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  • Book Review: Starter for Ten

    Starter For Ten by David Nicholls. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. Starter for Ten has been in my library for several years. The novel is set in 1985, and is the story of Brian Jackson, a first-year student who is preparing for an appearance on University Challenge while simultaneously falling in love and discovering…

  • Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club

    The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club is one of the most talked about debuts in crime fiction in recent years. It’s a record-breaking number one platinum bestseller, shifting over one million copies in the same year as its release, and notably the…

  • Book Review: Dandelion Wine

    Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. My rating: 2 of 5 stars. Dandelion Wine is a collection of short stories set in the fictional Green Town, Illinois over the summer of 1928. The setting is said to based on Bradbury’s own childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois. I have a collection of short stories by Bradbury, and…

  • Book Review: Generation X

    Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland. My rating: 4 of 5 stars. Generation X is a novel set in the 1990s, and is a story centred around three friends, Andy Palmer, Dagmar (Dag) Bellinghausen and Claire Baxter. Three additional characters make an appearance as the story progresses, including Tobias, Elvissa, and…

  • Book Review: James Herriot’s Yorkshire Stories

    James Herriot’s Yorkshire Stories by James Herriot. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. I’m a big fan of the new All Creatures Great and Small series, and was pleased when I received this little collection of James Herriot’s short stories as a gift earlier this year. Herriot’s writing style is deceptively simple, and his love…

  • Book Review: Where the Crawdads Sing

    Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. Delia Owens is an inspiration to writers who have been putting down words for years without seeing them published. Although she was already a successful author of non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist, Owens did not publish a novel…

  • VP

    VP

    VP is a short story I wrote in January 2020. It was first published in August 2022 by CafeLitMagazine. The opening paragraphs are below, and you can visit the CafeLitMagazine website to read the full story. *** When you tell someone you’re a Vice President, they usually ask one of two things. ‘What’s that?’ or…

  • Book Review: About Writing: The Authorised Field Guide for Aspiring Authors

    About Writing by Gareth L. Powell. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. In the late noughties, I used to converse on Twitter with a chap called Gareth L. Powell. We were both budding writers back in the day, and I can’t really remember how I met him, but we somehow lost touch during one of…