Dave Appleby
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daja57.bsky.social
Dave Appleby
@daja57.bsky.social
430 followers 280 following 890 posts
Obsessive reader: reviews on https://davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com/

Writer of Motherdarling, The Kids of God and Bally and Bro.

https://linktr.ee/daja57
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daja57.bsky.social
Gordon Carr's history of 'The Angry Brigade' reminded me of when the Vietnam war was raging, Spain and Portugal were ruled by fascist dictators and Greece by the military, and Germany, Italy and the UK had urban guerrillas.

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky

bit.ly/4pgnSyt
"The Angry Brigade" by Gordon Carr
As the subtitle tells us, this is "a history of Britain's first Urban Guerilla [sic] group."  I was at school when the Angry Brigade flouri...
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November 17, 2025 at 3:53 AM
daja57.bsky.social
I was told that Mary Webb's 'Precious Bane' was the book spoofed by Stella Gibbons in 'Cold Comfort Farm' but I really enjoyed reading PB. It may be melodrama but it's energetically done. My review: bit.ly/4qXij9L

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
"Precious Bane" by Mary Webb
I read this book because I had been told that it was the main object of the satire of Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. In fact, accor...
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November 12, 2025 at 5:39 PM
daja57.bsky.social
There are some Rose Tremain books that I adore but Lily, despite the wonderful verisimilitude, left me cold.

My full review: bit.ly/49DIv2S

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky
"Lily" by Rose Tremain
Tremendous verisimilitude but a dearth of complex characters in this novel about Victorian England.   Foundling Lily, saved from wolves as a...
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November 7, 2025 at 7:06 AM
daja57.bsky.social
Definitely scheduling 'Three Lives' for later in this month.
renardpress.com Renard Press @renardpress.com · 14d
Love this thoughtful post. I haven’t found the murderer either, but there’s a poetry in the chaos, and something of raw humanity - love, disappointment - that I think you’ve caught in your write-up. In some ways a hard place to start with Stein, but it’s uphill from here!
November 5, 2025 at 8:59 AM
daja57.bsky.social
@renardpress.com Well that was an interesting experience! Losing my Gertrude Stein virginity to 'Blood on the Dining Room Floor'. Not quite sure what to make of it.

bit.ly/47sGgOI

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky
"Blood on the Dining Room Floor" by Gertrude Stein
This short novella isn't a conventional murder mystery but a modernist experiment, regarded as one of the least accessible of Stein's works...
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November 5, 2025 at 7:20 AM
daja57.bsky.social
Best ever day on Dave's Book Blog: over 20,000 views in one day. 1,844 books reviewed so far.

davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
Dave's Book Blog
This blog has lots of book reviews. I read biography, history books and fiction; I sometimes read other non-fiction book genres too.
davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com
November 1, 2025 at 6:40 AM
Reposted by Dave Appleby
booksrme.bsky.social
'Zazie in the Metro' is a delightful whirlwind! Queneau's playful language dances through Paris, capturing the essence of youthful freedom. It reminded me that adventure can be found in the most unexpected places. #booksky 💙
daja57.bsky.social Dave Appleby @daja57.bsky.social · 19d
Wow! 'Zazie in the Metro' written at the tail end of the 1950s by Raymond Queneau and superbly translated by Barbara Wright is very different. A teenage girl let loose in seedy Paris. Brilliant word-play!

My full review: bit.ly/4nsRTtH

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
"Zazie in the Metro" by Raymond Queneau
Teenage girl Zazie comes to Paris for the first time to stay with her Uncle Gabriel, a dancer in a drag act, for a few days. Her ambition ...
bit.ly
October 31, 2025 at 1:54 PM
daja57.bsky.social
October has been the best-ever month for Dave's Book Blog (davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com) which has had over 100,000 views in just 31 days!

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
Dave's Book Blog
This blog has lots of book reviews. I read biography, history books and fiction; I sometimes read other non-fiction book genres too.
davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com
October 31, 2025 at 1:55 PM
daja57.bsky.social
Wow! 'Zazie in the Metro' written at the tail end of the 1950s by Raymond Queneau and superbly translated by Barbara Wright is very different. A teenage girl let loose in seedy Paris. Brilliant word-play!

My full review: bit.ly/4nsRTtH

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
"Zazie in the Metro" by Raymond Queneau
Teenage girl Zazie comes to Paris for the first time to stay with her Uncle Gabriel, a dancer in a drag act, for a few days. Her ambition ...
bit.ly
October 31, 2025 at 1:50 PM
daja57.bsky.social
Just finished 'The Enchanted April' by Elizabeth von Armin which was delightfully ... enchanting. My full review:

bit.ly/436tkeJ

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky
"The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth von Arnim
Four English ladies rent a castle in Italy (complete with servants) for a month. When they arrive, the beauty of the place works magic. All ...
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October 29, 2025 at 8:38 PM
daja57.bsky.social
So many books. Who has time to reread? But I am glad I went through 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel again. Twenty years ago I didn't realise how good it was. My review:
bit.ly/4nqSpYW

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
I read this winner of the 2002 Booker Prize  nearly twenty years ago and I had remember it mostly as the story of survival following a shipw...
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October 27, 2025 at 3:05 PM
daja57.bsky.social
Just completed my X in the 2025 A-Z of novelists challenge. Sulayam X wrote 'Bilal's Bread'. My review: bit.ly/3JumXes

