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Simon F. Sleightholm

@bookish_walker

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📚2026:107
📖 Miss Macintosh, My Darling
Volume knob. Uxorious retired Northumbrian. Humdrum book reviews, midlife family stuff. Netgalley reader

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Having just retired, it seems the time finally to do this…

I’m Simon, until recently a pioneering Cyber Security Manager in the NHS, working for a high-performing, innovative Trust. A stressful job I loved.

My main tension release valves were books, and hiking around my beloved native Northumberland.

I’ve loved reading since childhood and, after years reading both kinds of book - Sci-Fi AND fantasy - I was, in the mid-90s, flipped into the world of non-ficton by Antonia Fraser’s gripping The Gunpowder Plot. I stayed in that groove for a long time.

Years ago my wife Ange challenged me to read more fiction, then asked me how many women authors I was reading,

That changed everything for me.

I set myself a year of prioritising women and had such an amazing time that I have been doing that since and always will.

It’s given me such insight and empathy, and made a far better man of me.

Now it’s time to throw my whole self into being the best husband, dad, and grandad I can be, while sneaking in some extra books.

I’ve had my fill of fantasy, crime, and psychological thrillers (though an intriguing premise can still snare me), but other than that I’m pretty much open to anything - my favourite books of 2026 have been @wednesdayerskin’s The Benefactors, Yvvette Edwards’s Good Good Loving, and @writerclairefuller’s Hunger and Thirst.

I tend not to do the “I will die on these bookish hills” posts because, frankly, why would anyone care? My ego doesn’t work that way.

I also tend to steer clear of bookish accounts which follow significantly fewer accounts than follow them. That’s not community, it’s broadcasting.

I generally don’t need a lot of incident in a book, character is my key.

I have been loving my bookish time on Insta these last few years - sharing recommendations with each other has been such fun, and getting advanced copies of so many amazing books has been incredible.

NB, it has been said of me that I rarely dislike anything I read, that I will give it three stars just for being a book… 🤷

What I can say for sure is that if I say I love a book, then I really do LOVE it…

Thanks to all of you posting, following and chipping in, it’s an utter joy. by @bookish_walker

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6 months ago

Two off my wants list, thanks to the Sally Army shop in Whitley Bay.

Coffee and a toastie at @whitleybaybiglocal

#katemosse
#labyrinth
#morecambeandwise
#grahammccann by @bookish_walker

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16 hours ago

So, I was tidying up my huge bookshelf yesterday and realised how many (😳) unread books dwell within…

In an exercise of archaeology I’m very pleased (with myself 🤓) to call Shelf Discovery, I’m going to start picking away at those which have been sat there for literal years.

This is the first.

Blurb: “Utz collects Meissen porcelain with a passion. His collection, which he has protected and enlarged through both World War II and Czechoslovakia’s years of Stalinism, numbers more than 1,000 pieces, all crammed into his two-room Prague flat.

Utz is allowed to leave the country each year, and although he has considered defection, he always returns. He cannot take his precious collection with him, but he cannot leave it, either. And so Utz is as much owned by his porcelain as it is owned by him, as much of a prisoner of the collection as of the Communist state.”

#utz
#brucechatwin
#shelfdiscovery by @bookish_walker

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a day ago

Tea, coffee and a browse at the smashing @oldmelrosetearoom

#oldmelrosetearooms
#theborderreader by @bookish_walker

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2 days ago

Nipped into Kesley’s, in Haddington for a new Shark in the Park book. Christmas gift for Roman.

Don’t often find them in the wild 👀 by @bookish_walker

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2 days ago

The stunning @haddingtongarden

#haddington
#stmaryspleasancegardens by @bookish_walker

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2 days ago

Just popped over to the lovely @thehelpyourselfbookshelf in the gorgeous @theridgegardensdunbar.

Well worth a visit and your support, they are doing great things here.

