In an uncharacteristic bit of self-promotion, I'm excited to tell you that I have launched my creative writing blog/newsletter on Substack! I would be over the moon (and a little bit sick with nerves!) if you'd care to take a look... maybe even subscribe.😉

There's only one story on there at the moment but I am intending to post something every fortnight.
Here's the link: https://katekeogan.substack.com

(Normal service/shyness is now resumed.)😊

In truth, I've never been wild about the Brontës but, written from Emily's point of view, I really enjoyed this. It's given me a greater respect for them and their work (I hadn't realised just how precarious their living situation was). The nature descriptions are wonderful and I liked the various relationships between the siblings (and have conflicted feelings about Branwell).

I wouldn't have chosen a pandemic novel at this point but it's what was available on BorrowBox.
I enjoy how Ali Smith plays with words and story, so it's a pick, but could I tell you what it all *means*? I'm not sure I could. Definitely feels like she's more interested in raising questions than answering them. That's fine by me, but what the hell was going on with the Pelf family?!

I'm a peri-menopausal woman with a daughter; i.e. the core demographic for this book.
I enjoyed it, but question whether the whole horrible conspiracy was necessary (are three dead girls not enough?). I felt that the story sagged and stretched under the burden of it.
Harriet gets all the headlines but my favourite was Nessa.
I can't tell you how tired I am of being told that post-menopausal sex is the best ever: I've other priorities, damn it!

I treated myself to a re-read of my favourite contemporary poet. If she were just brilliant I'd be in the slough of why-doesn't-mine-sound-like-that despond right now. (I mean, when I'm on it I'm bloody good but I'm not Alice Oswald.) As it is, her work is of another order of magnitude, such that my only valid response is joy and gratitude that it exists at all.

Should you ever want to be wrecked by a book, ask Toni Morrison to read "Beloved" to you!
It's a brutal, harrowing story beautifully written and her warm voice dials up the contrast further. Goodness knows what took me so long to get to this but I surely won't forget it in a hurry. I don't want to be flippant and call it a book hangover: this is amongst the most powerful books I've read. I am properly shaken by it.

At times the prose was almost as floribund as Chelsea Flower Show, but I didn't mind too much and, given the subject matter, it had a good deal more nuance than I was expecting. I enjoyed it.

Claire Fuller is a hit and miss author for me but, perversely, I quite enjoyed this one, despite its bleakness, despite the fucked up monomaniac man spreading the up-fuckery around (is that a genre, or just the world?), despite the fact I pretty much guessed what was actually going on. 🤷

Make sure you're getting your B vitamins, dear Littens!

The drama! ?. Many years ago a friend of a friend said to me, "But, darling, one doesn't actually PAY tradesmen!" (My background is working class.) Shirin reminded me of her, which is to say the book gave my empathy muscles a thorough workout! It has important things to say about mothers and daughters, and about the wounds of geographical and cultural displacement ('cause that ain't going away anytime soon) but Shirin and Elizabeth are monstrous.

I like the Hairy Bikers: their recipes work, there's little by way of weird ingredients, and they really know how to double down on flavour. For such "meaty" chaps their veggie food is ?. Approx a third of these recipes are strictly vegan and a good few more are easily adaptable. I've bookmarked a whole list's worth to try!
There's chapters on brunch, salads, soups, light dishes, easy meals, weekend specials, puddings & bakes, and sides & basics.

I love these books about ordinary "unrecorded lives", and especially in audio. They make me curious about, and more kindly disposed towards, all the people in my life whom I barely know (and who, frankly, I generally prefer to keep at arm's length).

As for the book itself, I'm glad of the chance to have got to know Bob Burgess a whole lot better, and it feels right that Lucy and Olive should meet at last.

I'll rate it a pick for the scare value (the consequences of trading privacy and freedom for convenience under surveillance capitalism) and for daring to have a not especially sympathetic MC. But, oh, did it drag... right up until it got wind of the finish line, towards which it fairly galloped!

Maybe I've got the peri-menopausal rage-tinted spectacles on again, but isn't it also about how this economic culture depends on unpaid female labour?

I'm back from a week in Pembrokeshire (my happy place) 🌅
St. David's cathedral had a secondhand book sale: I found this. Didn't have my reading glasses with me that day so couldn't tell exactly what I'd found. I just recognised it was DT. 😄
(Also, I was evidently on a mission to collect every piece of sea glass that was on the beach!)

Tibb Ingleby! This is a naughty, warm-hearted, angry-in-the-right-places book about found family and also has the strongest narrative voice I've encountered in some while. I am well satisfied! ☺️

Before anyone gets hot under the collar, the Passion in question is Bach's St Matthew (and music more generally). 🙂
I love Bach and, completely unreasonably, expected reading this book to feel like listening to his music. Well... it wasn't that, although the rehearsing and first performance of the StMP was truly evocative. Otherwise it tends towards overlong and has saggy-middle-syndrome. JSB comes across as tiresome but I loved all the context.

