birthday books
I have a theory that glamourous women like to receive presents that suggest that they are secretly a bit of an intellectual: remember that that photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Heidigger (or whatever) with her specs perched on the end of her nose? Conversely a blue-stocking such as myself doesn’t want to appreciated purely for […]
Disposing of a library
My mother loved classic crime fiction, especially by American writers: John MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, and less well known, the novels of Elizabeth Linington. Linington wrote a truly stupendous number of books, under a variety of names: Anne Blaisdell, Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan. They are all set in Los Angeles, mostly in the sixties and […]
Comfort Reading II
I’ve been reading Simenon’s Maigret novels. In some cases it’s re-reading, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t read them for the plots, which are slender and not very memorable. No, I read them for the character of Maigret and the opportunity to spend a little time on the streets of Paris. Julian Symons describes Maigret […]
Back again
It’s time to resume my blog. When I signed off around 18 months ago, it was because my mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and I wanted to cut down on my commitments so that I could spend time with her. We had trips away, went to the theatre, spent evenings sitting reading […]
The Paris Review Interviews I
I’ve been reading these with great pleasure. All of these interviews with leading writers have been published before – the earliest (Dorothy Parker) in the Paris Review of 1956, the latest (Joan Didion) in 2006, but they all bear reading again. They’ve been selected by Philip Gourevitch and what a selection, Kurt Vonnegut rubs shoulders […]
Bamboo
I enjoyed this collection of William Boyd’s miscellaneous writings. I’ve only read one of his novels, years ago, AN ICE-CREAM WAR. Nothing since. This made me think I might read more. I particularly liked his accounts of his rebarbative public school and his childhood in Africa. And the eulogies to two particular institutions, the British […]
Can Any Mother Help Me?
This marvellous book, edited by Jenna Bailey, is a collection of extracts from the magazines of the Cooperative Correspondence Club. This was simply a group of women, with a somewhat shifting membership, who between the 1935 to 1990 contributed letters and articles to a magazine edited by one of their number and circulated privately amongst […]
Home Fires Burning
I loved Georgina Lee’s Great War diaries, HOME FIRES BURNING, written for her baby son, Harry, and got completely absorbed in her world. She married her solicitor husband when she was 41 and had her adored only child when she was 43 or 44. I identified with her as an older mother, though my life […]