Welcome to the Barking Mad Book Blog

Hi all

Yes, I know...just what the world needs....ANOTHER book blog! Well, we can blame the COVID-19 virus for this one, as working from home and self-isolating has given me some time on my hands to the extent that I thought I would give this book blogging a go!

Those of you who know me from Twitter will know that I tend to post mainly about three things.....books, dogs and music. My original plan for the name of this site was going to be a play on that classic Ian Drury and the Blockheads song and call it "Books and Dogs and Rock 'n' Roll" but that's a bit of a mouthful,  so in keeping with the dog element, and me going a bit stir crazy, the Barking Mad Book Blog was born!

This is my first ever attempt at any kind of blog, so pretty much a work in progress. I take my hats off to my good friend The Beardy Book Blogger @laughinggravy71 on Twitter, and all of you superb bloggers that I follow for your excellent reviews and recommendations - The Tattooed Book Geek, Bibliophile Book Club, The Reading Closet, It's an Indie Book Blog to name just a few. I doubt very much this thing will reach the quality and consistency of your blogs, but I guess as long as I'm happy and sharing  my love of books, that's all that matters.

So, enough of the waffling, let's crack on......

Current Read

I'm just over half way through this at the moment. It's a perfect piece of escapism from the current bonkers world we're living in. Teagan Frost is "blessed" (probably more like cursed) with psychokinetic abilities and works with a misfit covert government organisation. When a murder is discovered that looks like only someone with her abilities could have done it, Teagan is obviously blamed and her own team turn against her. She then has only 22 hours....yep they don't even give her a full day.....to clear her name and find the real killer.

TGWCMSWHM as I'll now call it is like The A Team meets the X-Men. The cover blurb suggests Alibi meets X-Men but I've never seen Alibi so wouldn't know. It's fast moving, funny, blood spattered and great fun. A follow up is due later this year. I understand the author, Jackson Ford, is a pseudonym for a well known sci-fi writer. I don't read a lot of sci-fi so don't recognise the style and have not been able to find out the true identity so if anyone knows give me a shout! 

TBR List
Top of my list is this beaut.....  

I was lucky enough to win a recent competition run by Mark Edwards and received this ARC of his latest release, due out in June. I love Mark's books so really looking forward to getting stuck into this as soon as I finish TGWCMSWHM. This has jumped straight to the top of my TBR pile which currently includes Adrian McKinty's The Chain; Lucas Veste's The Six; Vanda Symon's Overkill and Linwood Barclay's Elevator Pitch to name a mere few. I read as much as I can but I'm not the fastest ......I should have called this The Book Sloth Blog as that's probably a better reflection of my speed! 

2020 reads to date
My aim was to try and read at least 5 books per month this year which I thought was achievable, even for a sloth! Got off to a great start in January, then buggered off to Asia for three weeks in February so reading took a back seat apart from one (but it was a cracker!!) Some stupid virus thingy has also scuppered plans a little bit so far this month but slowly getting back on track. So far I have read.....

January

Nothing important happened today, Will Carver.
Violet, SJI Holliday
Black Summer, MW Craven
The Family Upstairs, Lisa Jewell
Arrowood, Mick Finlay
Your Deepest Fear, David Jackson
The Executioner, Chris Carter
Single, K L Slater

February
The Alibi Girl, CJ Skuse

March
Vox, Christine Dalcher

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, Jackson Ford 

Hopefully I'll be back to my minimum five a month next month!

Think that's about it for now. I have posted a lot of reviews on Amazon previously, under the name Mr C so if you get a chance, take a look. Might give you an idea of what to expect on here in the future....I may have just shot myself in the foot there!! 

I would seriously appreciate any feedback anyone has however. As I said, this is a definite work in progress so plenty of room for improvement. If you've lasted this long without getting bored, I thank you and will (hopefully) see you again soon 

Cheers and happy reading

Brian