About Me

I’m a retired teacher of English who lives in the north of England.  I’ve always been an avid and voracious reader, and I’d like to share my reactions to what I’ve been reading, and hear from other readers, too.

Fiction-wise, I’m particularly interested in Eastern European literature, especially from the communist era, and I’m increasingly exploring Middle Eastern novelists too. Strange as it may seem, I don’t read an awful lot of English and American contemporary literature, much of which I find rather self-obsessed and tiresome… but I do enjoy the classics, and return to them often.

But I like to read widely: I enjoy some detective fiction, particularly when I want to relax, and have been a Sherlock Holmes addict since the age of seven. Raymond Chandler and Ed McBain are among my other favourites. And I used to be a student of science-fiction – did research for my post-graduate degrees, and used to review some SF for Foundation magazine a long time ago. I’m particularly interested in utopias and dystopias…

In the last few years, realising that this lifetime will not be long enough for me to visit everywhere in the world I’d like to see, I’ve developed an interest in travel writing, particularly about Siberia, and also the Middle East; I particularly enjoy travels from a long time ago, when there was real risk, uncertainty and unknown about where travellers and explorers went. I have a minor obsession with deserts, too…

Finally, I read some popular science (my brain can’t cope with anything too technical), religion and theology from time to time, and politics and economics, though I’m often oppressed by the futility of it all…