I’m beginning this Arts review with my reading journey that included three of the novels short-listed for the 2021 International Booker Prize – two translated into English from French and one from Spanish. Subsequently, I read another seven novels from around the world: three from America, one from the UK, one from Egypt, one from Barbados and one from across … Read More
As usual, I’ve read a diverse range of books, watched a number of movies and seen some wonderful plays over the past few months, taking me to all corners of the world. One of the reasons I love all of these stories is because they introduce me to ideas and take me into places and characters I would never normally … Read More
At the end of my last Arts Update (August 2020), I was part way through reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and about to start David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue. I would highly recommend both of these novels, but especially Hamnet. Set in seventeenth-century Warwickshire (England), Hamnet is a beautifully written fictionalisation of the ups and downs of William Shakespeare’s family and particularly … Read More
BOOKS READ I spent the holiday period (December and January) perusing everyone’s ‘best of 2019’ lists (especially in the Guardian, the New York Times and the NZ Listener) and reading the novels that ‘crossed over’ many of these lists. In all, I read 13 novels in this period. My favourites, by far, were all by American writers and two of … Read More