It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.1 As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.2 The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house.3 Curiouser and curiouser!, cried Alice.4 ‘It’s today!’ said Piglet. ‘My favourite day,’ said Pooh.5
That was the day the Curious Book Fans site was born. We built a small room on the world wide web. The door is open for all readers who want to hear and talk about books. Welcome to our room full of books…
Last Man in Tower (Paperback), Aravind Adiga, book review The Help, Kathryn Stockett, book review The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, book review Winter Palace (A Novel of the Young Catherine the Great), Eva Stachniak
The Sense of an Ending , Julian Barnes, book review Care of Wooden Floors (HarperPress), Will Wiles, book review Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars , Sonia Faleiro, book review Lone Wolf , Jodi Picoult, book review

Most popular articles in 2011

An Idiot Abroad

An Idiot Abroad - The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington by Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, book review 1. An Idiot Abroad is written in diary style and for a guy who’s supposed to be stupid Karl is not a bad writer at all. That’s not to say that some of his opinions don’t make you cringe.

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The Winning Way – Learnings from Sport for Managers

The Winning Way, Anita and Harsha Bhogle , book review2. What does sport have in common with management? Quite a few things – most sports rely on teamwork and leadership and so does management.

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The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel

The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel, book review3. When it was announced that this series would be drawing to a close with the publication of the sixth and final novel, The Land of Painted Caves, in March 2011, her fans felt a mixture of sadness and anticipation.

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Daughters-in-law by Joanna Trollope

Daughters-in-law by Joanna Trollope, book review4. I don’t find many books unputdownable but that is how I felt about Daughters-in-Law. This is Joanne Trollope writing at her best, and if you have never read any of her novels, this would be a very good one to start with!

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One Day By David Nicholls

One Day By David Nicholls5. One Day is a great book. Poignant, realistic and funny, I found I could totally relate to this story.

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The New North

The New North: The World in 2050 by Laurence C. Smith, book review 6. I suppose the question at the end of it all is: am I convinced by Smith’s argument? Well, let’s just say that I now think that learning Norwegian might not be a bad investment in your future.

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Vern Sneider - The Tea-House of the August Moon, book review Egypt: 4000 Years of Art, Jaromir Malek, book review Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, David Bellos, book review Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys, Neil Oliver, book review
Room by Emma Donoghue, book review The Sandalwood Tree, Elle Newmark, book review C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too... , John Diamond, book review All That I am , Anna Funder, book review

Curious Book Fans talked to:

Essie Fox

Essie Fox, author (The Somnambulist)

Essie Fox: Oddly enough, when I first started to write I was planning on something contemporary. But every time I began, a character or some ‘item’ from the past would crop up and intrude on the novel’s plot

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Sonia Faleiro

Sonia Faleiro interviewSonia Faleiro: I met Leela through a source in what I call the ‘bar and brothel business’. She was 19 at the time, and one of the smartest young women I’d met anywhere. I immediately knew I wanted to write about her...

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Patrick Bishop

Patrick Bishop interview Patrick Bishop: I am of the view that most Talibs are fighting for the same reasons that young men fight – for the excitement of it and to test themselves. In this respect they are not much different to their British and American opponents.

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Abbas Kazerooni

On Two Feet and Wings - Abbas Kazerooni, interview Abbas Kazerooni: It is very mentally challenging for a child to deal with loneliness, boredom and the idea of knowing that there is no one that he can turn to for help with small and complex matters.

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Christie Watson

Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson, interview Christie Watson: Everyone in Nigeria is interested in politics. You can’t buy a bottle of Coca-Cola without the shopkeeper selling talking about their political views on the Niger Delta.

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Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman interview Oliver Burkeman: The kitchen timer (I carry one everywhere I go!) is a great way to turn confusing, intimidating, unmanageable or boring tasks into doable ones.

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Martin Pevsner

Martin Pevsner interviewMartin Pevsner: I had a different name for the novel originally – Companions of the Garden – a reference to the Qur’an. An agent told me people browsing in a bookshop would presume it was a gardening book.

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Deborah Harkness

A Discovery of Witches By Deborah Harkness, interview Deborah Harkness: In some ways I’ve been reading and researching this book since around 1984 when I first took a course that explored the relationship between magic and science.

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Farahad Zama

Read an interview with Farahad Zama

Farahad Zama: Yes, my wife’s uncle was our neighbour and that’s how the marriage was arranged. I met my wife for the first time in October and we were married on New Year’s eve, six weeks later.

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Alex Marsh

Alex Marsh, interview

Alex Marsh: I used up the best bits of my life in Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll and don’t want to do a diminishing returns thing… but I have been floored by some of the nice things that people have said about this one.

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Urmilla Deshpande

Read an interview with Urmilla Deshpande

Urmilla Deshpande: The Kashmir in my book is no more real, I think, than is the Alexandria in Durrell’s quartet or the London that Sherlock Holmes lives in.

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Sorayya Khan

Sorayya Khan interview Sorayya Khan: The inspiration for Five Queen’s Road is drawn from real events in my family’s history. Five Queen’s Road, in fact, was once the real address of my father’s parents’ home in Lahore ...

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The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst, book review There But for The , Ali Smith, book review The Last Hundred Days (Paperback), Patrick McGuinness, book review How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran, book review
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, book review The Night Before Christmas, Scarlett Bailey, book review The Secrets Between Us By (author) Louise Douglas, book review Smokeheads, Doug Johnstone, book review

Curious Book Fans read to children:

The Gruffalo's Child, Julia Donaldson Zog by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, book review The Great Pet Sale by Mick Inkpen, book review I Love You as Big as the World by David Van Buren and Tim Warnes, book review
Harry and the Dinosaurs Romp in the Swamp by Ian Whybrow and Adrian Reynolds, book review Fidgety Fish and Friends by Paul Bright, Illustrated by Ruth Galloway, book review The Trouble with Dragons by Debi Gliori, book review Aliens in Underpants Save the World by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort, book review

From our higher bookshelves:

Three Seconds

Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, book review

 

The writing is utterly convincing, and so it should be. Highly recommended.

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The Lotus Eaters

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli, book review

 

If Tatjana Soli continues to write, then she almost certainly has a great future as a novelist.

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Girl Guides

 

Like me, you may expect a twee and overly cheerful account of running errands, but it is so much more than that.

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The Last Patriarch

The Last Patriarch by Najat El Hachmi, book review

 

“The Last Patriarch” is a moving, sometimes shocking, story about an immigrant Moroccan family living in northern Spain.

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Saraswati Park

Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph, book review

 

There’s something Chekhovian about Saraswati Park, in its collection of small intimate details about life in Mumbai’s suburbs...

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True Things About Me

True Things About Me By Deborah Kay Davies

 

True Things About Me is Deborah Kay Davies’ first novel and it is a brilliant debut.

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1 – 1984, George Orwell; 2 – The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka; 3 – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon; 4 – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, 5 – The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne