New on the blog today, my thoughts on THE BATTLE OF THE VILLA FLORITA by Rumer Godden. An immersive, evocative, psychologically astute novel about the impact of a woman’s adulterous affair & subsequent divorce on her children. A 5-star knockout read for me! jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/06/02/t...

One of the strangest novels I've read, and the third winner of the James Tait Memorial Prize, Walter de la Mare's Memoirs of a Midget: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/06/01/m...

Hard to believe this satire on celebrity was written over a hundred years ago.

One of the strangest novels I've read, and the third winner of the James Tait Memorial Prize, Walter de la Mare's Memoirs of a Midget: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/06/01/m...

A couple of interesting new titles coming from Penguin Classics - next year will see a new translation by Bryan Karetnyk of Ivan Bunin's autobiographical The Life of Arseniev, written over 12 years, and previously published in English as The Well of Days in 1933 without the fifth part.

"He feared his dreams." #traindreams kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/06/01/h...

A few thoughts on twelve years of blogging roughghosts.com/2026/05/31/a...

"I knew there couldn't be lands where vines grow up to the sky, where you could lose yourself along the banks of streams while hunting wild cyclamens. I just wanted to console her. When you're little, you don't know."

New on the blog today, I've written about THE LADY BANDIT by Emilia Pardo Bazán (tr. Robert M. Fedorchek). I loved these darkly comic tales of fair-weather servants, trigger-happy priests and a notorious robber who finally meets her match! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/28/t...

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize 2026! 1streading.wordpress.com/2025/06/08/o...

Interesting but not revelatory - an abundance of quotations sometimes getting in the way of clarity - and ignoring Edwin and Willa Muir is unforgivable!

Agnes Owens: Out of the Margins Agnes Owens (1926–2014) was born 100 years ago #OTD, 24 May. This short film presents Owens as a writer shaped by working-class life, whose fiction exposed power, resisted sentimentality, & centred overlooked voices. A 🎂🧵 💙📚 1/7 www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYR...

A Kafkaesque tale from French writer Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, The Messengers (translated by Edward Gauvin): 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/23/t...

New on the blog today, I've written about A WORKING MOTHER by Agnes Owens. A prickly, slightly surreal portrait of the frustrations of marriage, work & motherhood, oscillating between barbed humour & dismal tragedy, all narrated by a woman on the edge. 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/24/a...

A Kafkaesque tale from French writer Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, The Messengers (translated by Edward Gauvin): 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/23/t...

“I don’t know, Heinz, are you the one or aren’t you?” My Mother’s Silver Fox by Alois Hotschnig, tr by @tesslewis.bsky.social roughghosts.com/2026/05/23/i...

Some new arrivals: Claudia Pineiro's 2020 novel Cathedrals, translated by Frances Riddle and published by @charcopress.com - a new Pineiro novel is always an event!

It’s Agnes Owens’s centenary on Sunday. I was thrilled to be able to write about her life and her bitterly funny books for @theobserveruk.bsky.social, talking to her family, her first readers (“What the fuck is this?!”), her first publisher, and fans like Douglas Stuart:

New on the blog today, my thoughts on OTHER PEOPLE by Celia Dale, in which a teenager's life is upended when her father returns from Australia after a mysterious 12-year absence. An unsettling coming-of-age novel from one of the queens of suburban noir! 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/19/o...

The 100 greatest short story collections would also be interesting!

Popped into the Edinburgh Bookshop yesterday. Literally ten minutes.

10 novels that should be in the Guardian's 100 greatest novels! The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) Pigeons on the Grass (1951) Woman in the Dunes (1962) The Case Worker (1969)

Seems appropriate to have seen this on the day Hearts lost (or at least didn't win) the league.

I've read 57 from the list which seems to be above average, though it is largely down to a concerted effort to read the classics of English literature when I was younger. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

I think the best way to enjoy this list, which contains lots of predictable choices (made as it was by committee), is to find a book you like, click to see who voted for it, and then look at the voters' other top 10 choices. You might find something else you like that you haven't read.

