Dangerous Books

There’s different types of dangerous books. We’ve all heard tales about books which are directly dangerous to your health: either the arcane knowledge they contain will drive you mad, cause you to become possessed, or some other terrible fate – possibly ending with the book reading you rather than the …

Chocolat

Fourth of the five books I chose for the “Read 5 books in January” challenge, “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris has been on my list of “books I should read at some point” for well over a decade. The main reason it’s languished there so long is that I watched the film …

A View across the Valley

“A View across the Valley: Short Stories by Women from Wales c. 1850-1950” was one of the first Honno books I added to my wishlist after attending their 30th birthday celebration last September. One of the speakers, talking about the diversity of the Honno Classics series, spoke quite movingly about …

Gaudy Night

I’m not sure I should admit this, given the company I often keep at writerly events, but… Gaudy Night is the first of Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries I have ever read! I’ve been aware of his importance in the canon of literary detectives, and have occasionally heard part of …

Beguiling Miss Bennet

So I finished the first of my 5 Books for January. Beguiling Miss Bennet is collection of Austen-inspired short stories published by Honno Press. I added it to my Amazon wishlist after being impressed by Honno’s attitude and values when I attended their 30th birthday shindig back in September. But that’s …