I am new to audio books. I started with Stephen Fry and his Mythos and found that listening rather than reading allows my imagination to go further – a bit like being told a story as a child, I can see the Gods and monsters rather than being distracted by grey text. When I finished listening to Mythos, I stayed in Greece and downloaded My Family and Other Creatures by Gerald Durrell, and I have to say it made me laugh out loud. However, not all stories transfer well to audio. A crime novel ...

It’s easy to feel little when you are a small publisher – going to book fairs and looking at your panel of twenty novels lost in the vast space dominated by the Penguin, Random, Harper Collins, MacMillan, Simon & Schuster and Hachette and all their glossy titles.
Thankfully I belong to the Independent Publisher Conference (IPG), a guild of small, innovative, hard-working publishers who are filled with enthusiastic zeal and wholeheartedly believe that their books have merit with consumers....

I read Overstory by Richard Powers for a book group. Many friends tell me they gave up on it as the 640-page tale of environmentalists lured to crime stretched too far. I have to say that while I grew weary at moments, I cared enough to keep going. But then I often like long novels – Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I have read twice; same with Anna Karenina and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
However, I am also a woman who gives up on a book after 100 pages. I believe it’s my life, my time ...