Oh, this horrible book! I don't mean it is poorly written: I mean that reading it troubled me, partly because I am a woman who has chosen a plant-based diet but mostly because of the disturbing behaviour Yeong-hye experiences at the hands of the other characters.
(Note to self: best stop joking about wanting chloroplasts so I can photosynthesise. I love my food; I just get fed up of the daily catering duty.)

It's Ali Smith so, as far as Classical retellings go, there was a little more going on than the standard fare.
I enjoyed revisiting Ovid's gender-fluid tale of Iphis and Ianthe: kind of wish I could've had Ali Smith's take on it during my teens.

An interesting read, for sure, but I enjoyed the idea of it more than the experience, which was of serial task-switching in novel form and therefore left me feeling rattled. Much as I hate being slapped round the face with the obvious, the connections between the six different narratives/genres were tenuous to say the least. And yet.... something about it makes me want to rate it a pick, though I'm in no great rush to read another of his books. 🤷

Another fantastic book from Sarah Moss (which I put off reading for ages, for superstitious reasons).
I love her fierce intelligence, and her insight into what makes families tick.
I've seen reviews elsewhere complaining of its being another book by her about "woke middle class people". (Yeah, and Jane Austen just writes about marriage, right?)
It's about parents being faced with the mortality of a child.

Oh dear, I think we might have a problem here.
She's talking about the SNS and PNS (sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems) except it sounds like she is saying "penis", which results in startling clauses such as "women with a dominant penis...". And it comes up a lot! (Oh God, now even that innocuous sentence is loaded with Freudian subtext! ?)

(Photo is my journal, with one of the fabulous Dante stickers my daughter made for me. ❤️)
I enjoyed this meticulous book's painstaking sifting of all the extant sources for the facts of Dante's life. Look elsewhere for discussion of his works: this is strictly biographically-focused. Personally, I appreciated being given some context for the creation of his extraordinary Divine Comedy. (Turns out he didn't beam down from outer space/Paradiso! 😄)

I did The Artist's Way 30 years ago (!) & have revisited a couple of times since. This book is a coda to that, not an alternative. Unlike TAW, I didn't follow the chapters as a weekly course: I don't think there was sufficient material to merit doing so.

Her dismissive attitude towards mental illness rubbed me up the wrong way. Creativity helps but is NOT a standalone cure! (Let's not get into how creative pursuits can lead to deep dark places.)

Read for library's book group. I don't know how the library service chooses its monthly books but I wish they'd give us something I can really get my teeth into. This was ok, but over-long. Actually I think it's one of those rare occasions when I would have preferred the TV series. I was interested enough to want to see how the story panned out, but never really cared for the characters. As for that ending! 🤨

Saturday #libraryhaul
That is all. 🙂

I loved this wonderful book (and not just on account of the lusty beetles, fabulous though they were)! ❤️
It could so easily have felt episodic but each new inhabitant left their own mark whilst inheriting all that had gone before.
I found the notion of Robert's films surprisingly moving. And the final chapter just felt... right.

Oh hello, Dante; is that you again?
Apparently this is how Venus retrograde is manifesting in my life, courtesy of BorrowBox. 😄

The Elizabeth Strout and Kimberly Farr audiobook dream-team has done it again!
These books make me think more kindly towards people.

Claire Fuller is a hit-and-miss author for me.
It's not the book's fault I wasn't really in the mood for a pandemic story. However, it felt like three books cobbled together: a memoir of Neffy's earlier life, mostly in Greece; Station Eleven; and one of the recent crop of octopus books.
It had interesting things to say about grief, guilt and a desire to escape to the past rather than face present horrors. I'm not sure it succeeded in saying them.

Read for my library's book group.
Packhorse librarians in 1930s Kentucky: what's not to love? (I was half expecting the library service to launch a volunteer recruitment drive on the back of this. 😆).
I enjoyed it, especially the growing friendships between the women. I did think a major plot point was superfluous, though, and I greatly prefer my characters to have nuance, rather than be straight-up goodies/baddies (all the more so these days).

It's no spoiler to reveal that there's no handy graph with great art on the X axis and monstrosity on the Y axis. What it does have is an ample selection of ethical chew-toys. She discusses themes such as: who gets to be considered a genius? How do we ascribe monstrosity differently to male and female artists? Who the hell is included in "we" anyway? To what extent does "our" individual, subjective judgement have any meaning? I liked it a lot.

Well, this was stirring stuff! It makes some of Uhtred of Bebbanburg's escapades look like a church fête!
There's no getting away from its being a matter of masculine heroics in the extreme; part of me wanted to find it all a bit ridiculous on that account. However, I was audio-drawing and more than once I realised my pen had been hovering motionless over the paper for some minutes. Audio is *definitely* the way to go with this.

Library #bookhaul
My InstantPot has long since been promoted from appliance to sous chef.
I've not made much use of the slow cooker function, though. (The air fryer is a new venture: so far it's at risk of becoming known as "the potato machine".)

She does a fine job of setting out her stall, that between the ages of 8 and 40 or so we're effectively hijacked by biology and culture and that midlife is an opportunity to become our true selves. However I found I don't subscribe to the myths about ageing that she assumes are universal, so it wasn't nearly the paradigm shift that was promised. And while she's good on excavating one's authentic dreams, the realising of them is more problematic.

