‘takes to the road’ for the first time in... [Read more of this news article]
It’s not often that I would get so focused on news of a cover being revealed, but this one is a little closer to me than most. You may remember last month that I featured Stories as a Daily Bookshot, that really exciting short story anthology from Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, which is being published in the UK on June 15th, by Headline Publishing?... [Read more of this news article]
It was an exciting start to a dreary morning, as the shortlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced earlier today. Taken from the original longlist of 15, which included big ‘hitter’s such as Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus) and Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and... [Read more of this news article]
Read More Posts From Book News
Featured Articles
Bookshelf of the Week: Bratislavan Bibliophile
There’s not a lot of detail about the subject for this week’s Bookshelf of the Week – other than it was taken in Bratislava, by fiction writer Michal Hvorecky – but I don’t think it really needs any. With books flowing from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, and even spilling out to the next room, this picture definitely... [Read more of this feature]
Cover Love: Knut Hamsun series from Souvenir Press
It’s been a wee while since I’ve done a Cover Love post (my last one was the four-volume Ox-Tales collection from Profile Books), so what better way to bring it back than with a post celebrating eight of the titles I’m reading in my Totally Knut reading project. All published by small independent publisher Souvenir Press, the collection... [Read more of this feature]
Rob’s 5 Reading Rules (inspired by Michael Bhaskar)
Inspired by Michael Bhaskar’s excellent post on the Picador blog, in which he introduces his five new rules for reading which will hopefully help him to tackle his ever sky-reaching book pile, I thought I’d play along on this occasion and offer up five of my own ‘rules for reading’, all of which have me ‘find’ a ton of reading time: 1.... [Read more of this feature]
Behind the Pen: Libby Cone, author of War on the Margins
This week sees the exciting release of War on the Margins by Libby Cone. Well written and engaging, War on the Margins is an important novel, because it not only sheds light on the level of suffering that was inflicted upon the Channel Islanders during the Nazi Occupation of WW2, it also provides an archive for a number of important historical documents... [Read more of this feature]
Bookshelf of the Week: Where books rule supreme
I adore this shot submitted to Flickr by ooh_food and chosen for this week’s Bookshelf of the Week, and I adore it for a couple of reasons. The first reason is the most obvious – wall to wall, floor to ceiling – a sprawling and glorious bookish vista. The second is how domineering the books appear, next to the teensy TV that occupies... [Read more of this feature]
Read More Featured Articles















