My initial thoughts on the International Booker Prize long list: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/24/i...

My initial thoughts on the International Booker Prize long list: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/24/i...

Another review for @stujallen.bsky.social's Hungarian Literature Month, Magda Szabo's Katalin Street: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/k...

New on the blog today, I've written about FREEZING POINT by Anders Bodelsen (tr. Joan Tate). I loved this chilling dystopian nightmare shot through with absurdist, deadpan humour - another knockout addition to the Faber Editions series! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/f...

Latest book club read, much loved by all (with one complaint about lack of speech marks). My first Kevin Barry but not my last.

My new blog post on Dino Buzzati's CATASTROPHE AND OTHER STORIES - a superb collection drenched in fear and paranoia. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/c...

In case you missed it, my (generally futile) attempts to predict the International Booker Prize long list.

George Saunders at a packed event in Edinburgh last night, his first (but hopefully not last) time in Scotland.

My annual (and often wildly wrong) International Booker Prize predictions: @thebookerprizes.com 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/i...

My annual (and often wildly wrong) International Booker Prize predictions: @thebookerprizes.com 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/i...

New on the blog today, I've written about THE EMPUSIUM by Olga Tokarczuk (tr Antonia Lloyd-Jones). I loved this wonderfully sly health resort horror story in which the true horrors are the misogynistic views of men, entrenched in early 20th-century society. jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/t...

New from @faberbooks.bsky.social editions, the first appearance of Swedish writer Brigiita Trotzig in English (translated by Saskia Vogel), Queen: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/q...

New on my blog today, I've written about Sarah Campion's MAKESHIFT, an excellent, absorbing novel set in the 1930s that captures a German Jewish woman's life in exile. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/m...

The church that falls again will rise again: A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness, tr. by Philip Roughton @archipelagobooks.bsky.social roughghosts.com/2026/02/12/t...

New from @faberbooks.bsky.social editions, the first appearance of Swedish writer Brigiita Trotzig in English (translated by Saskia Vogel), Queen: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/q...

winstonsdad.blog/2011/06/28/c... sad news of the passing of Cees Nooteboom the greatest Dutch writer of his generation he gave an interview to the blog 15 years ago

New on the blog today for #ReadIndies, I've written about some of my favourite books from NYRB Classics. Featuring books by Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Comyns, J. L. Carr and more! @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #BookSky 💙📚 #TranslationThurs jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/s...

For those of us who read The Fountain in the Forest in 2018, this is very exciting news indeed!

New on the blog today I've written about STORIES FOR MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS, another excellent anthology from the @blpublishing.bsky.social Women Writers series. Featuring stories by Maeve Brennan, A.S. Byatt, Jeanette Winterson & more! #BookSky #ReadIndies 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/08/s...

Rereading this for the first time and it's much more interesting than I remember.

For @stujallen.bsky.social's Hungarian Literature Month. George Konrad's The Case Worker (translated by Paul Aston), possibly the most depressing novel I have ever read: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/t...

For @stujallen.bsky.social's Hungarian Literature Month. George Konrad's The Case Worker (translated by Paul Aston), possibly the most depressing novel I have ever read: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/t...

New on the blog today. I've written about THE WATERFALL by Margaret Drabble. An intriguing novel about an illicit love affair which raises questions about how we choose to frame and relate stories to one another. How can we trust what we are being told? 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/t...

Some eerie tales from a master of the short story - Bora Chung's The Midnight Timetable (translated by @antonhur.com) 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/01/t...

Some eerie tales from a master of the short story - Bora Chung's The Midnight Timetable (translated by @antonhur.com) 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/02/01/t...

I'm now at that age where I'm still working but people who haven't seen me for a while ask me if I'm still working.

There's no other writer I'd rather listen to than Ali Smith!

Two stories intertwine across time in Kirstine Reffstrup's Iron Lung, translated by Hunter Simpson and published by Peirene Press: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/i...

Two stories intertwine across time in Kirstine Reffstrup's Iron Lung, translated by Hunter Simpson and published by Peirene Press: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/i...

New on the blog today, my thoughts on IN FARTHEST SEAS by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore). I loved this profound, intimate and deeply moving elegy to Cenzo Monti, Romano’s husband of fifty years. Fans of Annie Ernaux might appreciate this. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/i...

Going to see Andy White @traversetheatre.bsky.social tonight 40 years after buying his first album.

On the Ramblings today, for the #japaneseliteraturechallenge and #januaryinjapan I explore a heartbreaking short work, Grave of the Fireflies. More here: kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/b...

Writing toward the endless horizon: Landscape with Landscape by Gerald Murnane roughghosts.com/2026/01/26/w...

For Burns' Night, an extract from Matthew Fitt's Kate o Shanter's Tale - what happens when Tam finally arrives home.

For Burns Night. Wrap yr lugs round this beauty. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ7o...

Alasdair Gray & Robert Burns - Pictured is Alasdair Gray’s 1953 Tam O’Shanter, inspired by Robert Burns. A fierce champion of Scots, Gray shows Tam riding home below as witches dance to bagpipes in the haunted kirk.

The first step on my journey through Brian Moore's novels, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/24/t...

Atween November’s end and noo there’s really nithin else tae do but climb inside a brindlet coo and dream o Spring… —W.N. Herbert, “Rabbie, Rabbie, Burning Bright” in OMNESIA (Remix), @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social 2013 Warming up for #BurnsNight #poem www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/rabbie-...

The first step on my journey through Brian Moore's novels, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/24/t...

On the blog today, I spend time with a book by the bats but entertaining John Franklin Bardin - more here! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/o...

New on the blog today, I've written about more of my favourite London novels. Including books by Anita Brookner, Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Pym and many more! #BookSky #London 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/l...

On the Ramblings today, my thoughts on the truly magnificent Is A River Alive? by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social - what a book! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/p...

My latest #JanuaryInJapan review takes us far into the future with Hiromi Kawakami's 'Under the Eye of the Big Bird' (translated by Asa Yoneda, published by Granta Books), a novel telling us all about the human race, and how it ends... tonysreadinglist.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/u...

For #JanuaryinJapan my first experience of the 'other' Murakami, Ryu (translated by Ralph McCarthy), Piercing: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/p...

For #JanuaryinJapan my first experience of the 'other' Murakami, Ryu (translated by Ralph McCarthy), Piercing: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/p...

New on the blog today, I've written about the first novel in Olivia Manning's superb semi-autobiographical LEVANT TRILOGY - The Danger Tree. An acutely perceptive portrait of the early years of a fraught marriage set against the advancing front of WW2. 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/t...

1. B B King at the Playhouse (Edinburgh), my first. 2. Belle & Sebastian at the Carnegie Hall (Dunfermline) with a brass band. 3. Richard Thompson at St Mary's Cathedral (Edinburgh). 4. Rab Noakes/Michael Marra, Parkway Hotel (Kirkcaldy) 5. Bob Dylan, Usher Hall (Edinburgh), 2024.

Coming from the increasingly excellent @faberbooks.bsky.social editions next month, the first appearance in English (translated by Saskia Vogel) of Swedish writer Brigitta Trotzig.

I loved Sylvia Townsend Warner's stunning, funny, richly imagined historical novel, THE CORNER THAT HELD THEM. My thoughts: readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/01/16/t...

It's the centenary of the wonderful Agnes Owens' birth this year. Her books are being reissued & a satellite archive has officially opened within the Alasdair Gray archive. I spoke to her son, John, & wrote about this "most unfairly neglected of Scottish authors" in the @heraldscotland.bsky.social.