Ivan Vasil’evich meniaet professiiu/Ivan Vasil’evich Changes Profession

This week, there’s no need for my Good and Bad selves to duke it out.  For once, I’m in complete agreement with myself, and what I want to tell you is this: Run, don’t walk, to your nearest online DVD retailer/suitably international film library/Soviet film aficionado and find/buy/borrow/wheedle yourself a copy of Leonid Gaidai’s 1973 [...]

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Coming up on Vulpes Libris

As Vulpes Libris heads into December, we’re all about great stories for an evening by the fire.  We have not one but two inheritance mysteries, a time travelling tsar and a lyrical love story.  Plus, Bookfox Jackie gives us her views on bookstores, and Kirsty talks to Michael Ng in the latest Interview with a [...]

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Girl Aloud by Emily Gale

In the interests of transparency , I’ll just say now that I know Emily and that we have been online buddies for quite a long time. Okay, now that’s out of the way, I’m going to share with you my love of this book.  It wouldn’t matter whether I knew the author or not… Girl [...]

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My favourite books of the autumn – A selection of mini-reviews. Part 1

I haven’t been around Vulpes Libris as much as I’d have liked over the past few months, but in the time I’ve been away I have read a stack of books. So today I’m trying something different. Rather than offering a detailed, longer-length review of a single book, I have a selection of mini-reviews, which [...]

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The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

Wishing our U.S. readers a Very Happy Thanksgiving! Sarah Vowell is not your average historian, she’s quirky, funny and revels in irony. She hunts down the oddities in the past and presents them in glowing neon. Her previous bestseller, Assassination Vacation, was an irreverent account of trips made with her nephew to tombs and landmarks [...]

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A Review from the Soapbox – Stalin’s Nemesis: the exile and murder of Leon Trotsky, by Bertrand M. Patenaude

Stalin’s Nemesis came to me very highly recommended: a Radio 4 Book of the Week, it had met an enthusiastic reception in very diverse quarters. Richard Overy at the Literary Review liked it. The Socialist Party, with some reservations, liked it. Tariq Ali liked it, although I half suspect he liked it in order to [...]

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Roads Ahead, Edited by Catherine O’Flynn

Tindal Street Press is a small regional publisher based in Birmingham. With many prize-winning books on its lists (including three Booker Prize nominees: Clare Morall’s Astonishing Splashes of Colour,  Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost and Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in A Blue Dress) – it is well-known for punching above its weight. Launched a decade ago [...]

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Places Left Unfinished At The Time Of Creation, by John Phillip Santos

How little I knew about Southern Texas and the Mexican border country before I read this atmospheric memoir. Mention Texas, and Oil, Dallas, Houston, the Bush family would have come first to my mind. Only vaguely would I have remembered that for centuries the present day border between the US state of Texas and Mexico [...]

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Coming up on Vulpes Libris

This week the Bookfoxes are in celebration mode. We have a Thanksgiving-themed review, a selection of favourite recent reads and we finish the week in fine style with a review of a novel written by retired Bookfox, the fabulous Emily Gale. We also have a Soapbox article by Kirsty, as well as reviews of a [...]

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What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

This is not my usual fare at all being slightly allergic to anything remotely historical but I was drawn to the red lipstick on the cover and once I began reading I was a gonner. Set on post-war America, in the late 1940’s, the setting is vivid and gorgeously realised.  I was completely sucked in [...]

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