Allow Robert Louis Stevenson to give you a swashbuckling time in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up. Kidnapped (1886) is the classic romp through the heather by the master of the modern Scottish adventure, though it's set in 1746. Stevenson dragged the historical novel out of the rather long-winded grip of Sir Walter Scott, and made it immediate, exciting and … Continue reading Great swashbuckling: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped
Month: August 2016
The roar of the greasepaint: Clemence Dane’s Broome Stages
Once again, Brad of The Neglected Books Page and I have a conversation about a big fat book neither of us had read before, by a seriously neglected woman author, Clemence Dane. Broome Stages (1931) is a long family saga of the London theatre, beginning in the very early 1800s, when the first Broome, a country boy … Continue reading The roar of the greasepaint: Clemence Dane’s Broome Stages
Peculiar stories: Annelies Verbeke’s Thirty Days
Thirty Days is a slice of life so compelling and warm that I stayed up far too late to finish it. And was then very miserable: oh, what an ending! Annelies Verbeke’s novel was voted the best of 2015 by thousands of its original Dutch and Flemish readers. It’s out now in a fine English … Continue reading Peculiar stories: Annelies Verbeke’s Thirty Days
Jemisin, Leckie, Letters to Tiptree: praise ye them
The 2016 Hugo Awards were announced last night, and I am SO PLEASED that N K Jemisin's The Fifth Season won the category of Best Novel. It is groundbreaking, superb, a work of utterly readable literary invention that I am proud to have reviewed, here. Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy was one of the five other shortlisted … Continue reading Jemisin, Leckie, Letters to Tiptree: praise ye them
Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book
I fell into Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book with passionate gratitude, after wading through a run of disappointing novels. This novel, as Jo Walton has apparently said, is the one in which Willis got everything right, and it is superb. It won three awards, including the 1992 Hugo and the 1993 Nebula, and is a time … Continue reading Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book
Wild swimming for pleasure: Roger Deakin’s Waterlog
Roger Deakin's classic of wild swimming is the subject of this Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up: Waterlog. He began his project swimming up and down the moat in his garden, with the thought that he really wanted to swim around Britain, but would settle for sample swims in places where swimming ought to be done. … Continue reading Wild swimming for pleasure: Roger Deakin’s Waterlog
Stone stories: N K Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate
When Terry Pratchett wanted to explore how trolls might name themselves, he used mineralogy. Jade was one of the first Pratchett trolls to have a name. It was curiously dignifying as well as amusingly paradoxical (how could a lump of rock have a name, ho ho ho). Pratchett continued to dignify his troll characters rather … Continue reading Stone stories: N K Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate
Hand me a petrel: Robert Atkinson’s Island-Going
We're in the Outer Hebrides in the 1930s in this Really Like This Book podcasts scripts catch-up, on a mad quixotic journey in the roughest of conditions to locate, observe and tag an obscure little bird called Leach’s fork-tailed petrel. Island-Going by Robert Atkinson is a classic of nature writing, of social history, and of the … Continue reading Hand me a petrel: Robert Atkinson’s Island-Going
Women in Translation: Colette’s Gigi, and The Cat
It’s Women in Translation month, so here is my favourite author in translation: the magnificent, audacious, riotously insouciant Colette. I posted a review of her novella Julie de Carneilhan a year ago. Here are two more. Gigi (1944) is the story of a trainee teenage prostitute in the belle époque who avoids joining this family … Continue reading Women in Translation: Colette’s Gigi, and The Cat
Corncrakes on Coll: Kathleen Jamie’s Findings
This week's podcast scripts catch-up from Really Like This Book is a blissful swim through Kathleen Jamie’s book Findings. Like Robert Gibbings, she writes discursively, moving randomly but purposefully from one subject to another as the observations she’s making surface from her memory. Findings filled me a great desire to get on a boat to go whale watching, or climb … Continue reading Corncrakes on Coll: Kathleen Jamie’s Findings
Kate Macdonald 