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  • Tears for the Past and Future

    To me, it felt like a strange question to ask, given we’d only known each other a couple of hours. “Do you spend more time thinking about the past or the future?” It came at a reasonable point in the morning’s work, a pause as a truck load of logs headed off down the gravel…

  • The Evolution of Lad Lit: From Cheeky Beginnings to Contemporary Depth

    In the late 1990s, while women were devouring Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and candid confessionals about urban single life, publishers identified a parallel opportunity: men needed their own contemporary fiction that spoke to their experiences. Enter “lad lit,” a term that would briefly define a literary movement centered on the male experience of relationships,…

  • Top Three Books of 2022

    My reading rate has picked up again in 2022, and this year I’ve read another mix of non-fiction, novels, and short stories, keeping track of everything through Goodreads as usual. 1st – Winner – Every Summer After by Carley Fortune Every Summer After is the New York Times bestselling debut by Carley Fortune. It’s a “second-chance…

  • Book Review: One Day in December

    One Day in December by Josie Silver. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. Josie Silver’s One Day in December is an entertaining second chance love story that begins when Laurie James first encounters Jack O’Mara as she notices him through the steamed-up windows of her bus when it pulls up at a bus stop. Their…

  • Book Review: The Catsitters

    The Catsitters by James Wolcott. My rating: 4 of 5 stars. Johnny Downs, the protagonist in James Wolcott’s The Catsitters, has been compared to a male equivalent of Bridget Jones. I’m not sure I fully agree with that, as Downs is much cooler than Jones, and far less scatty. However, the novel certainly explores the…

  • Book Review: Every Summer After

    Every Summer After by Carley Fortune. My rating: 5 of 5 stars. Every Summer After is the New York Times bestselling debut by Carley Fortune. It’s a “second-chance romance” novel that marks a step out of my comfort zone into a genre that perhaps it’s still fair to say is traditionally enjoyed by women. I’ve…

  • Book Review: The Versions of Us

    The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett. My rating: 4 of 5 stars. Laura Barnett’s The Versions of Us is the story of Eva and Jim, spanning almost six decades from the moment they meet (or don’t meet) in 1958. The story follows three alternate paths through their lives, stemming from the moment Eva encounters…

  • Book Review: Water Shall Refuse Them

    Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy. My rating: 4 of 5 stars. When I scanned the synopsis for Water Shall Refuse Them, I knew I had to read the novel. Several themes attracted me immediately: the heatwave of 1976, the rural setting, and the folk horror of the British landscape. The unsettling tone…