#dunbar by @bookish_walker

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2 days ago

Discussing @rocking_bob ‘s new book with Tia

#theshadows
#bobstanley by @bookish_walker

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4 days ago

In the archives of the Swedish national library, researcher Linda comes across the face of nine-year-old Birgitta Sivander in a yellowed newspaper. Murdered in 1948 and never avenged, Birgitta gets under Linda’s skin, and as Linda becomes pregnant herself, her obsession with the case deepens; piece by piece, she tries to uncover what happened and perhaps who was responsible.

This is a gripping example of the investigative memoir, a form of nonfiction to which I really respond. Several of Julia Blackburn's excellent books and Lauren Elkin's recent Vocal Break are other fantastic examples. In books such as these, we read the results of the author's research into their subject, but also learn about the practicalities of that research — the archives visited, the field trips undertaken — and the disruption to their lives and spirit caused by these all-consuming activities and their exposure to the harsh realities of their subject.

Linda becomes haunted by the disquieting horror of Birgitta's murder and burdened by her fear for her own children. As she scrapes at the past, the centripetal force of the murder site draws her back again and again: walking the paths, fording the streams. Then that force becomes centrifugal, flinging her across geography and through time, questioning the police and judicial methods of 1948, applying modern profiling techniques and examining similar cases.

To increase the detail, she must zoom out — make a bigger, more complete picture. As more facts appear, their relevance to her own life and times — the coincidences and parallels, the stigmas of class and race — begin to speak to her and assume a tangible, disturbing presence.

Linda's empathy for the people involved in the case — victim, parents, accused, friends and witnesses — is palpable and lacerating, pulling us into the societal lattice of poverty, abuse and suspicion that can produce a damaged humanity, capable of many horrors.

The Eighth House is a haunting exploration of violence, motherhood and the ways in which the past refuses to stay buried, but also of the hope and possibility that new life can bring.

#lindasegtnan
#theeighthhouse by @bookish_walker

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4 days ago

Pub. Date, Oct. 1st

On Christmas Eve, as a snowstorm gathers outside a hotel on Ireland’s west coast, Janice and Gerry meet for the first time over dinner, wine and a confession each has been waiting to make. What passes between these two strangers that night will change rather more than one of them expects.

This slim volume, 124 pages, is a tight little gem from one of our best authors. Moss is a genius with the resonance of small and intimate acts, and how they can build empathy with even the most off-putting characters. She builds character in subliminal strokes: tics of language, the things they don't say, the ways in which they move and handle objects. We come to know them without being told much about them; it's quite remarkable.

In this short story it's the older, more verbose Janice we come to know first and best. Widowed in the recent past, she's come to the plush hotel at the instigation of a friend, a suggestion that she treat herself to some luxuries. She instigates the confessions with her question, "what is the worst thing you have ever done?" and gets the ball rolling with her own story of Northumbrian village intrigue.

Moss, who has used the Hadrian's Wall area previously in her work, has an ear for the rhythms of speech here, and salts them beautifully through Janice's confession. It's a discursive tale, frustrating Gerry and making him eagerly welcome the paired wines and spirits which accompany each course.

He's been away from Ireland for quite a while and may have very good reasons for keeping his return quiet, if indeed he can.

There was a point at which I thought this book was going to turn into something much darker than it did. It's not the "Tales of the Unexpected" rug-puller I thought it might be, though there are reveals and revelations along the way, and the meal does finish with some just desserts.

I loved Janice. At the start of the meal she's an engaging and funny companion, yet a flinty resolution reveals itself when the thoroughly self-serving Gerry scratches at her narrative, and its sharpness unsettles him.

An ideal "one-sitting" companion to a late-evening mince pie and a little tot of something. by @bookish_walker

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4 days ago

At Abbotsford… by @bookish_walker

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5 days ago

Couldn’t miss a visit to @mainstreethare as we’re staying literally two doors away.

The lovely Ange bought me The Old Man by The Sea, Domenico Starnone, ticking another title off from my wants list 😀

#domenicostarnone
#theoldmanbythesea by @bookish_walker

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6 days ago