Almost exactly twenty years between my first National Theatre of Scotland production and my latest.

"Strange is always truer" Samanta Schweblin's most recent collection, translated by Megan McDowell, Good and Evil and Other Stories: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/g...

New on the blog today, I've written about A BEAUTIFUL LOAN by Mary Costello. A closely observed, character-driven novel about a woman coming to terms with who she is, the choices she has made and what she needs from life to give it meaning. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/a...

I loved Elizabeth Jane Howard's FALLING - a dark, unsettling, incredibly immersive tale of deception, loneliness, control, and erosion of trust. I must read more EJH! readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2024/12/04/f... #BlogArchives

"Strange is always truer" Samanta Schweblin's most recent collection, translated by Megan McDowell, Good and Evil and Other Stories: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/g...

New on the blog today, my thoughts on THE DAY OF THE OWL by Leonardo Sciascia. A brilliant, groundbreaking crime novella that explores the mafia's role in organised crime and the codes of silence which act as barriers to the justice system. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/10/t...

The annual Christian Aid book sale in Edinburgh is always worth a visit.

"This is not the kind of story someone tells to pass the time, and it is not the kind of story you listen to to pass the time." My new blog post on Friedrich Torberg's brilliant novella, VENGEANCE IS MINE. Translated by Stephanie Gorrell Ortega. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/05/07/v...

A rediscovered Soviet satire - over at #shinynewbooks! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/05/07/a...

The second in Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, The Devil Book, translated by Caroline Waight: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/06/t...

The second in Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, The Devil Book, translated by Caroline Waight: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/06/t...

New on the blog today. I've written about INCIDENTS IN THE RUE LAUGIER by Anita Brookner. I loved this precise, psychologically astute novel in which a young woman's life is cruelly shaped by an ill-advised love affair at an impressionable age. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/05/i...

Enjoyed seeing more, and more varied, work by one of my favourite artists, Joan Eardley, at the Gallery of Modern Art today.

For Star Wars day, give us your top 10 sci-fi films. This I can do! Planet of the Apes (1968) Silent Running Blade Runner Alien Logan's Run Under the Skin 2001: A Space Odyssey Invasion of the Body Snatchers Dune (2021) and, of course, Star Wars

"... it's important you understand that at the event horizon you'll no longer be visible to those beyond..." The black hole of statelessness in Balsam Karam's Event Horizon (translated by Saskia Vogel).

"I'd rather spend time with the living." #julianbarnes #nothingtobefrightenedof kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/i...

Number three in my Brian Moore read through, The Luck of Ginger Coffey - having demonstrated how awful it is to be alone, he now reveals that marriage may not always go smoothly: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/t...

Number three in my Brian Moore read through, The Luck of Ginger Coffey - having demonstrated how awful it is to be alone, he now reveals that marriage may not always go smoothly: 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/t...

Nearing the end of reading all Simenon's Maigret novels, this, written in 1971, is unusual in specifying the year is 1965, although this does allow Maigret to remain 55.

New on the blog today, I've written about some of my favourite books set in New York. Featuring books by Edith Wharton, Vivian Gornick, Ursula Parrott and more! #BookSky 💙📚 @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social @dauntbookspub.bsky.social @mcnallyeditions.com jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/01/n...

Still my favourite found poem.

"Never think about the ball that's gone. It's gone, whether it was good or bad it's gone just the same. There's never any ball except the one you've got in front of you."

What would you do if someone sent you a package of stolen books? Sara Mesa's Scar (translated by Adriana Nodal-Tarafa) 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/04/26/s...

I would definitely be up for an imprint that only published such books, such as Ballard's The Wind from Nowhere and Lessing's Retreat to Innocence.

What would you do if someone sent you a package of stolen books? Sara Mesa's Scar (translated by Adriana Nodal-Tarafa) 1streading.wordpress.com/2026/04/26/s...