I was drawn to this book because it was on the longlist for the 2023 Booker Prize. How to Build a Boat follows a school pupil, Jamie, and two of his teachers as he tries to navigate the world and make sense of the chaos he experiences. Jamie longs to build a perpetual motion machine, which by his own unique logic, is his means of taking control. To try to help, Jamie's teacher Tess introduces him to Tadgh, the new woodwork teacher, and together they build a traditional Irish boat, a currach.

It's a sweet novel, and the threads of the various lives take us to interesing and difficult places. The writing is both lovely and careful, and at its strongest when we are inside Jamie's mind and experience.

Part 3 of the Slough House series from Mick Herron, and with Real Tigers you can feel the author really getting into his stride with the characters and their world.

The book is heavy on plot, as you'd expect, and I found myself drawn quickly along in every wise-cracking sentence. Character development is secondary, but we get to learn more about each of the Slow Horses the more time we spend chasing them around London.

A great story, and the adaptation on Apple TV+ is cracking.

This is a special novel. I can't believe that I've only just discovered Sebastian Barry this year (reading Old God's Time because it was on the 2023 Booker Prize longlist).

Eneas McNulty grows up in Sligo, on the west coast of Ireland, at the beginning of the 20th Century. One simple choice of a naive young man during depressed times, to go to work in the British merchant navy, defines the whole of the rest of his life as the rise of Irish nationalism and the struggle for freedom from British rule begets violence and conflict. Returning from the ships to a lack of work and a cold shoulder, Eneas joins the Royal Irish Constabulary, becomes an unfortunate witness to a killing. He's branded traitor and forced to flee Ireland, his home, his family, and Viv, the woman he loves. Though he tries to return later when he hopes that memories have faded, he discovers there will never be a place for him in Sligo.

The language of Sebastian Barry's writing is exquisite, just a delight to read from the first word to the last. Every image, every metaphor, every sentence is novel and beautiful and never indulgent. A really wonderful novel. And better still, it's the first part of a trilogy of stories about the McNulty family. Better even than that, I've got the whole of the rest of Sebastian Barry's works to look forward to, as well!

Lanny is a gorgeous story of an deeply imaginiative child in an ordinary village outside London. He's loved by his devoted mother, by his father who can't seem to get as close, and by an ageing artist who becomes entranced with Lanny's creativity. And he's watched also by Dead Papa Toothwort, an ancient spirit stirring in the ground beneath them all and has seen everything, always in this village outside London.

The novel is playful as Lanny is playful, as Dead Papa Toothwort is playful — playing with words (there's numerous places where words are printed in clouds and swirls), playing with the plot and the characters and the idea of novel. It's very wacky at times, and that could be just too much for some. But I really enjoyed it.