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky

NB: It's not really about bread but Kurdish immigrants in America, homosexuality, Islam and sexual and physical domestic abuse.
"Bilal's Bread' by Sulayman X
Bilal has problems. He's a Kurdish Moslem immigrant in America in the aftermath of 9/11. His father was killed by the Iraqi regime of Sadd...
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October 26, 2025 at 11:01 AM
daja57.bsky.social
Just finished 'The Gay Decameron' by Christopher Whyte. A group of gay men meet in Edinburgh for a posh dinner party and reminisce. My full review: bit.ly/3JsP2mm

#Booksky 💙📚
#Literaturesky
#Books 📚
"The Gay Decameron" by Christopher Whyte
A group of gay men, mostly in pairs, gather for a dinner party in the posh Edinburgh flat of one of the couples. They reminisce about the pa...
bit.ly
October 24, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Dave Appleby
renardpress.com
And just like that… 🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈

It’s official! Five years of Renard Press! 🦊

📚 165 books published
🌲 2,500 trees planted
😳 650 writers published or anthologised

📚 renardpress.com/books/
October 15, 2025 at 12:34 PM
daja57.bsky.social
I've just finished another Nevil Shute book: 'Ruined City' about the redemptive power of capitalism in the hands of a dodgy merchant banker.

My full review: bit.ly/43awAFK

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
"Ruined City" by Nevil Shute
A novel, set in 1930s England, about the redemptive power of enlightened capitalism. Henry Warren, a merchant banker, is on a walking holi...
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October 14, 2025 at 12:28 PM
daja57.bsky.social
Just completed V for Vaught, Anna in my 2025 A-Z of novelists challenge.

My review: bit.ly/43cA0b0

#Booksky 💙📚
#Books 📚
#Literaturesky
@renardpress.com
"The Zebra and Lord Jones" by Anna Vaught
This is a work of magical realism. Two zebras escape London Zoo during the blitz of world war II. They meet an ineffective and rather pathet...
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October 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
daja57.bsky.social
@creativewritinguk.bsky.social Pencils sharpened and tucked into top pocket of new blazer. Looking forward to freshers' week! (Is that a mixed metaphor?)
October 7, 2025 at 8:12 AM
daja57.bsky.social
“On the Saturday Thompson died, in the bright afternoon, while the cricket-match was going on as usual on the big-side ground.”
bit.ly/4nBkUEd

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky
#Victober
"Tom Brown's Schooldays" by Thomas Hughes
The classic bildungsroman of the English public school, written to adulate Dr Thomas Arnold, the famous reforming headteacher of Rugby Sch...
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October 6, 2025 at 5:12 AM
daja57.bsky.social
Just completed Tom Brown's Schooldays (in some ways frighteningly like my own, even with a gap of 130 years).

My review: bit.ly/4nBkUEd

#Booksky
#Books
#Literaturesky
#Victober
"Tom Brown's Schooldays" by Thomas Hughes
The classic bildungsroman of the English public school, written to adulate Dr Thomas Arnold, the famous reforming headteacher of Rugby Sch...
bit.ly
October 5, 2025 at 2:14 PM
daja57.bsky.social
I completed U for Updike, John (Rabbit is Rich) in my 2025 A-Z of novelists challenge. Next up will be a book by Jules Verne.

My review of R is R: bit.ly/42oYcqt

#Booksky 💙📚
#Literaturesky
#Books 📚
"Rabbit is Rich" by John Updike
The third novel in the Rabbit tetralogy. Awarded the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It's written using the interior monologue of  Harry...
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October 2, 2025 at 2:54 PM
daja57.bsky.social
Yesterday my book review blog passed 1 million views!!

davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com
Dave's Book Blog
This blog has lots of book reviews. I read biography, history books and fiction; I sometimes read other non-fiction book genres too.
davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com
September 30, 2025 at 6:46 AM
daja57.bsky.social
I've just finished the fascinating but flawed biography of Peter of Savoy, the man who built the Savoy Palace on the Strand and served King Henry III.

My review: bit.ly/482jnSN
"Peter of Savoy: The Little Charlemagne" by John Marshall
Pevensey Castle: Barbara van Cleve, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons A biography of the ...
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September 30, 2025 at 6:44 AM
daja57.bsky.social
Patriotism:
"I went on musing about why it was thought better and higher to love one's country than one's county, or town, or village, or house. Perhaps because it was larger. But then it would be still better to love one's continent, and best of all to love one's planet."
bit.ly/2atFrpw
"The towers of Trebizond" by Rose Macauley
What a strange and delightful book, the winner of the James Tait Black memorial prize in 1956. It is a novel though I thought it was a tr...
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September 26, 2025 at 2:10 PM
daja57.bsky.social
My review of 'Another Country' by Caroline Lucas:

bit.ly/42c1NrI
"Another England" by Caroline Lucas
From 2010 until 2024, Caroline Lucas was Britain's first and only Green MP (others were elected in 2024, when she stood down). This book is ...
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September 26, 2025 at 2:03 PM
daja57.bsky.social
I've reread 'To The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf and had a great discussion about it with my reading group so I've updated my review: bit.ly/1KW3P3M

#Booksky 💙📚
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#Literaturesky
"To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf
I was supposed to read this while I was in the sixth form at school as part of a Twentieth Century Literature enrichment course (I took Scie...
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September 24, 2025 at 12:21 PM