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much about his sexual awakening as a childhood obsession with an older woman quickly gets transferred to her more age appropriate daughter during a summer vacation in the current day thread max is mourning the loss of his wife and is driven to visit the site of these past dalliances we learn that the marriage was a little complicated and there s an almost estranged daughter in the mix as well the unreliability of memory and impossibility of learning the truth about the past are the main things here but there is also a mystery to solve and a revelation near the end gave me the delicious readerly sensation of being both surprised but also believing this is the only way for the story to end then i read the secret scripture this is my second barry and part of a different series than days without end which i read when it was up for the booker another commonality of these authors they are often up for the booker and occasionally win barry is a little less seedy than banville but there are many parallels a man in his sixties recently widowed after a complicated marriage no children this time but nearing the end of his career in psychiatry both men s stories are told in the form of a diary sort of we understand that max is writing about his life instead of what he should be writing the manuscript of his next book while dr grene is writing in his commonplace book instead of what he should be writing a psychiatric assessment of a 100 year old patient in his care roseanne dr grene must find placements for all his patients as the hospital is about to be demolished roseanne has been institutionalized for about sixty years outliving anyone who could tell dr grene why she was put there in the first place at the same time roseanne is writing an account of her life a testimony of herself there s no parallel narrative in the sea though there are certainly women and girls who transgress norms in a repressive culture that punishes women who don t fall in line the secret scripture is also more overtly about irish history it can t help but be with a character who was born around 1910 in sligo roseanne s father husband and brothers in law are historical actors in various ways but it s roseanne who survives and tells all of their stories dr grene could have admitted roseanne to a hospital and been done with it but he becomes obsessed with unravelling the mystery of her life likewise roseanne would be forgiven for giving up after living through unimaginable hardship historical and personal but she is just as driven to unravel things though it s her own life it s no less mysterious like the sea the mystery comes together in a way that would have been contrived in the hands of almost any other writer the last minute revelations i ll admit prevented these novels from being my favourite from either author there is something a little too neat here even though the stories are expertly written and the endings feel earned and especially in the case of the barry cathartic but a middling barry or banville novel is better than almost anything else out there so i m not complaining written by lauratfrey 9 comments posted in 1001 books reviews tagged with readingirelandmonth26 irish literature john banville sebastian barry the sea the secret scripture february 23 2026 these are my heart books from a promotional video for the weezer snuggie apparently a real thing i ve been reading in bed for fifteen years after five years i offered some blogging wisdom after ten i shared some of my favourite blogging moments now inspired by weezer s heart songs a red album track that was deemed cringe by my 14 year old he s a pinkerton fan i present to you my heart books to paraphrase rivers cuomo these are the books i keep readin early works or wuthering heights and things like wuthering heights wuthering heights by emily brontë if i had to pick one it would be this one i read this when i was 16 and in love for the first time i didn t have a chance the stone angel by margaret laurence turned me into a real reader whatever that means read around the same time as wh without the benefit of seeming relatable it had to stand on the strength of the writing villette by charlotte brontë if pressed i will admit that this is a better book than wh love in the time of cholera by gabriel garcía márquez this is what people think wh is a sweeping epic romance the crimson petal and the white by michel faber if you must insert grittiness into your victorian novels do it right you hear me ms fennell later works or things i read after starting the blog having kids the bear by claire cameron completely riveting and changed my mindset about that old kids are resilient saying infinite jest by david foster wallace proved to myself that i could still read a book after a severe case of baby brain rooster and coq by ali bryan rooster is hilarious if you have young kids and the sequel kept me sane ish the night after my house burned down the cat s table by michael ondaatje a minor work but happens to contain one of my favourite lines in all of literature and a child narrator that i can get on board with no pun intended he s on a boat wolf hall by hilary mantel a major work with the best opening line in literature the only cringe part for me is when he sings debbie gibson tell me that you think we re all alone because obviously that was tiffany i know this is a joke but as a debbie gibson girl it s not funny written by lauratfrey 26 comments posted in features tagged with favourite books weezer heart songs january 6 2026 it s always sunny in la mancha i discovered two beloved and durable classics in 2025 but only one counts towards my 1 001 books challenge don quixote by cervantes translated by edith grossman don quixote s length means it becomes an undertone to whatever else is going on in your life during the weeks okay months you are reading it for critic ariel dorfman don quixote is forever linked to the coup in chile as she and 30 other refugees read it to each other in 1973 while hiding in an embassy ed simon an editor at lithub connects cervante s imprisonment and themes of freedom in the book with the kidnapping and imprisonment of immigrants in modern america as for me i read don quixote dq hereafter unless i mean the character while binge watching it s always sunny in philadelphia iasip hereafter and now it is inextricably linked with the gang s adventures this is perhaps not as meaningful as others experiences but as i watched and read i started to suspect that cervantes invented the sitcom rather than the novel which he is often credited with this feels significant as sitcoms are dying out after overtaking novels as a dominant narrative form in the twentieth century so while i m interested in what cervantes has to say about freedom imagination and the dying days of the spanish empire my brain was primed to see him inventing the form that eventually led to danny devito writhing on the floor naked and covered in hand sanitizer so rather than write a review of dq as you hardly need me to tell you if you should read it i m going to look at all the ways in which dq is echoed in iasip a show that premiered exactly four hundred years after the first part of the ingenious gentleman don quixote of la mancha was published in 1605 continue reading written by lauratfrey 17 comments posted in 1001 books reviews tagged with 1001 books don quixote it s always sunny in philadelphia november 12 2025 small boat by vincent