Archives for Reviews - Page 2
HIP REVIEW: How To Solve Murders Like a Lady
By Hannah DolbyPublished by Bloomsbury, paperback £ BY DAVID E P DENNIS This is a cake and brandy kind of book – rich, fruity, and ; Not only that, but…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis
By Nick BanoPublished by Verso, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Nick Bano is a barrister and has a different take on the causes of our current housing crisis than is…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Manifesto: The Battle for Green Britain
By Dale VinceIndependently Penguin, rrp £ BY RICHARD PRICE Are you dispirited because of the climate and biodiversity emergency, and the fact that the urgency of these issues is ignored…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW | Roof Less: The Housing Crisis in Words and Pictures
by Christopher HogginsIndependently published, rrp £15REVIEW BY TIM BARTON Four years ago, Chris, of Dweeblings fame, found himself facing homelessness. In his moving, and if you are a tenant yourself,…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet
By Brett ChristophersPublished by Verso, rrp £22REVIEW BY TIM BARTON In his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, author Bill Bryson waxes lyrical about the US consumer…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: What Will Survive of Us
By Howard JacobsonPublisher: Jonathan CapeREVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH Muse for a moment on the title of Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, his 17th, What Will Survive of Us, and you…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Fighting for Life
By Isabel HardmanPublished by Penguin, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Edna Thomas gave birth to the first baby born under the aegis of the National Health Service, almost on the…
HIP BOOK REVIEW: Fourteen Days
Edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas PrestonPublished by Chatto & WindusREVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH Award winning author, Margaret Atwood, is the joint editor together with Douglas Preston of the…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: One Fine Day
By Ian MarchantPublished by September Publishing, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Ian Marchant, a regular presenter on ‘Open Country’, Radio 4, and diarist for Church Times, is dying. Side by…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Follow the Money
By Paul JohnsonPublished by Abacus, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON The subtitle of this book is ‘how much does Britain cost?’, cost being defined here by the balance of taxes…
The Stamp of Innocence
by Aled Gwyn JôbPublished by Troubadorrrp £ at Bookbusterreview by Tim Barton The 'Post Office scandal' has dominated the news for a few weeks now, yet it goes back a…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Disconsolate Dreamers: On Pessimism and Utopia
Published by Zer0 Books, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON ‘Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’, said Romain Rolland, sadly remembered primarily for being a Stalinist. He used the…
Moving Mountains: Writing Nature Through Illness & Disability
LOUISE KENWARD Through twenty-five pieces of prose, poetry, and artwork, this new anthology offers a vision of nature that encompasses the close up, the microscopic, and the vast. From a…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – Palestinians and Israelis: A Short History of Conflict
Published by The History Press,rrp £ BY TIM BARTON In Deuteronomy, Chapter 31, Moses claims ‘the Lord’ promised a swath of land west of Jordan to the Israelites, saying ‘the…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Occult & Uncanny Zines
Shuck; Undefined Boundary; Myth & Lore; Hellebore; Grimoire Silvanus; and moreat BOOKBUSTERREVIEW BY TIM BARTON Over the last couple of years, I have seen a boom in interest in the…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Weird Walk
By ‘Weird Walk’!Published by Watkins Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON The Weird Walk zine has been selling well at Bookbuster for a while now, and has reached issue…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW – All In: How we Build a Country that Works
By Lisa NandyPublished by Harper North, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Lisa Nandy is stuck in a party that is losing public confidence fast, no one appears to like…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Ritual
Published by Weird Walk (in collaboration with StudioCanal & TSPTR)2023, rrp £ BY TIM BARTON ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ If you’re a Wicker Man fan, you’ll love Ritual! From the offices…
HIP LOCAL BOOK REVIEW: The Invisible Women’s Club
By Helen ParisDoubleday, August 2023Hardback, pp336, £ BY VIOLA VON HARRACH If you are looking for a book to read this autumn then try local author, Helen Paris’s second novel,…
Bookbuster Review: Leftfield Horror Film Fanzines
The Last Closet on The Left, vol 1Published by the Nottingham Horror Collective, 2023 rrp £ Came from The Closet Edited by Joe VallesePublished by Saraband, 2023 rrp £ BY…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Shattered Nation
By Danny DorlingPublished by Verso Books, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON Halfway through this excellent outline of the decline of the UK, and dismantling of the post-war settlement and…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Hawkhurst: Murder, Corruption, & Britain’s Most Notorious Smuggling Gang By Joseph DragovichPublished by The History Press, 2023 rrp £ BY TIM BARTON In the middle of the eighteenth century existed…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Weaponising Anti-Semitism
By Asa WinstanleyPublished by O/R Books, 2023 rrp £15REVIEW BY GILL KNIGHT In this book, Asa Winstanley takes the reader on a meticulously researched 7-year journey to demonstrate how accusations…
Let Them Call It Jazz
VICTORIA KINGHAM on Jerry Bergonzi (tenor), Jason Rebello (piano), Steven Keogh (drums), Mark Hodgson (bass) at the Hastings Jazz Club. Anybody who has read Jean Rhys’ magnificent, tragic, heartrending story…
Lionel, the Watch and the Walk-in Wardrobe
by VIOLA VON HARRACH Ned Lawton’s debut novel is a murder mystery, a tale of lost causes, secret codes, and conspiracy theories, with a few untoward deaths along the way.…
Bookbuster Review: Electrify!
