Freedom
Among my presents this year was Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM, which I’d very much looking forward to reading. The big question has been, could he come up with something as good as THE CORRECTIONS? I thought that was the very best contemporary novel that I had read for a long time, exhilerating good in the way […]
Meltdown . . .
. . . in more ways than one. The snow has more or less gone now. There was another small snowfall yesterday, but it hasn’t amounted to much – yet. More snow is forecast. We still have that feeling that our plans are provisional and I am wondering if we are going to miss the […]
Fourteen degrees below zero . . .
. . . was the temperature outside our back door yesterday morning. Yesterday I wore a thermal vest, a cotton t-shirt, a woollen jumper, a cashmere cardigan and a big Swedish sweater, a hat, and a scarf and that was INDOORS. Outside I look like an extra for DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Ordinary activities take so much […]
Snowed In!
For the first time ever in the fourteen years we are completely snowed in. Yesterday we woke to 16 inches of snow and it has gone on falling ever since off and on. In the past there has always the train to fall back on (that was how we got to our son’s wedding four […]
Let it snow . . .
I don’t usually blog about the weather, but it is the dominating fact of our lives at the moment. The snow arrived last Friday night and the threat of more stopped us going away at the week-end. It wasn’t too bad yesterday: my husband got his car out and our daughter got to school. But […]
My Father’s Fortune
I hadn’t read anything by Michael Frayn until I read this memoir, though a few years ago I did go to see his play, NOISES OFF, which was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in the theatre. Judging by MY FATHER’S FORTUNE, I’ve been missing something. Although it does encompass the author’s childhood, […]
William Maxwell
‘In order to pay off an old debt that someone else had contacted, Austin King had said yes when he knew that he ought to have said no, and now at five o’clock of a July afternoon he saw the grinning face of trouble everywhere he turned. The house was full of strangers from Mississippi; […]
Holiday Reading
It’s always hard to know which books to pack when space is at a premium. Recent holidays have been spent in Northern France so it has just been a matter of slinging a bag of books in the boot of the car. But this time we were going to China so there was a real […]
I’ve never read Ulysses
I’ve just read Susan Hill’s HOWARD’S END IS ON THE LANDING about the year she spent reading from her own collection of books. I enjoyed it and agreed with her about a lot. Like her I think that THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER is a masterpiece. Like her I have a high regard for Trollope and Dickens […]