I don't quite know what to make of this book, and while I liked one half - the contemporary half - I didn't get a whole lot out of the historical part. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year, and it does come highly regarded by some, although it does polarize..it also comes in two versions; the only difference between the two versions, I believe, is that the two parts of the book come in a different order - in one version the contemporary story comes first, in the other the historical part comes first.

Helena's father Stefan was one of the 732 Polish children offered unlikely refuge in New Zealand, following Soviet deportation during the second world war. This memoir explores his experiences, the burden he carried and recreates part of his long journey from Poland, across Siberia, through Iran and ultimately to New Zealand. It's a very moving book, very well written; the revelations unfold at just the right times in the text.

This is a socio-cultural look at the world of contemporary art, which seeks to explain how it works at as a market, through the eyes of the artist, collector, critic and art student. It succeeds with a great deal of wry humour, shrewdness and respect. As the title implies, there are seven chapters, each exploring a different element of the art world.

John Darnielle is the singer and songwriter of The Mountain Goats, one of my favourite bands. When I heard that he'd written a novel, and that it was good, and to be published in the UK by Granta (rights in Australasia have gone to Scribe) it's fair to say I was excited! It really is a pretty extraordinary, inventive and powerful novel, and for a first novel it's amazing. It's told backwards.

This novel follows the lives of a family living on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, from 1980 when the family's 3rd child is born, through to 2002. The island is gradually losing people, and the family are becoming estranged as the children leave for schooling on the mainland and then have to decide whether to return. The book is not arranged chronologically, and it's rather episodic as it follows each member of the family separately, but it does work, and by the end, is very moving. It's a sad, downbeat book about a way of life which is disappearing,

I've been meaning to read this trilogy of classic travel memoirs for many years, but, as is the way of things, I just haven't got to them, until some time being laid up, I jumped at the chance. The trip was originally made in the 1930s, when Fermor was 18, but not published until many years later, and over a long period of time - Gifts was published in 1977, Woods and Water in 1986, and Broken Road after his death, in 2013, completed by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper.