Rewind

When I first started this new blog, I transferred all my old reviews from my old blog, which was written under a pseudonym I no longer use. I've deleted all of those posts and intend to restart.

What I've found in the past three years or so that I have seriously taken up writing again is that I have changed. My writing has changed, my reading has changed, my outlook has changed.

All my reading life, I would have argued that my favourite novels are Gunther Grass's The Tin Drum, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase. I still love little Oscar (to the extent that he is tattooed on my arm) and the Buendias, but I re-read the Murakami a couple of years back and thought it was awful.

But are they favourites? No way. My favourite books now, the ones that inform my writing and my world view, are:

• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

I could not write what I'm currently writing without these three works of genius. So as well as recording my own writing journey, I am going to use this blog to revisit some of my favourite novels and revise my original reviews. It'll be fun...

Join me...