by TIM BARTONThere’s many a slip between a cup and a lip, indeed. Griffiths has subtitled his book ‘an optimist’s playbook for our clean energy future’. He is at pains…
Less is More: a Bookbuster Review
Published by Penguin, RRP £, available from Bookbuster, Queens Rd Review by Richard Price Part One of Two We are in a period of history where we need some optimism…
An Inconvenient Apocalypse
Bookbuster Review of the above title by Wes Jackson & Robert Jensenby. Published by Notre Dame Press, rrp £, available to order from Bookbuster, £20 each. Review by Tim Barton."...and…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Cracking Humpty Dumpty By Tim Devlin Published by Susak Press, rrp £, available at Bookbuster Review by Tim Barton Of ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’, Tim Devlin, in his…
Regrets – I’ve had a few
Kent Barker says a documentary about the venerable and venerated Hastings blues guitarist Roger Hubbard, reveals a musician ruefully aware of roads not taken during his career. In my rather…
Playing in the Potholes of Your Mind
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling The sheer number of potholes in the road fabric of this town is, let’s face it, bloody annoying. In this town you can basically go…
BOOK REVIEW: The Long Covid Handbook
By Gez Medinger and Professor Danny Altman Published by Penguin, October 2022 Review by Viola von Harrach At last, a book that demystifies, that dispels the myths, offers practical advice and…
Into the Light
Ally Raftery visits The Memorial Studio Project in Hastings. It’s not the offer of a free portrait sitting, or the sign that says that pets and props are welcome, charming…
BOOK REVIEW: The Real Anthony Fauci
Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health By Robert Kennedy JrSkyhorse publishing Review by Robin Holtom At the beginning of the pandemic a friend…
Souls o’ the Drowned
Gareth Stevens visits a new exhibition with strong maritime undercurrents at the De La Warr. Can’t You See the Sea Changing? features work produced over the last 14 years by…
Jazz Abate-ment
Victoria Kingham enthuses about the unpretentious Greg Abate quartet at the Hastings Jazz Club. Greg Abate has been on the American (and international) jazz scene since the 1970s, having spent…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
The International Alt-Right By Hermansson, Lawrence, Mulhall & Murdoch Published by Routledge, rrp £23, available to order from Bookbuster. REVIEW BY TIM BARTON In the last month two major reports…
Who Immersion
On the night of the first moon landing, The Who played Hastings pier. 53 years later Mark Walter explores a multi-layered exhibition based around the iconic 1960s rock band. A…
REVIEW: Let me tell You ‘bout the Manfreds
By Kent Barker The replacement of Paul Jones by Mike d’Abo as Manfred Mann’s lead singer in 1966 was, for many British teenyboppers, as cataclysmic an event as Dylan going…
BOOKBUSTER REVIEW
Stolen By Grace Blakeley Published by Repeater Books, rrp £, available at Bookbuster Review by Tim Barton In relation to ‘rational policies’, as Liz Truss and her ideologically extremist cohort…