Hi I m back from a week from hell

Many of you are aware i just had a week from hell my Mum had been ill for a while but three weeks ago end up in Hospital intially for a few days but over time her liver was in failure due in part to a genetic condition , even then she was due to go to be assesed for a new liver in a month or so , we got a call from my aunt who had been there with my mum saying she was worse than we knew so My brother and I went a week last friday and saw how ill she was and planned to come on the weds but by sun she was in ICU which time Duncan and I went everyday a six hour return journey to see here and then on weds last week she lost her battle , even know I feel numb and books have been far from my mind i did manage to read Black mose and part of the Unseen so keeping track with Shadow Man booker duty . I hope to get my reviews done in time but this year I am taking a back seat on the prize for this year . I am thankful for all the nice messages everyone left me on facebook . I am taking it a day at a time at the mo ,still not sunk in .

London Book Fair and Man Booker International longlist

I had a long bookish day yesterday. I set off just before 8 in the morning to London to go to the book fair for a third year . I took a Quebec novel to read on the train which I managed to finish before I got there .

Just as I pulled into London the Man Booker announced their second Longlist .

Compass – Mathias Enard (France) translated by Charlotte Mandell.My review 

Swallowing Mercury – Wioletta Greg (Poland) translated by Eliza Marciniak.My review 

A Horse Walks Into A Bar – David Grossman (Israel) translated by Jessica Cohen.my review 

War And Turpentine – Stefan Hertmans (Belgium) translated by David McKay.Part read

The Unseen – Roy Jacobsen (Norway) translated by Don Bartlett. have to read

The Traitor’s Niche – Ismail Kadare (Albania) translated by John Hodgson. on order from Library

Fish Have No Feet – Jon Kalman Stefansson (Iceland) translated by Phil Roughton.Have read will reread

The Explosion Chronicles – Yan Lianke (China) translated by Carlos Rojas.On order from library

Black Moses – Alain Mabanckou (France) translated by Helen Stevenson.Not out ask serpent tails due in next week then be sent out for review

Bricks And Mortar – Clemens Meyer (Germany) translated by Katy Derbyshire.read will skim through then review

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal – Dorthe Nors (Denmark) translated by Misha Hoekstra.half read

Judas – Amos Oz (Israel) translated by Nicholas de Lange.Have to read

Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin (Argentina) translated by Megan McDowell.Finished yesterday

As you see I have three reviewed two more read at time list out and one read since so have seven books to read before the short list . I then sped across london to the Fair and head to the Lit translation centre where there are talks given around translation , I grabbed a coffee and bumped into David Colmer the translator  he had done the Bakker novels we chatted he has a classic dutch novella he is translating for archipelago , then Louise Roger Laurie for a quick chat then sat in on a panel with ra page of comma press chatting about metropolitan fiction and the lack of fiction from outside cities and other things .

Then I wandered I want to meet and say hello to Karen at Orenda books as they had a small stand and she had been a support of the blog back in her Arcadia books day > I went and said hello and she was just as she is on-line a really warm friendly person , I also chatted to her editor Camel West about translation and various other things , I got a sample of her latest novel in translation and a new star she has just published .

 

then I was due to meet Susie from Istros . We meet and went for a bite to eat and a drink , I said how shock I was Panorama missed the longlist !! From the first world series she has done with Peter Owen , luckily they had three of the second in the series which Spain is the focus , I could have and also a nice hardback film tie in of Silence .

We also chatted about the longlist, I said Compass for me was the best book of the ones I have read a wonderful book , whilst chatting Susie met the publisher of another small press she knows Archane press , they don’t as yet do translation but have some interesting short story collections . Then we bumped into Rosie Goldsmith whose euro lit network has now gone into print called The Riveter . I then left the fair and meet my dad who was also in London doing some shopping , we had a nice meal at Barbecoua in Piccadilly then I went and got fever dream and Mirror ,shoulder and signal . I had hope with a couple of hours to my train and two and half train journey . I managed to read Fever dream which I will review soon.

 

Shadow Man booker prediction 2017

It is a few day til we see the longlist for this years Man booker international prizes , this is the first in the post Boyd era Boyd Tonkins being a judge in all the IFFP and the first man booker so it will beinteresting to see if the panel changes tack with the books on the list. I have select only from books I have read in the last twelve months since the prize .

