Raynor Reads Stuff

Raynor reads stuff:

The random musings of a bookworm

REVIEW: Before the Coffee gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I love Japanese literature and the ones I enjoy the most always have something existential about them. I read the first Before the Coffee Gets Cold a couple of years ago and absolutely adored it. This is the second in the series and there is also a subsequent book called Before Your Memory Fades which,…

May 26, 2023
REVIEW: The Three Electroknights by Stanislaw Lem

We are onto Penguin Modern Classic numero 9 and I give you The Three Electroknights by science fiction/ fantasy writer Stanislaw Lem. Now I know I have mentioned this before but the font on the front of this collection of 50 classics is so hideous I can barely look at it. The merging of the…

May 25, 2023
REVIEW: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

I am very late in introducing myself to Matt Haig. He’s been around a fair while and I have several of his books on my vast and overloaded To Be Read shelves including The Midnight Library but I decided to start with How To Stop Time. I liked the premise of this book – it’s…

May 24, 2023
REVIEW: A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo

Yes this is another children’s book and yes this is by Michael Morpurgo. What can I say? I love Michael Morpurgo’s stories and I have even more sitting patiently on the To Be Read shelves. And I’m not sorry. Along with many other of Morpurgo’s works, this edition of A Medal for Leroy is beautifully…

May 23, 2023
REVIEW: The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller

After the debacle of Gertrude Stein’s Food – number 08 in the Penguin Modern Classics collection and the subject of yesterday’s blog – I desperately needed something that I was going to a) understand and b) enjoy. Step up Elizabeth Speller with The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton. Laurence Bartram is our protagonist in this…

May 22, 2023
REVIEW: Food by Gertrude Stein

I know I said I did not read books I didn’t enjoy. I know. I said that. And I truly believe I shouldn’t read books I don’t enjoy. But I have pledged to read all 50 of the boxed set of Penguin Modern Classics that I bought and this was number 08. It’s too early…

May 21, 2023
REVIEW: Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo

For a Jo Nesbo novel, Blood on Snow is incredibly short. Its 172 pages is less than half that of an average Jo Nesbo thriller but that doesn’t make it any less gripping. I am a huge fan of Scandi Noir and I thoroughly enjoy Nesbo’s page-turners. As a complete aside, I found a children’s…

May 20, 2023
REVIEW: Notes on Nationalism by George Orwell

Here we go, Number 07 in the Penguin Modern Classics is George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism and I am still loathing with a passion that font on the front cover. The double L looks ridiculous. However, the contents of this book are incredibly interesting. This 52-page volume contains three essays written by Orwell in 1945.…

May 19, 2023
REVIEW: The Snowdonia Killings by Simon McCleave

I’ve found a new author. New to me, I mean, not necessarily to you. Simon McCleave was a scriptwriter on television series like Eastenders, Silent Witness and Murder in Suburbia. Now he writes novels and this is the first in a series featuring Detective Inspector Ruth Hunter who has relocated to Wales from the Metropolitan…

May 18, 2023
REVIEW: The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding

When I looked through the list of what I had read last year there was a distinct lack of anything other than novels and so this year I am trying to include more poetry, plays and non-fiction in my reading matter. This comes into the last of those three categories and is just fascinating. Thomas…

May 17, 2023