I am so glad I discovered Beth Kempton (via Instagram, of all places)!
She comes across as a thoughtful, genuine and generous person and her books reflect this. This one's accompanying podcast is a great listen, too, and her website offers various supportive freebies (meditations, a writing group workbook...)

I am actually starting to think about writing again (I haven't been able to write since I completed my poetry book a couple of years ago).

Not my usual fair; in fact, had it not been Kyle Gray I would have dismissed it out of hand. I like and trust Kyle: for all his woo-woo he generally comes across as level-headed. From where I'm standing, though, this book is faaaaar out and some of the concepts and vocabulary made me distinctly uncomfortable. On the other hand, some parts made sense of things I've experienced. (I'll just think of them as spirit teachers and take it from there.)

God, I love how she tells a story!
Without intending to, I ended up reading back-to-back pandemic books. The other was for library book group and had all the close-quartered sameness of that time. In contrast, ES delivers another of her quiet books and lets its rich and capacious interiority sing out.

Read for my library's book group.
If I were pitching this I'd say it's a cross between Nina Stibbe's "Love, Nina" and Hazel Prior's "Away With The Penguins".
It's not bad, but for me it was too samey throughout, in terms of both tone and pace. And then it doesn't end so much as stop. ?

Thank you, @Caroline2 😙
I loved her Migrations (in a bleak moody kind of way!) so am looking forward to Wolves.
The Camus is nothing if not pertinent!

I have finally completed the #bookerprize longlist!
I wish I could say I finished on a high but, alas.... ? This had its moments but, goodness, did it test my patience! Many of the "events" happen off the page, in the great chunks of time between chapters, which makes the languorous prose / long-windedness (depending on how fed up I was) all the more frustrating. And I really could have done without that epilogue.

My birthday book haul, from the weekend: I'm a happy woman! ☺️
Thank you @squirrelbrain and @TrishB for "Rivers" and "Decembers". I've had my eye on those for a while.

Truth be told, it lacks the resonance of his Children Of Time trilogy. Instead there are multiple fight scenes, or maybe a kind of Goldberg Variations on the first fight scene. However, I grew to love the crew, and it took my mind off "world events".
If you don't go in expecting an existential crisis (despite its theme of the destruction of worlds bearing sentient life) but just buckle up and go with it, I think you'll enjoy the ride.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2cMcZgAIZS0ZafdW1MDYKU?si=qO2rbsPCSg2DiMb8QNxifg

Just leaving this here, for anyone who needs it today.

#libraryhaul ☺️
Marmalade is the next library group book.
The Messud is my final #bookerprizelonglist title.
The Tchaikovsky is by way of treating myself after showing up for a social activity. 😉

#bookerprizelonglist
My run of ho-hum books continues. ?
It took me to a world I would never have thought to enter otherwise, so I'm grateful for that, and the opening chapter/fight was interesting... but thereafter it proved to be a one-trick pony, until we reach the Space Odyssey-esque ending (wtf was that about?!). Nor do I buy the "competitively hitting seven bells out of eachother as a metaphor for girls maturing into womanhood" angle. Meh.

Readable but I'm perplexed by its making the #bookerprizeshortlist
Sadie's like a generic greetings card: attractive front, blank inside. It's problematic when we spend the entire time in her head as it renders the other characters and events flat, too.
She does make some sharp observations of people at times, so why did she find Bruno (a ten-a-penny boring old fart) beguiling?!
A couple of times it almost became thrilling but then decided not to.

My first book of 2025!
I loved the melancholic, dreamy vibe but it did make the abrupt revelation of Yaiyo's past somewhat jarring: I seem to have had more difficulty assimilating it than she herself did.
And I think if you are going to introduce a taboo relationship (or two!) then it really needs to be given more space and depth if the reader is to have any response besides wanting to push it away.

My 100th, and final, book of 2024.
I enjoyed the evocation of time and place very much, so it's a pick, but truthfully I never quite warmed to either Robert or Dulcie (and was unmoved by Romy's story, possibly because it was told at a further remove). It's a personal thing but I was riled by Robert's horizons being broadened by a toff: as if that world is the real world and all other experience a poor deviation from or distortion of that reality.

Amateurish.
The core concepts strike me as sound and deserving of serious contemplation (and application!) but the whistle-stop tour we're given of these takes up only 50% of the book. The second half launches into surface-level self help territory, as we're told how to set up and maintain an exercise regime, how to make healthy food choices, how to talk to our spouse so as not to escalate conflict etc. It's just weird and uncomfortable. 😣

This year's installment of my annual Last Kingdom fest. ☺️
Are the stories getting formulaic by now? Pretty much, yeah.
Is Uhtred a posturing self-mythologiser? I'd say he matches the description, yes.
Did I thoroughly enjoy these past few days in his company? Absolutely!

Merry Christmas, dear Littens, to all who celebrate. 🎄🎁📚
To those who do not, I wish you the best of Wednesdays. ☺️