Raynor Reads Stuff

Raynor reads stuff:

The random musings of a bookworm

REVIEW: Demos Rising

Cards on the table, I ordered Demos Rising, published by Fly on the Wall Press in 2022, solely because a friend and former colleague of mine, Rachel Swabey, is one of the 29 international creatives whose work is featured in this anthology. If it wasn’t because I wanted to read Rachel’s work, I would probably…

January 12, 2023
REVIEW: The Anthology of English Folk Tales

I’ve always been interested in folk tales, their origins, the art of oral storytelling etc etc, in fact I start a 10-week course next week – An Introduction to English Folklore – so when I saw this little beauty, I couldn’t resist buying it. First published in 2016 (my edition is 2019) and published by…

January 10, 2023
REVIEW: Exit

January 9, 2023
REVIEW: The Optimist’s Daughter

Having cheated slightly and read a couple of children’s books this week (Stairway to Doom by Robert Quackenbush and Michael Rosen’s A to Z of children’s poetry by various authors), I decided to tackle something a little more heavyweight and chose 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty. This book was first published…

January 8, 2023
REVIEW: Daughters of the House

Daughters of the House is written by Michele Roberts and published in paperback in 1993. It was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize and won the WH Smith Literary Award the same year. I had not read it before but I am on a bit of a mission to read as many Booker Prize shortlisted…

January 6, 2023
REVIEW: Stairway to Doom

I feel as though this is a big, fat cheat… but it’s a book and I read it so it is going on the list. When I noticed the other day that I had read no authors with surnames that began with Q or U last year, I called up the Wikipedia page with an…

January 5, 2023
REVIEW: Miscellany One

I have a question. Are you meant to be able to understand Dylan Thomas or was his whole raison d’etre to be confusing and obscure? In my quest to read more non-novels this year, I have just worked my way through Miscellany One, first published in 1963 (my version was 1976), that includes a selection…

January 4, 2023
REVIEW: Michael Rosen’s A to Z

I’m getting in quick this year with some poetry, as I only read two poetry books during the whole of 2022. Michael Rosen’s A to Z: The best children’s poetry from Agard to Zephaniah, also counts as an anthology, of which I read none last year. So ticks in two reading goal boxes already. Published…

January 3, 2023
REVIEW: The Pachinko Parlour

Here it is, my first read of the year – The Pachinko Parlour written by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the original French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins and published in English in 2022. It’s a compact novel, running to 171 pages and so was a quick read for my first of 2023. Elisa Shua Dusapin…

January 2, 2023
2023 reading goals

Happy New Year. May 2023 bring you health and happiness and lots and lots of new reading matter. It’s New Year’s Day and so I’m considering my reading goals for the next 12 months. As I mentioned the other day, I was extremely lucky to receive a literary abundance for Christmas ( here’s the link)…

January 1, 2023