delecroix translated by helen stevenson welcome to novellas in november 2025 in which i try to catch up on reviews by tackling the novellas i ve read so far this year this novella stuck with me not only because it is so good but because my interpretation of it seems to be a rare one and maybe a wrong one so to the extent that a philosophical novel based on true events which i may have interpreted incorrectly can be spoiled beware of spoilers ahead continue reading written by lauratfrey 21 comments posted in reviews uncategorized tagged with novnov novellas in november september 23 2025 10 books of summer makes way for 1 book of fall by any metric summer is over school s in and i have a high school student leaves are falling and i have a disappointing tally of reviews from my 10 books of summer but i have big plans for fall 10 books of summer wrap up less by andrew sean greer actually reviewed and enjoyed the netanyahus by joshua cohen finished past deadline and unlikely to review given the effort that would take for a book that most people read back in 2021 it s worth a read though if you re holding out athena by john banville my least favourite of the book of evidence trilogy but still a stand out might tackle the sea next small boat by vincent delacroix tr helen stevenson this book took me by surprise should have won the ibp probably i didn t read the winner so i can t really say there s a monster behind the door by gaëlle bélem tr karen fleetwood and laëtitia saint loubert a strong start but it kind of petered out in the end playing hard by peter unwin a review copy a collection of essays about games and sports did not get to this it s a tough one an author i enjoy writing about a subject i m not terribly interested in don quixote by cervantes tr edith grossman see below mornings without mii by mayumi inaba tr ginny tapley takemori finished in an airport sobbed yoga by emmanuel carrère tr john lambert actually reviewed and enjoyed ripping it to shreds on the calculation of volume ii by solvej balle tr barbara haveland reviewed and enjoyed november 18th pub date of the third book in english cannot come fast enough apologies to tara who would certainly prefer to get to the 19th 1 book of fall preview if i am going to read one book this fall it will be don quixote i tried and failed a few times over the summer getting no farther than the introduction and first few chapters but i m on chapter 8 now and believe i am locked in as my kids would say so far i am struck by how this novel often touted as the first novel is about someone who went crazy from reading too many novels well romances in light of recent moral panics like this one i am curious about when and how the act of reading fiction went from being indulgent and ruinous see also northanger abbey to virtuous and edifying if you ve read don quixote and have any tips or resources for me please share novnov to the rescue what about all those books of summer that i didn t properly review luckily most of them are novellas and would qualify for my favourite alliterative book blog event novellas i n november i would really like to write about small boat as i have a theory about it that is either so obvious that no one talks about it or so out there that i will look like an idiot can t wait to find out which i also want to talk about dua lipa s book club and this was a recent pick so a perfect way in a disappointing review tally but i did read 8 10 and started one more onward the introduction is by harold bloom who features rather prominently in the netanyahus in a strange coincidence or bookish serendipity written by lauratfrey 9 comments posted in 1001 books reading roundups tagged with novnov 20 books of summer don quixote novellas in november august 6 2025 on the calculation of volume ii by solvej balle translated by barbara haveland on the calculation of volume ii didn t feel as magic as book i read my review if you aren t familiar with the premise of this series it took me weeks to read when it should have only taken days after a year of gloomy continental november 18s tara decides to impose some seasonality she travels north to experience winter then south for spring and summer finally settling in düsseldorf once she was done chasing the seasons i started to feel the magic again but while she travelled around getting into various scrapes a sprained ankle a mugging i found myself pondering things like how many november 18s she s really lived through we know she s done 367 in a row when this book opens and about 1 000 of them by the end but how many before all this or to put it explicitly how old is she i thought i had found a definitive answer but when i came back to grab a link for this review the links are dead only the result previews linger the search results preview still says she is 29 but clicking through to the goodreads page today i find no mention of her age at all the same preview to page disparity exists on net galley and the booker international prize reading guide which i swear to god said 29 when i clicked through a few weeks ago but now says tara is in her late 20s it s an eerie feeling not as eerie as tara noticing a hotel guest dropping a piece of bread in the same exact way at the exact same time day after day of course it s eerie in the opposite way i can t re create what i saw i can still see it but it s just out of reach all this pondering led to even more pondering which november 18 is tara reliving we know that she s 29 and these books were published in danish in 2020 so tara could be a millennial born in 1990 reliving november 18 2019 we also know that balle conceived of the idea in 1987 so tara could be a boomer born in 1958 reliving november 18 1987 making her roughly balle s age but smart phones exist in tara s world though they aren t ubiquitous and tara carries information on a usb stick not in the cloud which puts her squarely at the end of the aughts or the early 2010s tara is in fact an xennial my age this threw me for a loop at first but it makes sense a tech averse antiquarian book dealer circa 2010 is probably just the type of young person who could live off the grid like this tara doesn t turn to the internet for answers or resources during her travels and she s able to forget to charge her phone eventually tossing it i can t relate but in 2010 it was still possible i could relate to tara s obsession with rome i love a good wikipedia rabbit hole a roman coin she obtains in an early november 18 acts like a talisman and around day 900 it becomes a fixation she gets back online to see if the key to her time warp is somewhere in the ancient world learning about rome replaces her fixation on seasons and weather that drove most of this volume which replaced her fixation on the calendar year and the rotation of the planets which drove the first eventually tara takes her obsession offline and audits a roman history class at a local university where she seems to meet some fellow travellers in a last page cliffhanger at this point 29 year old tara is also 32 year old tara having lived through nearly three years worth of november 18s by the time book iii comes out on november 18 of course and we find out what happens next 44 year old me will be 45 with only one additional november 18 under my belt i only wish it could be november 18 2010 as i was on my first maternity leave and my emails suggest i was mostly concerned with kindermusic classes and exchanging recipes with my sister in one exchange i aske...