Book Group
Next week it is my turn to offer the books for the group to choose from and this always involves some pleasurable musing. It is a bit like assembling a cheese board. Everything should be good of its kind and there should be a variety. It’s good to choose something recent and this time it […]
One-hit wonders
It was reading MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY by Winifred Watson that got me thinking about this. It’s usually a derogatory term, but I, for one, would rather have one hit than none at all. Alain-Fournier is the classic example of this with LE GRAND MEALNES. Death in the trenches of WWI ended his […]
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 […]
The Lincoln Lawyer
Some weeks I just don’t know what I want to read and I’m not happy with anything. I pick at this and that, but can’t settle. Reviewers never come out and say ‘I wasn’t in a very good mood when I read this, so maybe the problem is with me, not the book’ but I […]
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
As I said last week I have to be careful about what I read at the moment, so that I don’t muddy the waters for the novel I’m writing. This collection of early detective stories from the decade or two before the first world war fits the bill nicely. It was edited by Hugh Greene […]