Sudden death by Alvaro Enrique

A tennis match spreads around thew world at the start of the enlightenment , the second book by him I have read and the best mexican novel from last year .

 

Affections by Rodrigo Hasbun

 

A second spanish language novel , last year was a great yeaer for spanish lit yet none made the longlist , this follows a mad german explorer and his family in 1950’s Bolivia .

 

The winterlings by Christina Sanchez-Andrade

Another spanish novel this follows two ssters returning home after somehting cause them to leave the village many years ago .

Moonstone by Sjon

I am a huge fan of Sjon and the story of Mani is dickensian in style with a backdrop of classic films and a flu epidemic

Consteliation by Adrien Bosc

A french pklane crashes and we have pen pics of the crew and paassengers a cross section of the modern world from the disney merchandise cheif to some spanish shepards on hunt for a better life .

Trysting by Emmanuelle Pagano

love broken into bare words stripped of who and why beautiful in its brittleness like a leaf skelton of love

Land of my Father by Vamba Sheriff

A freed slave returns to Africa but then want to convert the locals to God at what cost

None like her by Jela Krecic

A man goes on the hunt for lovve a slovenian fonz tries to find the one

 

Panorama by Dusan Sarotar

Simply this is what translated fiction is about the ripple effect of a writer like Sebald hits Slovenian and produces a true gem , as I’ve said I can’t see why Istros haven’t been on the list !!!!!

 

2084 by Boualem Sansal

A new take on 1984 in a ISlamic style country , powerful writing from one of the best writers around

 

Compass by MAthias Enard

Another look at the arab world as a man can’t sleep we see his previous love and the run around the arab world that is no longer there , also the influence of east on western culture .

Book 12 –

Of books I haven;t read here is a selection I think could be there –

War and War laszlo Krasznahorkai

Fever dream by Samantha Schweblin

Transmigration of bodies by Yuri Herrera

are three that may make it also as ever Peirene have had three good books the empress and the cake is a great look at eating disorders .

 

 

 

The Principle by Jerome ferrari

The Principle by Jerome Ferrari

French fiction

Original title – Le Principe

Translator – Howard Curtis

Source – review copy

Well from a new French writer to me yesterday with Pierre Senges to an old favourite of this blog Jerome Ferrari has had his two earlier books translated into English The sermon on the fall of Rome and Where I left my soul.  He won the Prix Goncourt with his last novel and lived in Abu Dhabi where he teaches Philosophy. but now lives in Casablanca , like his other novels I have read this is a look back at recent history this time he has looked back at those fever years of the war when scientists where trying to build the Bomb.

You were twenty-three years old , and it was there, on that desolate island where no flowers grow, that you were first granted the opportunity to look over god’s shoulder,There was no miracle, of course, or eve to be honest , anything resembling God;s shoulder, but to give an account of what happened that night, our only choice, as you know better than anyone, is between metaphor and silence . For you , there was first silence, then the blinding light of an exhilaration more precious than happiness

This the time he made his famous uncertain principle

we are drawn into the world of Germany in the  early 1930’s  and onwards when the country falls under a dark shadow of the Nazis,  we follow the life of Werner Heisenberg , a man best known know for his uncertain principle .We glimpse into his world one of knowledge , but he was best known for something he worked out many years earlier his principle . we see his life unfold drawn into the Nazis world of the hunt for the Bomb as he was the one that made classic science become the atomic age of science he is at the forefront. What we see is how a man of science and his own principles has to walk a tight line of the age he is trying but not trying if you know what I mean ! Faced with a world he didn’t expect to be in from those early days  of discovery .

They’re all bored to death

Something in them becomes gradually worn pout over the  endless weeks

Professor Heisenberg plays Mozart sonatas, by heart on the piano. Nobody listens to him anymore. Every day, Professor Hahn walks for hours in the garden, never tiring .He calculates the distance he’s covered. If he’d walked straight ahead , he would have crossed the sea. By know he would have been ages in Germany

They struggle to get the Bomb made .

This was a clever novel that is a good autobiography in a novel form of a figure , that was at the heart of the burning atomic age a man who provide the turning point in the way people thought of Physics. Like his earlier books lament and sorrow under lie the main character in a way also like his earlier books he deals with how people deal with those situation where we have no chance to turn and the world seems in utter chaos. In Where I left my soul it was the Algerian war and the sermon which was an angrier look back at his childhood homeland  as ever using his poetic writing style to look at one person struggle in this world . Here it is the madness of the Nazis and Hitler wanting the Bomb before the allies. There is similarities in style too In search of Klingsor by Jorge Volpi which was also a look at the same group of people in this novel from a different angle where they try to find the top man in the programme. An interesting look at the times .

