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Brain Boost Diet

Books to inspire pre-teens

With a Young Adult (YA) market that’s growing at an incredible pace, full of varied levels of depth, we have often been asked about recommendations that are less frivolous. Here is a list of some of the books we found particularly inspiring for our own children to take on a more substantial literary diet. They are our favourites, not only for introducing our younger teens to great literature or non-fiction, but also for opening the way to interesting discussions on politics, society and ethics, amongst others. Whether short or long, famous or obscure, these are accessible books that still stimulate the mind.

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Man Booker International Prize 2016 – a treasure trove of translated novels

I have great faith in translated international book prizes, only the best make into the English language market and choosing the very best of those is inevitable going to result in a list of excellent books. I’m thrilled to see Mend the Living and A Whole Life on the list as they are both amongst my absolute favourite recent reads. I’ve also just finished the wonderfully quirky The Vegetarian, unlike anything I’ve read before. And then there is Elena Ferrante’s books, three of which I’ve reviewed on this blog (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name and Days of Abandonment.) If the quality of those I’ve read is anything to go by, all of these should be amazing reads.

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Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman | Stefan Zweig | When compassion turns to passion

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Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Passion guised as compassion

Austrian author Stefan Zweig  (The Post Office Girl, Beware of Pity and many novellas) was once the world’s most translated author. No wonder. This steaming hot novella about a woman and her whirlwind 24 hour affair with a much younger man is absolutely spellbinding, even more so when you know it was written by a man and almost 90 years ago!

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Mister Pip

A wonderfully intense, gem of a book

Set against the backdrop of the civil war that took place on the Papua New Guinea copper-rich pacific island of Bougainville during the early 1990s, Mister Pip is named after the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Indeed, Dickens’ plot shapes the entire novel. Written by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 and won the Commonwealth Prize in the same year and rightly so as I found it a lyrical, beguiling read.

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World Book Day 2016 – Let’s celebrate the short novel!

Six perfectly formed little books

Sick of those huge tomes that take up months of your life, weigh down your bag and often end up being badly edited? Try some short novels instead, they’re often better. Short is harder, as we all know. Try one, several or perhaps all (!?) of these….

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Libreria – Taking bookshops to a whole new level

Welcome Libreria! A brand new bookstore concept opening today in London’s East End – 65 Hanbury Street, London E1.

Not only does it look fabulous – artist designed colourful floor to ceiling shelves, a reflective material in the ceiling giving a sense of space, small dens to huddle up in while you read – but it also has curated selections of books according to themes and across genres, a whiskey bar (!),  24 hour opening hours at least once a month and lots and lots of events. Smart phones and tablets are prohibited inside the shop as the founders want to ‘celebrate the analogue’. Love it already!

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Mend the Living (The Heart)

A question of life and death

I was left speechless by this astounding novel, the story of a young man’s death and the dilemmas around organ donation. It reads like a thriller and had me pinned to the chair. Maylis de Kerangal fast-paced prose is intense and unusual, and, admittedly, took a few pages getting used to, but once you find the rhythm of her writing you’ll be unable to stop. An absolute must-read!

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The Prophets of Eternal Fjord

Compulsively readable novel about arctic hell hole

If you’re at all disgusted by bodily fluids, don’t even think about reading this book. If you’re not, prepare yourself for a firework of a novel by a master storyteller set in a part of the world which I’m willing to bet you’ve never read anything about before. Kim Leine’s novel The Prophets of Eternal Fjord, set in Greenland during Danish colonial rule, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2013 and is finally out in English.

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Elena Ferrante heading for the screen

Here’s some good new for those of us mourning the end of BBC’s adaptation of War and Peace. Elena Ferrante’s hugely popular Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Child, will be made into a 32 episode television series in a co-production between Italian TV production companies Wildside and Fandango, the producers behind Gomorrah. The identity of the author remains a mystery…

Fantasy casting for Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels on TV by the Guardian

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Pruning bookshelves – is it possible?

My bookshelves are overflowing. I have promised myself to fix it and as I stand before them I come to all sorts of realisations. First of all, I buy a large number of books that I never read. A trip to the book shop for me is like a trip to IKEA, you go in thinking you’re buying a lamp and a bin and two hours later find yourself in the check-out queue with a trolley full of napkins, candles, bedsheets, kitchen utensils, plants…

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