Lost for Words

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Lost for Words is the fifth novel by Stephanie Butland. It’s the only novel of hers that I’ve read. It was a trying things out type purchase for me. It has been on my e-reader since 2017. There were lots of things I enjoyed about it. A key factor was the main character’s love for A S Byatt’s Possession, which is a book I have read multiple times.

The story largely takes place in a bookshop and is a tale aimed at bookish readers who like quirky characters and a bit of grit in their escapism.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 5

Resurrection Bay

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Resurrection Bay is the first novel in Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic series. Caleb is a private security specialist and fraud investigator. Deaf since childhood, he has developed an outsider mentality and has made some poor choices in life that see him living in a poorly decorated rental at the start of this book. Before we find this out about him, though, his best friend is killed, dying in Caleb’s arms. Caleb’s presence at the scene when the police arrive places him under suspicion of being involved in the murder.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 0

Strong Female Character

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Strong Female Character is the autobiography of Fern Brady. I love Fern Brady. If you don’t know her, she’s a comedian from Bathgate in West Lothian, Scotland. I first encountered her on the Wheel of Misfortune podcast that she created with co-host Alison Spittle. I loved her blunt humour. I loved her even more when she appeared on Taskmaster and wrote a song about why she should be crowned Queen of the Taskmaster house. Her autobiography explains how she came to be the strong female character of the title. My love for her has increased now I’ve read her book. The telling is raw in its honesty, as is Brady in her comedy.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book

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I’ve never listened to the Shipping Forecast. It’s broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 00:48 and 05:34 each morning (plus 17:34 at the weekend) when I am tucked up in bed/doing something weekend-y. I know of it, of course. It’s famous. Some people mimic it like it’s a poem.

A friend bought me a copy of Alan Connor’s The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book for Christmas. I was intrigued.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 0

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies

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Noopiming, an Ojibwe word meaning ‘in the bush‘, is narrated by Mashkawaji, an entity frozen in a lake who, over the course of the book, is visited by seven characters. Mashkawaji describes these characters as making up their being: the Elder Akiwenzii, Ninaatig the maple tree, the Elder Mindimooyenh, a recovering alcoholic called Sabe who is also a sasquatch, a caribou called Adik, and two young lovers, Asin and Lucy. Each of these characters, Mashkawaji tells us, represents a specific part of them: Akiwenzii is the will, Ninaatig the lungs, Mindimooyenh the conscience, Sabe the marrow, Adik the nervous system, Asin the eyes and ears, and Lucy the mind. The book begins with a poem, a single line or sometimes three on each page for 32 pages, that introduces Mashkawaji and the seven component characters, and is a meditation on place and time, on connection and nature. It is a strange and unsettling start for a person raised in the western European tradition of storytelling.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 0

Lessons in Chemistry

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Bonnie Garmus’s celebrity-endorsement-bedecked global number one and multi-million-copy bestseller Lessons in Chemistry was a Christmas gift in 2024. It’s a curious fish, part roustabout women’s lib comedy, part devastating document of just how abhorrently men can treat women in the workplace and the home, part sensitive examination of how tragedy shapes people’s lives and how love doesn’t always conquer all. There’s a workplace rape after 18 pages of light-hearted scene setting that pulled me up short, just as I was settling in for a less serious read than has been my habit of late. It sets out the stall of this exploration of the fight for equality in the workplace as seen through the life of one very particular woman.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 8

‘Cherry’ Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan’s Blossom’s

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Have you visited Japan during the cherry blossom season? Have you done your own hanami (花見/はなみ) ritual, gazing at the ephemeral beauty of the sakura (桜/さくら) in the brief window the trees are in flower? I have. Did you know that a single variety of cherry tree, the Somei-yoshino, a cultivar from the end of the Edo period (1603-1868), became popular at the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912), was unofficially selected as Japan’s national tree at the start of the Taishō era (1912-1926), and became a political symbol in the Shōwa era (1926-1989)? Or that prior to industrialisation Japan had a greater variety of cherry trees that blossomed over a longer period? I didn’t. Naoko Abe told me about it in her whirlwind of a book about Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 4

Raising Hare

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The hare on the cover of Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton’s non-fiction debut, had stared at me from book selection tables, bookshelves and book carousels in bookshops I visited and on social media across 2025. My need to buy fewer books than I read in the year meant I worked hard to resist it. The arrival of a book token for my birthday at the end of October was all the reason I needed to buy it from my local independent bookshop. It was a treat to myself to be saved for the miserable days of January when I always need cheering up.

At the front of the book is a drawing of Dalton’s home in the country, a converted barn enclosed by dry stone walls, hooked round by a stream and bordered by wheat fields and woodlands. This is the place Dalton retreated to from her Foreign Office political advisor job in Westminster during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s the place where she raised the day old leveret she discovered, exposed on an open track, on a walk one day.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 6

The Goldfinch

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I have owned Donna Tartt’s third novel The Goldfinch since 2015. It was about time I read it. In the near 11 years that I’ve owned the book, I’ve managed not to read any reviews. If I knew anything about the story when I bought it, I’ve forgotten. It made for an intriguing read.

The story begins one Christmas in an Amsterdam hotel. An American man has fled New York with inappropriate clothing for the time of year and not even a book to pass the time with. He reads newspaper reports in Dutch papers that he can’t understand, seeking out news of his own flight. The words in Dutch translate to an unsolved murder, and a criminal record. He is ill from the cold. In a fever, he dreams of his dead mother. She died when he was 13, one April day 14 years in the past, in a way he feels responsible for.

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 10

Six Degrees of Separation, January 2026

New Year, new month, and the first Saturday of both. Time for Six Degrees of Separation!

It has been a while. Almost three years, in fact. I’ve seen the posts in my WordPress reader, but today’s the first time I’ve felt the urge to join in. Over at host Kate’s blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best, I see we’re to start with the last book from last month’s chain, or the last book we read. I’m doing neither. I’m going back to the last time I took part, in April 2023. The last book in my chain back then was …

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Posted on by Jan Hicks 7