It was pleasure and privilege to be invited once again to Penguin’s Bloggers Night held in the third floor gallery at Foyles. Thank you to Penguin, and especially Lija there who arranged the evening. It is always especially pleasurable to meet up with blogging friends old and new. It always amazes me that we all Read More
Month: March 2013
A Tale of Two Women in 1930s Berlin
Black Roses by Jane Thynne Remembering Jane Thynne’s columns and reviews in the Daily Telegraph, and having read that she is married to thriller writer Philip Kerr, I had high hopes of her new novel, set in Berlin during the years preceding WWII. I wasn’t disappointed, for Black Roses is a brilliant historical thriller based Read More
A tale of motherhood across generations…
The Confidantby Hélène Grémillon, translated by Alison Anderson I got a letter one day, a long letter that wasn’t signed. This was quite an event, because I’ve never received much mail in my life. My letter box had never done anything more than inform me that the-sea-was-warm or that the-snow-was-good, so I didn’t open it Read More
An absolute pleasure to dip into …
The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield I’m so glad I finally decided to give this book a go, as it has been a real pleasure to dip into over the past couple of weeks. As I already reported here, I was smitten by this book from its opening pages. Having obtained an Read More
A book that wants to be a family saga
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman A proof copy of this book has languished on my shelves since its publication in 2011. I generally prefer not to read books that are getting all the hype during the hype, so, during the final days of my TBR pledge for this year, it was finally Read More
It’s what’s between the covers that counts …
No doubt you can point me to countless book covers that use the same photographs – there are several that use a Victorian gent by some railings that I’ve seen commented upon, but yesterday I spotted a pair for myself… The first is Black Roses by Jane Thynne, which is set in 1930s Berlin. A Read More
Finding one’s inner animal?
A Man in the Zoo & Lady into Fox by David Garnett Until I encountered the blogosphere, I had only ever encountered David Garnett (1892-1981) as the author of a novel that Andrew Lloyd-Webber based his musical Aspects of Love on. Garnett was part of the Bloomsbury Group. He was lover of Duncan Grant, and his second wife Read More
A master class in the art of stand-up
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin In the 1970s, Steve Martin was one of the US’s top comedians, playing sell-out tours to huge audiences, and regularly appearing on Saturday Night Live and the Johnny Carson Show. After eighteen years, worn out by it, and noticing the first empty seats in an audiences Read More
The power of a descending bassline …
I don’t usually do ‘Song for Sunday’ type posts, but felt inspired today. I was listening to Broadcasting House, the Sunday morning magazine programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, and there was a feature on why Baby by Justin Bieber is a classic pop song. It has all the hallmarks – being written in Read More
Ramble on …
This is my 800th post – Gosh! That means that in my four and a half years of blogging I’ve posted around 177 times per year. It also works out that I’ve averaged a post every other day – which frankly astounds me! Anyway it is entirely appropriate that my 800th post should be a Read More
Midweek Musings …
Dear Readers, I am smitten! No, not a new man in my life, but a book. Finally, inspired by Simon’s Guest post on Vulpes Libris, I dug out my copy of The Diary of a Provincial Lady, by E.M. Delafield. By page two, I was lapping it up, and I shall be dipping into this Read More
Non-fiction and me …
I have shelves full of proper non-fiction books all awaiting my attention. Books historical, geographical, biographical, scientific, and so on – you get the picture. I love the idea of reading them, but in practice they make up less than ten percent of my reading. The majority of those I do read are memoirs and Read More
