Post Tagged with: "Book Review"

  • Book Review: Of course, the ruling class are vampires!

    The best thing about God Save the Queen (Kate Locke) is that it’s clearly a labour of love and that love is infectious. Drawing a world where the aristocracy are literally parasitic on the country they command we see the likes of Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill in a new light […]

     
  • Book Review: The Martian Ambassador

    The Martian Ambassador by Alan K. Baker is a delicious mix of nostalgia harking back to H. G. Wells mixed with a very modern take on a sci-fi Victorian London. Set at the end of the nineteenth century mainly in London we our stiff, middle class heroes contend with the […]

     
  • Book review: China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun

    China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun is classic”New Weird” writing. At nearly every page there’s a new bizarre image or discombobulation that keeps your mind struggling to keep up with the text. This is not the first time when reading Mieville that I’ve found myself thinking things along the lines of […]

     
  • Just Boris: sad, lonely and ineffectual

    David Mentiply has been reading Just Boris: The Irresistible Rise of a Political Celebrity Back in 2009, City Hall blogger Adam Bienkov branded the Mayor ‘Boris the Boring’. This is perhaps not the first caricature that springs to mind when people think of Boris, but it actually turned out to […]

     
  • Book Review: Battle for the East End – Jewish resistance to fascism

    David Rosenberg’s Battle for the East End covers a tremendously important aspect of the fight against fascism in thirties Britain. While many books and articles focus on the left’s response to Oswald Mosley and the near mythic confrontation in Cable Street in 1936 Rosenberg highlights the specific, yet often ignored, role […]

     
  • Book Review: China Mieville’s Kraken

    As we’re talking about the deities of London  it would be an outrage if we didn’t mention China Mieville’s Kraken. Having almost nothing in common with the Rivers of London in style, meaning or intent they do share a sumptuous love of London which, rightly, finds its expression in the mystical. But […]

     
  • Review: Rivers of London

    Although I enjoyed Ben Aaronovich’s Rivers of London I did find myself frequently stopping and thinking “do I like this? Really?”. A supernatural murder mystery set in today’s London of coffee shops, mobile phones and traffic jams might not be to everyone’s taste, but you may well want to give it […]

     
  • Review: Mark Steel’s In Town

    I knew when I picked up Mark Steel’s In Town I was going to enjoy myself. However, what I hadn’t realised was that this was going to be the best book I’d read all year. Really. I do have a nagging feeling that the book was written specifically for me. […]

     
  • Video review: Building London

    I’m quite intrigued by this style of book review by Bibliophile books, you certainly get a browsing in the bookshop experience from it… Looks like a nice Christmas present – I just need to work out who for! Building London: The Making of a Modern Metropolis by Bruce Marshall