Film Review: Obsession and 9 novels with similar themes

I swore off horror films after watching The Exorcist as a teenager at a cousin’s place more than four decades ago. It scared the pants off me. What made it worse was returning home alone on the dark and rainy night. That resolution didn’t last very long. Over the years, I have watched horror films now and then, more out of morbid curiosity than any real liking for the genre. In my defence, I haven’t read too many horror novels, though William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, on which the film was based, remains one of the best-known books in the genre. I haven't read it either.

Which brings me to Obsession, one of the most talked-about psychological horror films of 2026.

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New Fiction: Books that caught my eye in 2026

One of the joys of being a booklover, apart from buying and hoarding books, is looking up fiction titles scheduled for release in a particular year, even if it’s not possible to read them all. I frequently read about new or forthcoming books that have generated interest in the media and literary circles. I’m curious to know more about these books and sometimes buy them, depending on whether I read in those genres.

To be honest, though, I don’t buy many physical books these days because I’m running out of storage space and already have more than enough books to read. My collection of comics is another story for another day. So, most of the new books I buy are ebooks, which I read on my tablet.

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Book Review: Bad Medicine by Paul Bagdon

Westerns have been my favourite genre ever since an uncle introduced me to Oliver Strange’s Sudden series in my teens. I read all ten novels by Strange, as well as another five by Frederick H. Christian—one of many pen names of the late Frederick William Nolan—who did a fine job of bringing the eponymous gunfighter back to life.

Since then, I have read Westerns every year, though not as many over the past couple of decades as my attention shifted to other writers and genres. Even so, I’m always looking for Western fiction. I was therefore delighted to come across a new author, Paul Bagdon, who appears to have written around fifteen series and standalone novels, though there may well be more. I also read online that Bagdon has published more than 250 stories and articles in several magazines.

New Fiction: Books about books, libraries and bookshops

There seems to be no shortage of novels about books, libraries, and bookshops. There is a growing audience for what might be called “books about books,” or bibliophilic fiction, as it’s also known. I have seen more films and television shows revolving around books and literary culture than I have read novels in this genre.

Below are only a few such books that caught my attention, though I haven't read any of them. There are many others in this ever-growing bookish genre—some I have read about, many I still have to discover.

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Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

I can never guess the culprit in Agatha Christie novels until Hercule Poirot lays it all out at the end. In the same way, I didn’t see the signs or the twists coming in Alex Michaelides’ debut novel The Silent Patient (2019), even if at times they might have seemed obvious. Just not to me. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention; so absorbed was I in this cleverly crafted psychological thriller.

The Silent Patient, to use a cliché, pulls you in from the start with an unsettling theme: thirty-three-year-old Alicia Berenson, a once-famous painter, shoots her husband and stops talking completely. Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, reads about her case in the papers and is determined to make her talk and find out why she did it—and, in fact, you can’t wait until he does. After all, Alicia, by her own admission, loved Gabriel and couldn’t imagine life without him.

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I got bookends for Christmas, but no books

I didn't get any books for Christmas. Instead, my family gifted me a lovely pair of horse-shaped bookends among other things, perhaps in the hope that I might be tempted to read the books on display if I saw them every day. Never mind all the other unread books carefully tucked away in cabinets.

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You read the ones you have first, and then we'll see about more books.

The trick, if it was one, seemed to have worked. Perhaps it was a sense of guilt that made me put The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides and Shiver by Allie Reynolds on display. Both were gifts from my daughter two years ago.

I had started reading The Silent Patient and even wrote about the book on this blog in 2024, and then completely forgot about it.

The bookends were a reminder to pick up the book where I'd left off. Except I had to start from the beginning, having forgotten what I'd read up to the bookmarked page. You can't just open page 52, so to speak, and continue reading as if you'd been there only yesterday.

People often ask on social media what book they would read first in the new year. With me it's usually a half-read book from December 31. So no surprises or hidden gems there—unless I’m tempted to let other books jump the queue.

But I'm optimistic, as I am every New Year, that I'll not only finish the leftovers but also read more books this year. 

Maybe then I'll get books for Christmas.

The wild ginger is in flower. So is agrimony, lady's lace, wild geranium. The ferns are turning yellow. The fruit of the snake lily has turned red, signifying an end to the rains. A thrush whistles cheerfully on the branch of a dead tree.

Yes, and when all the wars are done, a butterfly will still be beautiful.

— Ruskin Bond, author and poet, in his introduction to Delhi Is Not Far: The Best of Ruskin Bond, September 7, 1994 

Book Review: A Wanted Man by Lee Child

"Some old guy once said the meaning of life is that it ends. Which was inescapably true. No one lives forever."

 

I know more about Jack Reacher from the Tom Cruise and Alan Ritchson movies and series than from Lee Child's novels, having read only Killing Floor, the first in the series.

In keeping with the trend, I was prompted to read the 17th instalment, A Wanted Man, after watching Season 3 on Prime, which is based on Child's seventh book, Persuader.

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Reacher's unintended exploits—or troubles, depending on how you see it—begin when he hitches a ride on a deserted highway to Nebraska with two men and a woman, ostensibly headed for Chicago. He's en route to Virginia to meet a girl. But once in the car, the highly decorated ex-military cop quickly senses something's off: the men appear friendly, making small talk, yet oddly evasive; the woman seems scared; and the route doesn't quite add up. His suspicion is confirmed when the woman, seated in the back, manages to warn him with a series of coded eye blinks through the rear-view mirror. Saying more would ruin the suspense for those who haven't read the book. 

Elsewhere, a Kansas sheriff is investigating the murder of a US trade attaché, a cover for a CIA station chief. The body, found at a nearby diner, is central to the plot of A Wanted Man.

Over the next forty-eight hours, Reacher finds himself in the middle of a dangerous situation that unfolds with each chapter. It involves conspiracy theories, an undercover operation, disappearing witnesses, and a potential terror plot with links to both domestic and Middle Eastern, likely Syrian, terrorists. Reacher teams up with Julia Sorenson, a sharp and initially reluctant FBI special agent from the Omaha field office, who's investigating the diplomat's murder. The plot spirals into a national security issue, pulling in FBI agents from other field offices, the State Department and the CIA.

A Wanted Man is a slow-building thriller that moves at a steady pace—a departure, I assume, from many of the other Reacher novels and their screen adaptations. Reacher spends considerable time thinking and analysing each situation before making his move. For example, he's admirably restrained as the two men drive for hours—across state lines, through Nebraska, Kansas and Ohio—without quite reaching their destination. He resists the urge to confront them, choosing instead to bide his time so he can get to the bottom of who they are and what they're actually up to. Here, Lee Child captures the tension of the seemingly endless road trip really well.

The ending is trademark Reacher, though. He storms in, guns blazing, for a high-stakes showdown inside an abandoned, blast-proof military installation—likened to a capsized battleship—in the middle of nowhere. It's so massive that the author details its secretive interior over several pages. I had trouble picturing it in my head.

I was so impressed with Lee Child's writing in Killing Floor—precise, with clipped sentences—that I promised myself I'd read more of his books. In A Wanted Man, I especially liked how Child effortlessly repeats certain words and phrases across consecutive sentences within the same paragraph. I don't recall coming across that style in anything else I've read. Hopefully, A Wanted Man will spur me to pick up more of his novels.