Current Reading
Welcome to this reading journal: a quiet corner of the site where I track what I’m reading, what I’m returning to and what’s gathering dust in the ever growing pile. I go through phases but do try to read every day even if it is just for a short time.
Flesh by David Szalay
Published: March 2025
Reading: September 2026
Winner of The Booker Prize, 2025 - Flesh follows the rags-to-riches, coming-of-age story of István whose life starts on a Hungarian housing estate and journeys, via juvenile detention and military service, all the way into the top one-percent of Europe's earners.
 Taipei StoryRebecca F Kuang |  The WitchMarie Ndiaye |  John of JohnDouglas Stuart |
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Top of the pile
Recent Reads
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn
Published: November 2025
Read: September 2026
Longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, The Wax Child is a lyrical and unsettling tale of womanhood and witchcraft, power and control, magic and nature, told from deep within the shadows of 17th-Century Denmark.
Inspired by the true story of a witch trial, the story is narrated entirely by a wax child fashioned from beeswax and containing hair and fragments of fingernails. Despite being a crude, inanimate and powerless instrument, the wax figure is able to observe the world. It can sense the dew that hangs on grass blades and describe the muscles taut in the throats of conspiring men.
The wax child's narrative hums like an incantation. At times grotesque, matter-of-fact and chilling, at others beautifully poetic, its language is hypnotic and lyrical, scattered with spells and rituals taken from existing grimoires and black-books. Visceral and vivid.