charles barrow's writing

I've just reached the final chapter of the 17th book from my 26 in 26 list - a list of the 26 ebooks on my Kindle that I intend to read before the door finally closes on 2026. The book in question is The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni. All I knew going in is that it had been compared to the work of John Irving which was recommendation enough. I've read half a dozen Irving novels and loved them all. He takes the reader on a deep, deep dive into the lives of his characters; often from childhood, through adolescence and into world of the adult. And so it is with Sam Hell, actually born Samuel Hill, who is also born with red eyes, hence the nickname that stays with him throughout his life. I'm going to rate it four stars. I've really enjoyed it. Two other books I've recently read, from the list, have neatly dovetailed with my other, and ongoing, reading project about railway journeys to different European countries. The first of those books was On the C...

Recently I've written about a reading project I have bubbling away in the background - see my 26 in 26 post back in January. The idea of it is that I'll read the 26 named titles across the year. It's going really well, so far, and I've read 11 from the list, and I've also interspersed a few random books amongst those. So it's been a good reading year. It's been so good that I've been planning another reading project that I'd like to have running in the background alongside the above mentioned 26 target, but this one will have no set titles or timescale. This new project has been prompted by  a train ticket I never bought, and  an adventure I never had, back in the 1980s. Let me explain. When I was in my mid-twenties, in the mid-80s, there was a train ticket available that gave a young back-packer/traveller/adventurer one month of unlimited 2nd class train travel across the rail networks of 21 European countries. This ticket was called the Inter-rail ...

This is a companion post to my last one, 52 in 25, and it details the 26 books I definitely plan to read this year. I'll spread them out across the year, and drop other books in between these as I go. I've said it before, I'm a mood reader so I have to really be in the mood for something before I pick it up, so it's good there's such a variety of genre here. I should also mention that these are all ebooks, on my Kindle, the other books I'll read this year will mostly be physical books off my shelf. These book titles below aren't listed in any particular order of preference. Also, I've already read Yellowface from this list, and I'm currently reading Pretty, Pretty Boys, and Queen James. So I'm off to a flying start. I'd like to get to the Murakami soon, and the C.J. Sansom will finish off the series of Shardlake books that I've loved. In fact I've loved everything I've read by these two authors, so I have high hopes for these two ...