schopflin's reviews
717 reviews

The first Maeve Kerrigan book and it's good. I don't regret the lack of Josh Derwent because I have never quite understood his attraction.  There's not a huge amount of suspense in the plot but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless. 

This was a well-meaning present and well-written, but was a bit of a slog for me. It's only tangentially a book or publishing history, focusing on a series of examples of poetry collections to describe specific cultural moments in British history. I think it probably doesn't help that I am not a poetry reader but regardless of that,  some episodes were of more interest than others. 

Not my favourite Heyer. I liked the hero very much but the strong female character was kept very much in the background. Enjoyable enough though. 

Clever and absorbing. The time it's written and set is very real to me although I'm not sure what modern readers would make of it. The characters were never completely real to me and the self-absorption was often hard to love, but the observations on self-deception were biting and it made a pleasing pattern. 

I love the way Simon Barnes writes and I love reading about plants so this was always going to be a winner for me. It doesn't quite match the wistful quality of 'On The Marsh' or 'The Year of Sitting Dangerously' but then it's more in his 'helpful information' stream of books. I miss the more personal aspect. 

The family holocaust memoir is one that's quite familiar to me. This excellent book deftly combines a moving personal story with exceptionally well-researched wider history. Told in a clear way that expresses grief and sorrow without ever being sentimental. 

I don't really like Stream of Consciousness even well it's extremely well done, as it is here by Tsypkin and his translator. And there were many, many scenes of gambling, which I found stressful. But there's much to admire here, particularly around the author squaring his love of Dostoyevsky and the latter's antisemitism. I especially loved the little details of Soviet life. But the main part - Dostoyevsky's travels early in his second marriage - really wasn't for me. 

I'm not sure if I understood (or possibly believed) the unifying theme here, but it was a good read, full of excellent stories and sense of place. And Epping Forest is impossible not to get lost in unless you go there all the time.  

This was a useful novelistuc companion to Small Fires, touching at much greater length on issues of domesticity, the reasons we cook and body image. The story itself isn't amazing but the feminist message was well-explored and the insight into Japanese cultural mores was fascinating.

This is clever and inspiring writing. It's not a genre I usually like very much but Johnson makes such subtle points about food I really enjoyed it. If it had a single unified theory behind it, I missed it. But it was worth it anyway.