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I got The Armour of Light by Ken Follett, one of my absolute favourite authors (see my blogs on The Pillars of the Earth, Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, The Edge of Eternity, The Evening and the Morning and A Dangerous Fortune) as a

I got Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin for my birthday in July and read it on a walking holiday in the Isle of Wight. This is the latest in the Tales of the City series (see my blog

I read Tell Me How This Ends by Jo Leevers basking in the first real sun of the year in the garden some months ango and really enjoyed it. Its protagonist Henrietta Lockwood is a bit like Eleanor Oliphant –

I was lucky enough to see Salman Rushdie (via Zoom) at the Hay Festival in 2023 and bought a signed copy of his book Victory City in the festival bookshop and finally had some time to read it this July

I was given Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan for my birthday by my friend Pam. As a former resident of an adjacent part of north London I knew I was going to like it. The cast of characters is so

I read The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn in the cold days of April and enjoyed being transported to the Second World War and its impacts on the family who own a great Dorset house. The novel begins in 1919

I started reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (see my blog on Unsheltered) last summer and was really enjoying it until life got in the way, so was delighted to finally find time to pick it up again this summer.

I always look forward to the latest novel by Kate Atkinson (see my previous blogs) and last year was given Shrines of Gaiety for my birthday and finally got a chance to read it in May. It is set in

I got a proof copy of The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan at the Hay festival last year and finally read it on my commute in June. It is exactly my kind of book, given that it is a

The Emotional Craft of Fiction by literary agent Donald Maas is an excellent book for any writers trying to ensure that their novels have emotional depth and will resonant with their readers at a cellular level. Each section is clearly

I came across Christian Lewis at the Hay Festival last year, when I went to see Raynor Winn speak about her new walking book Landlines and he was on the same panel, speaking about his transformational walking journey around the

I heard about Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties by Sarah Ditum before it came out and I listened to it earlier this year on audiobook, as a woman who came of age in the nineties, a very long time

I am a big fan of Zoe Science and Nutrition and the Zoe podcast, so in January bought Food for Life: Your Guide to the New Science of Eating Well by Tim Spector, one of Zoe’s co-founders. The book starts

I haven’t read for months and to get going again I treated myself in December to The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith, the latest in the Cormoran Strike detective fiction series (see my previous blogs on the rest of the

2023 was a strange year for me, in that I read far less than I ever have before, due to work, using all my spare time to write, and then due to two months at the end of the year of dealing with a bad accident in the family. It means I have half the usual number of books to choose from but also two new categories, best audiobook and best newly discovered author.

I am always on the lookout for books that make work better and so was eager to read Supercharged Teams: The 30 Tools of Great Teamwork by Pam Hamilton. Its premise is that in a working world that is faster,

On a rainy July day I decided I need something escapist and that it was time to read the final instalment in the seven sisters series by Lucinda Riley – The Story of Pa Salt, written by her son Harry

Watching Davina McCall’s two documentaries about the menopause in 2021 and 2022 was game-changing for me, as it was for so many others, and I followed it up with reading Confessions of a Menopausal Woman by Andrea McLean and Davina’s

It’s a while since I read a novel that so throughly captivated me in the way that Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers did. It is the story of Jean Swinney, a 39 year old newspaper reporter on a local Kent

I recently went to a talk about the history behind Operation Moonlight by its author Louise Morrish in Portsmouth and bought a copy. It’s a debut novel focused on a female British agent in the Second World War working in the

I was looking forward to reading Bournville by Jonathan Coe, having so enjoyed Middle England and Mr Wilder and Me, and it absolutely didn’t disappoint. As the title suggests it is set in Bournville in Birmingham, which has the Cadburys chocolate