About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Richard Cohen
Rave The Times (UK) ... an enthralling investigation into the ways in which the background of historians affected and affects the way they present the past. Using such lively material as autobiographies (for which historians have had a predictable fondness), letters and the comments of contemporaries, he brings to life Herodotus, Tacitus, Muhammad, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Gibbon, Marx and Churchill as well as the modern tele-historians Mary Beard and Simon Schama. Black history and \'herstory\', novelists and journalists, Bible stories and military campaigns, Putin’s revision of Russian history: all pass under his consistently entertaining scrutiny. There are memorable anecdotes galore ... Cohen’s warm, well-modulated voice underlines how much he has enjoyed constructing his historical Tower of Babel. This is one of those books that I’ve enjoyed listening to so much that I’ve also bought a hard copy.
Stephen King
Rave The Times (UK) ... wholly compulsive ... [Bill Summers\'s alter ego] Paul Sparks’s voice has warmth, drive and versatility, and King lards the narrative with literary reference...and jibes against Trump, offering teasing glimpses of The Shining’s spooky Overlook Hotel in an elegiac finale. A tour de force.
Richard Osman
Rave The Times (UK) .. an ingenius plot ... Each is a gem of a character with a rich backstory ... Even more compelling is the book’s fixer, Bogdan, a Polish builder whose resourcefulness outdoes Jack Reacher’s ... a feelgood story that wittily reflects society as it is rather than beating the drum of a fashionable cause ... Osman\'s characters...[have] comic flair.
Laura Purcell
Positive The Times ... unsparingly gothic ...Nathalie Boscombe, already versed in horror readings, imaginatively varies her voice, enunciating Dorothea’s puzzled naiveties in crisp, stilted accents, then presenting Ruth, the more sympathetic character, in a warmer way, usually humble, at times heart-rendingly angry.
Carlos Rovelli, Trans. by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell
Positive The Times (UK) ...a book that reviews all of the best scientific thinking about the perennial mystery of time, from relativity to quantum physics to the inexorable second law of thermodynamics. Meanwhile, he always returns to us frail human beings — we who struggle to understand not only the external world of atoms and galaxies but also the internal world of our hearts and our minds.
Rosamund Young
Positive The Times Young combines humour and enthusiasm to convince us that if animals are not brought up in constricted conditions but are allowed to roam freely, they reveal their true characters ... Her book is a powerful tract against the restricted lives endured by so many farmed animals.
Penelope Lively
Rave The Times (UK) It is a rambling and informative celebration of life, human and vegetable ... in this wise and perceptive book, she considers changes in gardening fashions and the way that gardens have been represented by artists...as well as novelists and writers ... She offers up her favorite plants and her pet hates with wry humor, and beats a drum for the importance of gardening for the body, soul and local community.