The Major refutation by Pierre Senges

The Major Refutation by Pierre Senges

French fiction

Original title – La réfutation majeure

Translator – Jacob Siefring

Source – review copy via translator

I have from time to time be contacted by the translator to review their latest book and this was the case with Jacob , whom I knew vaguely via twitter and the fact he has been championing this writers work. He has translated a number of works by Pierre Senges . Pierre Senges start initially as a jazz musician , this I note as later I do wonder if this hs influenced his style of writing . He has been a writer since the 1990s and has written over fifteen books and also a large number of works for radio in France. He is noted for his baroque style and the way he twists history with a way of keeping the original style to his works .

If this New world actually existed, if its measure could be had in hectares and in tons, or maliciously in carats to reflect the value of its diamond mines, or in nautical miles because it is semmingly capable of devouring an entire hemisphere as a crab would , going from north to south and from east to west- if this were the case , then adventures would have set foot there long ago ,smugglers failing to find better use for their discovery would have taken it as their refugee

From the opening page of the Major Refutation , this seems true how could something so large be unknown !

This book is meant to be a work that was written by Antonio De Guevara , this is a work that was mention supposedly and lost then found and it is a work The book is a work about trips to discover what is the new world then to send people these  written as a treatise to Charles V  , about the falsehood of the new world. this is back in a time when of course some people thought the earth was flat and places unknown on maps were often just marked with the words here be monsters ! De Guevara argument is that the new world isn’t all it is meant to be and is a creation by others to deceive the king and other and De Gueveara brings many arguments to why this is the case in what are letter like chapters.

The invention of the new world and of the useless islands supposed the invention of evidence, fabricated on this side f the earth, on the continent, in the portuguese colonies perhaps but always brought back into port; for it is impossible to make a country of fog,of phantoms and of gleaming gold exist out there with out having some exotic but tangible scraps wash up on our beaches .Some talk might have sufficed; our taverns are full of those boasters returned from afar, full of one-armed men who clasped in an embrace the great Khan of China and the incestuous gang of prester John

The New World is made up of lies , boasters and false goods

When I started blogging the real hunt for me wasn’t just world lit , no I could just count countries I do but not in a race . For me the reason I blog is to be like an explorer of books a discoverer of fiction , an adventure on the edge of what the novel is and this is why getting connect with guy like Jacob and been introduce to a writer like Pierre Senges this book is a book that has thanks to the time Jacob spent translating it , you can find out more on Jacobs blog . This is a book that defies pigeonholed .For me the fact in his early life he was into jazz and was a musician plays a part in this book , great jazz can take something ordinary and twist it and bend it into something totally new.so like John Coltrane in his working of my favourite things we have some part of the original . Well lets break this down Fray Antoino de Guevera was a preacher and his preaching was about peace and a different vision of what empire was , Charles the fifth was the spanish lead at the time the new world was discovered. So  the parts are their want Pierre Senges has done is create a rift on the two men and the idea of there being a treatise on there not being a new world . I loved this as Jacob said it is a unusal book and one that if he hadn’t pushed we wouldn’t have read , one great thing is so many transltors have there pet projects and maybe publisher need listen to them more (a sublte nod here to Horcynus Orca which I know is a pet project of Andrea Camelleri translator ), how many more are out there !!

Shadow Man booker 2017

Well it is that time of year again and in ten days we have the highlight of the translated fiction year in the UK the man booker international fiction prize the second year of this prize which took over from the old IFFP , we return to do a sixth shadow panel the second for this incarnation of the prize. I have a list to go up next week of my thoughts on what will make the list Tony has done his already here .This year we return with eight members again like  last year we managed to provided over 100 reviews of the longlisted books between us .So here we are –

Stu Allen is returning to chair the second Man Booker International Prize shadow jury after hosting four shadow IFFP juries plus the first MBIP shadow award.  He blogs out of Winstonsdad’s Blog, home to 500-plus translated books in review.  He can be found on twitter (@stujallen), where he also started the successful translated fiction hashtag #TranslationThurs over six years ago.

