As 2023 drags to a close, I’m finishing up my reading project for the year. It’s been an amazing 12 months reading the collected works of Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut in chronological order. If you want a little overview of what I’ve learnt from this project you can read my Irish Times article here. Next year I’ll be reading two more American writers, whose careers overlapped: James Baldwin and Carson McCullers.
Read MoreIt’s almost the end of 2022. It’s been a brilliant reading year. I’ll post my annual round up of my favourite reads in about a week’s time because I hate to end the reading year too early. The Christmas hibernation period is such a great time for curling up with a good book I often find a couple of brilliant reads sneak in right at the end of the year.
Read MoreI think I was possibly a bit deluded after completing Agatha Christie in a single year, but I lost the run of myself last December and though I could manage two authors in 2022. I had intended to read all of Graham Greene AND all of Virginia Woolf.
Read MoreI’m guessing the idea time to compose a list of your favourite caravans in fiction would be the week you publish a collection of linked short stories set in a North Coast Caravan park, or even the week these stories begin airing on Radio 4, or even, (at a pinch) when they’re subsequently repeated on Radio Ulster. I had good intentions. I started a list at the back of my diary. I never quite got round to finishing it.
Read MoreThis year I’m setting myself two quite achievable reading goals which I know I’m going to enjoy. I’ll be reading all Graham Greene and Virginia Woolf’s fiction in chronological order,
Read MoreI suspect we’ll all look back on 2021 as a dreadful year for being alive but a pretty epic reading year.
Read MoreI have very little to say in defence of 2020. It felt like an utter vacuum of a year. It was hard to write. It was hard to think. It was hard to be. Reading was the only thing which came easy to me in 2020.
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