4/5: Well, that was a bizarre mix of... things. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley's debut novel, is about a young British-Cambodian woman working as a civil servant who is recruited to act as a 'bridge' for one of a group of 'expats' - people plucked out of their own times shortly before impending death and brought to the present day. Our narrator is assigned Commander Graham Gore, once a naval officer on John Franklin's 'lost expedition' to the Arctic in 1845-8, now trying to adjust to t...| www.goodreads.com
3/5: Mixed-race Alva and her American mother Sloane live in Shanghai, where Alva attends a local school and dreams of the kind of life she could access via her US passport, although she has never left China. When Sloane hooks up with their landlord, Lu Fang, Alva assumes he's just the next in a series of Chinese men her mother's dated for their money. But it turns out that Sloane and Lu Fang have a shared past that reaches back more than twenty years, when Lu Fang was working in a shipping ya...| www.goodreads.com
Every year, I say I’m not going to shadow the Women’s Prize this year, but after the disappointment that was the 2024 longlist (although we did end up with a worthy winner, hooray!) thi…| Laura Tisdall
A short reading diary for the end of January as I’m currently nearing the end of three (excellent) books which I will post about separately. Nussaibah Younis, Fundamentally. I had intensely m…| Laura Tisdall
I’ve attended the Durham Book Festival every year since I first moved to the north-east in 2017. It’s a fantastic festival, very well-organised, showcasing some brilliant writers. This …| Laura Tisdall
Two more reviews from the Booker longlist today, plus my rankings and predictions before the shortlist is announced TONIGHT! Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner: Ah, I really don’t know what to m…| Laura Tisdall
I can hardly believe I’ve been blogging for a decade. It seems like no time ago that I started this site on a whim early in my freelance career, soon after my main online publication folded and my …| Bookish Beck
In this post, I’ve picked twelve 2025 releases that I am particularly looking forward to, then, as always, added a further eighteen books that I want to read in 2025, whether they are new this year…| Laura Tisdall