Tony Malone is an Anglo-Australian reviewer with a particular focus on German-language, Japanese and Korean fiction.  He blogs at Tony’s Reading List, and his reviews have also appeared at Words Without Borders, Necessary Fiction, Shiny New Books and Asymptote.  Based in Melbourne, he teaches ESL to prospective university students when he’s not reading and reviewing.  He can also be found on Twitter @tony_malone

Clare started blogging at A Little Blog of Books five years ago. She does most of her reading during her commute to work in London and reviews contemporary literary fiction and some non-fiction on her blog. She particularly enjoys reading French and Japanese fiction in translation. Twitter: @littleblogbooks

Tony Messenger is addicted to lists, and books – put the two together (especially translated works) and the bookshelves sigh under the weight of new purchases as the “to be read” piles grow and the voracious all-night reading continues. Another Tony from Melbourne Australia, @Messy_tony (his Twitter handle) also reads Australian Poetry, interviewing a range of poets on his blog, which can be found at Messengers Booker (and more) and at Messenger’s Booker on Facebook – with a blog containing the word “booker” why wouldn’t he read this list?

Lori Feathers lives in Dallas, Texas and is co-owner and book buyer for Interabang Books, an independent bookstore in Dallas. She is a freelance book critic and board member of the National Book Critics Circle.  She currently serves as a fiction judge for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. Her recent reviews can be found @LoriFeathers

Bellezza (Meredith Smith) is a teacher from Chicago, Illinois, who has been writing Dolce Bellezza for eleven years and has hosted the Japanese Literature Challenge for 10 years. Reading literature in translation has become a passion of hers since she began blogging, when she discovered writers from many other countries through fellow bloggers and favorite publishers. Her Twitter name is @bellezzamjs.

David Hebblethwaite is a book blogger and reviewer from the north of England, now based in the south. He has written about translated fiction for Words Without Borders, Shiny New Books, Strange Horizons, and We Love This Book. He blogs at David’s Book World and tweets as @David_Heb.

Grant Rintoul is a Scottish reviewer who lives on the coast not far from the 39 steps said to have inspired Buchan’s novel. Luckily the weather is generally ideal for reading. He blogs at 1streading, so-called as he rarely has time to look at anything twice. He can sometimes be found on Twitter @GrantRintoul

What do you think will be on the longlist for this year ?

Octavio’s Journey by Miguel Bonnefoy

 

Octavio’s journey by Miguel Bonnefoy

French fiction

Original title – Le Voyage d’Octavio

Translator – Emily Boyce

Source = review copy

I hope to reach 100 french books under review on the blog this year and one of those publishers that has helped me reach that total is Gallic books they mainly publish french fiction and this is the first book by them I have reviewed this year and it is one that was a runaway success in france for a debut novel . Miguel Bonnefoy was born to a Venezuelan Mother and a Chilean father he spent his childhood in France, Venezuela and Portugal this book was on the longlist for the Prix Goncourt for a first novel .

Don Octavio was born of this land,

He lived on the hillside in a modest , flimsy , slate clad house to which he held no deeds. The space must have formed a single room, was decided into a living room and bedroom ,  wardrobe stood beside a glassleess, curtainless window typical of the tropics , with a camp bed and rush-seat chair nearby. At the back of the living room , candles burnt on a little altar, casting flickers of light on the walls. Apostle figures were carved into beroom handles and also etched on glass which had been filed with rum to guard against misfortune . The scent of wild herbs hung in the air

His humble home was a simple beginning for Don Octavio

This is one of those books that maybe short but seems much longer the book follows the life of Octavio , we meet the young boy as he is unable to read as he is sent by the doctor to the chemist luckily whilst embarrassed a woman named Venezuela like his homeland opens this young boys eyes to the power of words as the two fall in love , Don Octavio grows and we drift into the past of his homeland as the church arrives land is saved by a lemon tree that is seemed as a miracle . Then Don Octavio journey to the heart of his country and the jungle and sees how the country is and decides to stay there .This is one mans journey to the heart of his country and feeling in doing that .

Venezuela suffered from acute insomnia , which meant that for the past twenty years she had to nap at odd times of the day . She had grown used to irregular bedtime, sometimes eating in bed and getting up in the ,middle of the night roam her apartment. the doctor advised ger to stop taking her sleeping pills. Out of embarrassment, she began avoiding pharmacies where she might be recognised and ventures out to the little chemists shops in the suburbs where she could buy what she needed unnoticed amid the anonymity of the crowd

The woman who teaches Don Octavio to read but is she also an allegory for the home land in recent years .

