Birthday blog
It’s almost traditional. Today’s my birthday and my present from my husband is a book I’ve already got. Own goals in previous years have included THE BRIDGE OF THE SAN LUIS REY and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. This year it is THE VIRAGO BOOK OF GHOST STORIES. I know exactly […]
Sentimental Journey
A couple of weeks ago I was at a study week-end in Birmingham and drove over to Moseley, a suburb where I used to live between the ages of 22 and 30, an important time in anyone’s life. First I was a postgraduate student and then I worked at the Museum and Art Gallery as […]
The power of art to console
Last Monday I was in London doing research for an academic article and was travelling from the British Library to the London Library on the underground. I was feeling low, a November day, and not very happy. I was coming up the first of the escalators at Piccadilly Circus when I heard someone singing. As […]
Warning: Reading Can Damage Your Health
‘A whole family, brought to destitution, has lately had all its misfortunes clearly traced . . . to an ungovernable passion for novel -reading entertained by the wife and mother. The husband was sober and industrious, but his wife was indolent, addicted to reading everything procurable in the shape of a romance. This led her […]
The pig and the sausage
It’s a strange experience reading a novel by someone you know well, especially when it definitely has autobiographical elements. Sue Hepworth’s lovely comic novel, PLOTTING FOR BEGINNERS, came out earlier this year and features a woman of a certain age living in the Peak District, married to a somewhat eccentric husband, with three children. She […]
namedropping
Who would have expected a book about the Bayeux tapestry would read like a thriller? It was almost looted by the Nazis. Himmler regarded it as an Aryan masterpiece and was desperate to get it out of France. The Allies reached Paris only just in time. THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY: THE LIFE STORY OF A MASTERPIECE […]
. . . ‘I prefer reading’
‘People say that life’s the thing, but I prefer reading.’ I’ve always liked that quotation from Logan Pearsall Smith, and there have been times when that was true for me. My decision to make this a blog about books and reading has made me think about the part reading has played in my life. What […]
A Failed Southern lady
A book that made me laugh out loud recently was Florence King’s CONFESSIONS OF A FAILED SOUTHERN LADY. I missed it when it came out in the 1980s and only caught up with it now because it was chosen by my reading group. It’s supposed to be autobiographical (I imagine some of the tales have […]
What Christine’s been reading
It’s been a good month or two for reading with a holiday in Denmark and two long ferry crossings allowing more time than usual. I don’t tend to read much crime when I’m writing a novel myself, so holidays are a good time to catch up. I enjoyed THE COFFIN TRAIL, the atmospheric first novel […]