Reading Journal: 16th & 17th March 2010

I hope you will all forgive me for not posting a Reading Journal entry yesterday. I wanted to concentrate all my efforts on finishing Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson). Also, with no reading scheduled for Wednesday aside from Mukherjee’s novel, I thought I’d leave it until today so that I [...]

Forethoughts: Pocket Notebook by Mike Thomas

It’s not every day that one gets to pick up a novel penned by a serving police officer. But today is that day as I begin my journey through Pocket Notebook (William Heinemann), the debut novel from bona fide bobby, Mike Thomas. Before I do start reading it though, I thought I’d offer up [...]

Daily Bookshot: Wonderful as wallpaper!

Wonderful as wallpaper!, originally uploaded by Robert Burdock.

I remember being around on Twitter last week when Sceptre Books revealed the cover art for David Mitchell’s eagerly anticipated latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. Impressed though I was with the cover design (the creation of the hugely talented Joe Wilson), I urged [...]

Chekhov Shorts: Sleepy

Title: Sleepy (*note – the translation read for this review was Pevear & Volokhonsky’s in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (Bantam Books)
Date Read: 16th March 2010
Briefly: The masters of the little nurse Varka are unrelenting in their demands of the thirteen-year-old. By day she lifts and carries, and by night she is forced to [...]

Chekhov Shorts: Vanka

Title: Vanka (*note – the translation read for this review was Pevear & Volokhonsky’s in Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov (Bantam Books)
Date Read: 16th March 2010
Briefly: It’s Christmas Eve and poor shoemaker’s apprentice Vanka is missing home. The nine-year-old sits down and pens a little to his distant grandfather, in the hope that he [...]

Bookshelf of the Week: ‘Berlin Bookcase’

If you’ve been following my Bookshelf of the Week feature for a while now then you may remember back in 2008 I featured a rather odd shot of a bookcase bolted to the outside of an apartment block in Tallinn, Estonia. Well for this week’s Bookshelf of the Week I feature an equally enigmatic [...]

Daily Bookshot: Adventures with ‘Great Books’

Adventures with ‘Great Books’, originally uploaded by Robert Burdock.

I know that this isn’t a particularly good shot of a particularly grubby 2nd-hand book, but beneath the grime is what looks to be a particularly interesting book. I got the ‘heads up’ on Great Books by David Denby (Simon & Schuster) last week while reading [...]

Reading Journal: Monday 15th March 2010

This week I’m keeping myself more off the Net than on, in order to concentrate more fully on the important soul-nurturing task of reading and writing in an undisturbed environment. That means less Twittering, less web surfing, less checking my email every 10 seconds. And although I’m sorely missing the opportunity of connecting with [...]

Devouring De Maupassant: Our Chum Patience

Title: Our Chum Patience (also known as Friend Patience/em>)
Date Read: 15th March 2010
Available Online?: YES (although read for this review was the David Coward translation of the story in A Day in the Country and Other Stories (Oxford University Press)).
Briefly: Government official Gontran Lardois is in an unfamiliar bar in an unfamiliar town when [...]

Devouring De Maupassant: A Railway Story

Title: A Railway Story (also known as On The Journey)
Date Read: 15th March 2010
Available Online?: YES (although read for this review was the David Coward translation of the story in A Day in the Country and Other Stories (Oxford University Press)).
Briefly: While on a train from Cannes, a doctor recounts the tale of Russian [...]

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