This is of course a book that owes a lot to Marquez and even in someway I felt Calvino . There is a magic realism at work When Don Octavio seems to move back through the history of his homeland and that is what is at the heart of this book an ode to Venezuela , we here much of their recent trouble this is a look back at what is the beauty at the heart of the country a woman , the forest and the chance to make something of yourself like Don Octavio he is maybe a sign of what can happen in Latin America where one can become someone from none . Another books I was reminded of is G Cabrera Infantes book a view of dawn in the tropics which also like this book mixed fiction with the history of his homeland in Infante’s case Cuba here we see Bonnefoy in an ode to his homeland and a fable like tale of what was and maybe a feeling that is lost . This is under hundred pages long a perfect evening read .

 

 

 

Cheese by Willem Elsschot

 

 

 

Cheese  by Willem Elsschot

Dutch fiction

Original title – Kaas

Translator – Sander Berg

Source = review copy

I was contact by Alma books as they are want to highlight  some of their back catalogue gems , I choose this and a book by Louis – Ferdinand Celine . I choose this as I had a happy memories of Holland and cheese , My father has done a lot of business in the Netherlands over the years and  about twenty years ago got a gift of some Cheese socks which he passed on to me the had a Edam hole style cheese with a little mouse looking out of a hole on each one , I loved those socks so a book about cheese , which from my time on the borders of Netherlands and spend a number of days in Nijmegen and surrounding area I know the dutch take the cheese seriously.

This Mr Van Sconnbeke comes from an old, wealthy family .He’s a bachelor and lives by himself in a big house in one of our most beautiful streets.

he has plenty of money, as do all his friends. These are for the most part judges , lawyers , merchants or retired businessmen.every member of this company possesses at least one car, with the exception of Mr Van Schoonbeke himself , my brother and me .But Mr Van Schoonbeke could own his car if he wished, and no one knows this better than his friends. Indeed, they think it’s rather curious and sometimes speak of him as “that old devil Albert”

The main reason for Frans is his friendship with Mr van Schoonbeke

Frans Laarmans is the main character of this book , he starts as a clerk in the novel in Antwerp . But has a chance to further his career and becomes a merchant in a much larger company egged on by his posh friends to take the job . This is where the problems begin with this new job where in a chance to impress his bosses and prove that a simple clerk like him is worth the job . He gets in a tangle with one supply with ordering to many as he get confused over what he has ordered with him then twenty tons of cheese turns up . Then he tries to get it sold but with no hope , his wife and children suffer as he starts to fall apart in a way .

The twenty tons were waiting for me on four trailers in the courtyard. They’d quickly offloaded the cheese last night to avoid paying demurrage to the railway company . That’s how I was able to witness my cheese being locked away in my safe . I stood in the middle of the cellar, like an instructor in a manege, keeping a close eye on everything until the last crate had been brought in

The large pile of cheese he has to get rid off before it goes off .

This is meant to be a comic masterpiece of comic  dutch literature . This is a novel of social-climbing Frans is a man who is wanting to climb it is similar in some ways too Wodehouse ,Frans is one of those oddly name side character from Jeeves and Wooster in a way one of those small stories that get told as an aside in the Wodehouse stories  . this is a classic man trying to better himself but with a dry look at failing at it a man who hates cheese ,drowning in cheese. I not sure it fully works when I first mentioned I was reading this a connection on twitter said they had thrown it to one side half read . I said and still hold by it that humour is hard to translate, in parts it works . I feel there is another level that maybe we miss that is some what Belgium humour , I was reminded of what Jonathan meades observations about the odd ways belgium is so different yet so close to us the quirky way they have small museums for everything and the way each street is individual in their look . Laarmans is a character that Elsschot used in his other big novel and again in his other books he wrote , he was considered to be semi biographical reflection of the man himself.

