DeBooks

Books 2025 I started with a much longer list of favourite books and wanted to say something brief about each. But “brief” doesn’t come easily to me. In the end, I said far too much about just a few books. Here are the books: The Queen of the Sky

Today I tell you about ten English novels that delighted my heart this year. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy Like everyone, I’m a devout admirer of Arundhati Roy after The God of Small Things. Mother Mary Comes to Me, with its striking title, is a kind

David Szalay's novel Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize. He is Canadian-Hungarian. A while back Mercia S. Burger discussed the novel here. It doesn't exactly sound like a page turner. She had the following to say about Szalay's protagonist: "István is written as

The wonder of reading should not be underestimated or undervalued. In a year that, like every year, becomes too long, when everything drags its feet and looks tired, there are always books, new books appearing every day. Let me tell you about two books that launched me out of the

Every now and then you open a book that is completely unlike anything you've read before. Blood Book is one such book. It is translated from German; the original title is Blutbuch. It has won German and Swiss prizes, although readers on Amazon seem to have given it

I read three novels with S’s in the titles: A Mouth Full of Salt, The Surf House, and Secrets of the Starlit Sea. In all three, large bodies of water are present. The first is the more literary book, the other two are undiluted suspense. A Mouth Full of

Today Mercia S. Burger holds forth. She is an acclaimed writer and like my friend Louis Gaigher, she only reads literary books. She has a keen, unblinking eye and a way with words. Just so we know what we’re talking about – the British-Hungarian writer David Szalay’s surname is

If you enjoy reading domestic noir, before long you start thinking the male gender is suspicious. It’s as if the male protagonists in every novel merge into a ghastly collage of messy manhood: narcissistic, selfish, bullying, domineering, false, and deceitful. At first romantic and considerate, and again briefly when

I want to discuss three books. I'll start with the least substantial one. The Woman in Ward 9 made me think that I'd recently read it. I was thinking of Ward D by Freida McFadden. Easy mistake, look at the titles and covers: Psychological thrillers like

I’m a crime fiction junkie, but I actually read Jo Nesbo for the sake of the characters and the dynamics between them. The main characters are as ruggedly butch as alley cats, but they possess a sensitive side and a true appreciation of women. Meet Detective Bob Oz. He’