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…
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…
January 27, 2015 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon There are plenty of copies of Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist essay A Room of One’s Own available, new and second hand, but I…
January 20, 2015 Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf Reviewed by Simon I should hang my colours to the mast from the outset: for my money, Virginia Woolf is the greatest writer of…
October 20, 2014 Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcom Review by Victoria Best I’ve been a huge fan of Janet Malcolm since reading her brilliant biography of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, The Silent…
July 22, 2014 The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell My first encounter with Alan Lightman was through his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dreams, a fictional account of the scientist during the…
July 21, 2014 The Legs of Izolda Morgan by Bruno Jasieński Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the…
July 17, 2014 Pleasures and Landscapes by Sybille Bedford Reviewed by Simon Thomas Are you ready to be transported back to postwar Europe? Although this collection of essays was first published as Pleasures and…
April 24, 2014 On Writing by A.L. Kennedy Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I first heard that A.L. Kennedy had written a book called On Writing – now out in paperback – I was…
April 21, 2014 Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s a shame, in some respects, that our divisions on Shiny New Books don’t allow for subcategories within non-ficton, because you…
