About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Paul Caruana Galizia
Positive The Financial Times (UK) \"...devastatingly compelling ... With proximity comes bias. Given the circumstances, that is entirely understandable. But the blanket picture of a venal elite feels just a little too convenient. Galizia’s argument in a nutshell: \'Malta’s post-independence constitution had effectively renamed colonial governors as prime ministers.\' His mother would agree, however, which is perhaps the point. And it is in Daphne’s role as mother (as well as wife and friend) where this book really sings.\
Dorthe Nors tr. Caroline Waight
Rave The Financial Times (UK) Such frankness is as rare as it is refreshing in modern travel writing, a genre so vulnerable to the shallow and saccharine. Like the raw, elegant landscape she sets out to describe, Nors’ prose blends the delicate with the direct ... It is the sea, however, where Nors really reveals her mastery ... Touchingly personal and poetic, A Line in the World makes no effort to sell its subject. Instead, its 14 short chapters see Nors tussle with a place brimming with memories and strangeness, where storms surge and lighthouses blink. Fun, Jutland may not be, but it sure sounds fascinating.
Matthieu Aikins
Rave The Spectator This isn’t a reconstructed account, pasted together from secondhand sources; it is embedded journalism in the raw, a personal dispatch from behind the lines of Europe’s intractable migrant crisis ... Aikins’s vivid prose helps the story canter along ... For insights into the mechanics of illegal migration The Naked Don’t Fear the Water offers much to would-be asylum seekers — as well as to those trying to stop them ... More problematic is Aikins’s own role in this human drama. Genuine as his travails are, this, ultimately, isn’t his struggle ... Ethical quibbles aside, this richly reported account humanizes the migrant crisis in a way few books have before.
Simon Kuper
Rave Financial Times (UK) \"... gripping ... packed with managerial tips and tricks, from training routines (a chain-smoker, Cruyff favoured ball skills over the gym) to strategy ... But the book’s appeal goes further. At its heart, this is an intimately told story about how to create a winning organisational culture—and how, by avoiding Barça’s mistakes, not to lose it. Offered unprecedented access, Kuper’s interviews range from board members to scouts. Little escapes his keen eye ... Business readers looking for insights will be sadly disappointed ... There’s also little for gossip-hungry fans ... Instead, it offers a grounded and often witty peek behind the scenes. “ \
Lamorna Ash
Rave Financial Times (UK) Part coming-of-age memoir, part anthropological study, Dark, Salt, Clear glistens with deftly told snippets and character-rich stories: about the habits of fish and the art of catching them; about the bifurcating life of sea and shore; about \'salt-licked winds\' and squawking seabirds; and, perhaps most poignantly, about Lamorna Ash herself, the \'emmet\' or outsider, who so desperately desires to belong ... When she turns to issues such as quota revisions or Brexit (which has near-universal support in fishing communities), Ash does so not in facts and figures but via the lived realities of the fishermen ... With graceful lyricism and endearing humility, Ash gives this rage both voice and face.
William Atkins
Rave The Financial Times We live on a crowded planet. The once unexplored corners of the world are all mapped and measured. To travel nowadays is to see what others have seen, to step where others have stepped ... For some, this is a blessing. In an age of GPS and smartphones, we need never get lost. Swipe and we know where we are. Click and up comes the nearest burger joint. Yet for the intrepid travel writer, this is a problem. Where on earth to go? ... In this rich and refreshing travelogue, William Atkins finds an answer: the desert ... Atkins’ ability to eke out close to 400 pages on the subject is testament both to his skill as a writer — sharp, sympathetic, endlessly informative — and the surprising abundance of his chosen topic. The desert is neither mausoleum nor museum, but rather a complex, living ecosystem.