December 7, 2021 Everybody: A Book About Freedom by olivia laing Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Olivia Laing has established herself as a group biographer par excellence, taking as her subjects alcoholic writers for the superb…
November 25, 2021 These Precious Days by Ann Patchett Reviewed by Harriet I’m a great admirer of Ann Patchett’s novels. I read Bel Canto when it first came out and have loved her…
November 11, 2021 Allegorizings by Jan Morris Review by Liz Dexter “If I had any moral principles to declare, I came to realize, they were extremely simplistic. First, there was the…
May 13, 2021 The Hard Crowd, Essays 2000-2020, by Rachel Kushner Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Gallery of Souls I’ve Known Many years ago, novelist Rachel Kushner worked in a bar called the Blue Lamp…
May 6, 2021 In the Garden; Essays on Nature and Growing Review by Hayley Anderton This is the first of the Daunt Books essay collections that I’ve read and I’m mostly impressed. The quality of…
March 16, 2021 Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Joan Didion knows that language is not a windowpane. Clarity, yes; transparency, no. To report a fact requires arranging words….
February 23, 2021 Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo by Sam Mills Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from…
February 2, 2021 Reviewer’s Choice: A New Sublime – Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’…
January 21, 2021 The Passenger: Japan Reviewed by Terence Jagger Early last year, Europa launched a new imprint “for explorers of the world”: The Passenger. Now, the list includes Berlin,…
December 3, 2020 Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamás Review by Peter Reason. This elegant and engaging collection of seven essays by poet and critic Rebecca Tamás—her first prose collection—is beautifully produced as…
October 27, 2020 Happy Half-Hours: Selected Writings of A.A. Milne Review by Simon Thomas You might be familiar with the beautiful little hardbacks from Notting Hill Editions, where they select essays and other writings…
June 16, 2020 James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Edna O’Brien Review by Rob Spence Last year, Weidenfeld and Nicholson reissued Edna O’Brien’s 1999 biography of Joyce, an entertainingly idiosyncratic volume, which is reviewed here….
September 18, 2018 On Rape by Germaine Greer Review by Anna Hollingsworth To say that the statistics are grim is a blatant understatement. One woman in five will experience sexual violence, but…
February 8, 2018 The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell Review by Karen Langley Although George Orwell’s name resonates most strongly with us nowadays because of his great novels – in particular “Nineteen Eighty…
February 1, 2018 The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky Introduced by Rosamund Bartlett Translated by Kenneth Lantz / Olga Shartse Reviewed by Karen Langley Notting Hill Editions will probably need no introduction to…
October 6, 2016 Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Rose France Reviewed by Karen Langley One of my highlights from 2014 was the…
June 28, 2016 The Abundance by Annie Dillard Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Annie Dillard is one of those uncategorisable writers who poke fingers into all sorts of genres. Like Adam Gopnik, Rebecca…
January 26, 2016 Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter, with an Essay by Rosemary Hill Reviewed by Harriet I was a slow starter where Angela Carter was concerned. I was given what I now think of as her masterpiece, Nights…
January 19, 2016 Gratitude by Oliver Sacks Reviewed by Simon I’ve had the privilege of reviewing three different books by Oliver Sacks for Shiny New Books now, but this is the first…
December 10, 2015 Beautiful and Impossible Things by Oscar Wilde Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed…
December 1, 2015 More by Max Beerbohm Reviewed by Simon Max Beerbohm’s name is known today, if at all, as the author of Zuleika Dobson – a curious sort of modernised Greek myth,…
October 13, 2015 Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson Reviewed by Simon This is the third Shiny New Books issue in which I’ve had the privilege of writing about Shirley Jackson’s works –…
July 9, 2015 Cyclogeography by Jon Day Reviewed by Victoria The term ‘psychogeography’ may sound unwieldy but it’s actually rather an intriguing and lovely notion. It ties together the ideas that…
April 9, 2015 Portrait Inside My Head by Phillip Lopate Reviewed by Victoria Readers may recognise Phillip Lopate’s name from the anthologies of American essay writing for which he is the editor, though in…
January 29, 2015 Where I’m Reading From by Tim Parks Reviewed by Annabel Many of us who are booklovers enjoy nothing more than reading a book about books. I’m familiar with Tim Parks through…
