His writing has been compared to Bill Bryson's... and, like Bryson, he gives a light touch to weighty topics, but the comedy does not diminish the informative heft of this foodie odyssey... Readers will enjoy generous helpings of insights into some of the world's finest sustenance.

Booth is drawn to the offbeat, and The Meaning of Rice gives us a banquet of the unfamiliar... What Booth does best is a masterclass in Japanese cuisine from haute to caff counter... Beneath the light-hearted surface is a depth of research, respect and affection for Japanese culture and the quiet stoicism of its people.

The Meaning of Rice: And Other Tales from the Belly of Japan by Michael Booth is an energetic, witty travelogue that I enjoyed for its quirkiness and its lightly-worn learning. We live in an age of supermarket sushi, but this book is a million miles from that kind of mass-production. If you want to know more about the mysterious and increasingly ubiquitous yuzu, or about how soba noodles are made—answer: with quite astonishing precision—this is the book for you. For me, Booth is Bill Bryson wrapped in nori and, metaphorically at least, tottering around on a pair of wooden sandals.

The Meaning of Rice…will have you salivating for the Land of the Rising Sun.

It is not just a book of food though, it is a warm and funny tome which sees Michael and his family venture far off the beaten track to find a fascinating cast of food heroes, from a couple lavishing love on rotten fish to a chef who literally sacrificed a limb in pursuit of the ultimate bowl of ramen. It’s fun and full of food and Michael has been dubbed the new Bill Bryson – not bad then!

Both jolly and illuminating – a rare combination.

An immersive big-hearted new novel

Written in a simple, readable style that leaves you free to concentrate on the weirdness of the content… There is no other writer able to give us the fix that his unique qualities provide

In this novel, [Murakami] captures the creative process compellingly… The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s inner life

Murakami keeps the reader gripped

Murakami dancing along ‘the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor’ is like Fred Astaire dancing across a floor, then up the walls and onto the ceiling... Killing Commendatore is a perfect balance of tradition and individual talent

Rich, sprawling… Killing Commendatore is a… powerful, sustained meditation on how we engage with works of art

Brilliant… Murakami is good company, that most precious of qualities in an author

Murakami has produced a captivating novel, full of otherworldly detours and fascinating digressions

One of the most influential novelists of his generation

An intriguing tale of bloodlust, horror and resurrection . . . [Dracul] builds to an exciting and suspenseful climax.

It takes you on a journey through time - Christmases past and present in a Dickensian way, but brings you bang up to the present - how can we live our lives and keep our memories and how do we find the truth? It is uplifting and miraculous with plenty of surprises along the way. It is vintage Smith

"Winter" is an insubordinate folk tale, with echoes of the fiction of Iris Murdoch and Angela Carter... There are few writers on the world stage who are producing fiction this offbeat and alluring... [Ali Smith] intends to send a chill up your shanks and she succeeds, jubilantly... Her dialogue is a series of pine cones flung at rosy cheeks

Smith is routinely brilliant, knowing, masterful... The light inside this great novelist's gorgeous snow globe is utterly original, and it definitely illuminates

The only preparation required to savor the Scottish writer Ali Smith's virtuosic "Winter" is to pay attention to the world we've recently been living in...What Smith has achieved in her cycle so far is exactly what we need artists to do in disorienting times: make sense of events, console us, show us how we got here, help us believe that we will find our way through...Smith gives us a potent, necessary source of sustenance that speaks directly to our age...Yet we, like her characters, are past the winter solstice now - the darkest part of the coldest season done. From here on out, we're headed toward the light...It doesn't feel that way, I know. But in the midst of "Winter," each page touched with human grace, you might just begin to believe

Winter is a stunning meditation on a complex, emotional moment in history

Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days...You can trust Smith to snow us once again with her uncanny ability to combine brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art

The stunningly original Smith again breaks every conceivable narrative rule; reflecting her longstanding affinity for Modernism, what she gives us instead is a stylistically innovative cultural bricolage that celebrates the ecstasy of artistic influence. It demands and richly rewards close attention. [Autumn and Winter] each add to Smith's growing collection of glittering literary paving stones, along a path that's hopefully leading toward the Nobel she deserves. In the interim, we can (re)read "Winter" - and eagerly await the coming of "Spring"

One of the rarest creatures in the world: a really fearless novelist...her prose is melodic, associative, wise, sometimes maddening...'she shares with Mantel and Ishiguro a sense of human caution, a need to understand, a wariness of the high-handedly authorial. All write with the humility of adulthood

The second in Smith's quartet of seasonal novels displays her mastery at weaving allusive magic into the tragicomedies of British people and politics...a bleak, beautiful tale greater than the sum of its references

An engaging novel due to the ecstatic energy of Smith's writing, which is always present on the page

A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time

These individuals converge to confront each other in the big shabby house, like characters in a Chekhov play. At first, hellish implosion looms. Slowly, erratically, connection creeps in. Lux quietly mediates. Ire softens. Sophia at last eats something. Art resees Nature..."Winter" gives the patient reader a colorful, witty - yes, warming - divertissement

With Iris and Lux as catalysts, scenes from Christmas past unfold, and our narrow views of Sophia and Art widen and deepen, filled with the secrets and substance of their histories, even as the characters themselves seem to expand. As in Sophia's case, for Art this enlargement is announced by a hallucination - "not a real thing," as Lux tells Iris, whose response speaks for the book's own expansive spirit: "Where would we be without our ability to see beyond what it is we're supposed to be seeing?"