 

Compass by Mathias Enard

Compass by Mathias Enard

French fiction

Original title – Boussole

Translator – Charlotte Mandell

Source – review copy

Well strange I did my round-up and book of the month for february yesterday .I am sure unless something unexpected comes along this will be March’s  book of the month only a day in . This is the third novel by Mathias Enard I have read and for me this is his best . It won the Prix Goncourt in 2015. Mathias Enard studied Persian and Arabic and has spent long periods in the Middle east . This is his tenth novel

Sarah found that pharse extraordinary, “Take me, lead me where you like ; I won’t bother you, I sleep all day, in the evening you can let me go to the concert and at night you can do what you like with me ” a declaration of absolute beauty and despair, a total nudity – unlike Liszt , I know where she is buried , the montmatre cemetery. Which Sarah showed me

sarah quotes Marie Duplessis Liszt’s mistress and a woman who inspired Alexander Dumas .

The last but one  sentence of the intro is the key  to what  this book is about  simply Enard is a huge fan of the Middle east and this book is his ode to the way us in the West and the east mix together . I’m now not sure what we call this area the middle east or as Nawai El Saadawi who’s middle east , the Wests middle east ! so from the middle west here is my view of this wonderful book . Then we have the term Orient the older term which is the one Enard seems to prefer . Anyway the Arab speaking world and How Enard has chosen to show us this  west and east struggle via Franz Ritter a Austrian musicologist who over the space of one late night and early morning suffering  with a bout of insomnia he recalls his frequent trips to this part of the work . so from Istanbul to Tehran and place like Aleppo and Damascus we follow Franz but also Sarah a spirited french woman like Franz caught between west and east. SO as the night goes on the arc of the relationship maybe also arcs the relationship of west and east . Like the point of a compass this book points east to the heart of Arab world and an affair that was doomed but also the clashing of the west and east how the west has viewed the east through music , art and literature and how these have been tinged by the East from Franz Liszt to Agatha Christie the east has touch many artists and their works .

The debate became stormy ; Sarah had mentioned the great name, the wolf  had appeared in the midst of the flock , in the freezing desert: Edward Said .It was like invoking the Devil in a Carmelite convent ; Bilger , horrified at the idea that he could be associated with any kind of Orientalism, immediately began embarrassed auto criticism, renouncing everything : Francois-marie and julie were nuanced on the question, while still acknowledging that Said had asked a burning but pertinent question : the relationship between knowledge and power in the Orient

Said one of the main names you connect with Orientalism

Well as you see this book is one that it is easy to fall in love with it is one of the novels that you will also need a note-book and maybe Spotify hand to listen to the music mentioned and the books mentioned. So as we see Franz wrestle with on coming sleep and the dreams to remember the good and bad times of the relationship. This is also an ode to that lost world his times in Aleppo , which is now a smoking ruined city instead we see the Aleppo that drew people there before the war . We get a sense of a past that isn’t there now a time when the world wasn’t so tense in this Joycean evening of vivid dreams of a long past relationship and world .

Feb 2017 that was the month that was

Well it is now two months of round ups this year . Last month I managed to review 13 books the same as January taking total to 26 books under review this year . I also read two new to me press books Noir press  who are bring us Lithuanian lit to English for the first time . Then Belle Vue press an american press that published The attempt . Ten countries covered last month , I managed to read six books for Pushkin press fortnight , I also have one more to review next month . !2 of the 13 books are translation the one non translated work is my first to be for the Burgeess100 celebration of Anthony Burgess .

1. Breathing into Marble by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite
2. The attempt by Magdalena Platzova
3. His name is David by Jan Vantoortelboom
4. Echoland by Per Petterson
5. Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
6. The French Father by Alain Elkmann
7. The Crew by Joseph kessel
8. Bird in a cage by frederic Dard
9. Summer before the dark by Volker Wiedermann
10. Dear reader by Paul Fournel
11. The mystery of the three orchids by Augusto De Angelis
12. Trenor of Intent by Anthony Burgess
13. The buddha’s return by Gaito Gazdanov

Book of the month –

I loved this tale of the last summer before their worlds all change these great writers at various points in the career are caught in the Belgium seaside and my favourite from Pushkin Press fortnight .

Books read –

You can follow what I have been reading on instagram I am a few books ahead as ever of what I am reviewing but with a few long books coming on tbr pile I hope to catch up and be back on par by end of this month .

Non Book discovery

A second new record shop in Chesterfield called Vanishing point I imagine after the film or primal scream track selling second-hand vinyl and CDs . After a year or two with no record shops and from four at one point many year ago it will be nice to have another place to spend time browsing .

How was your month ?