I am not sure how best to categorise the next addition to my reading list, which is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. It might well be filed under science fiction but was also a best-seller (deservedly so); speculative fiction would be my speculative placement.

The heart of the book, which has no hard science but plenty of imagination, is that one of the protagonists frequently and inadvertently finds himself taking trips through time; the other is his wife. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started it (chick lit? unreadable pretentiousness?) but by the end, I wished I could jump back a few days and savour the book afresh from the beginning.