Author: Susan Brice

  • Being told what to read…

    I have read the suggestion that one should avoid reading newly published books and focus on those at least 10 years old. The premise being that if they are still around then, well, they must be worth reading. It is so expensive to publish a book that it is more and more common for print […]

  • Trelawney’s Cornwall – Petroc Trelawney

    Sometimes I like a reading break away from fiction and this book presented itself. I may have mentioned before that Petroc is my favourite Radio 3 presenter! His breakfast show is my choice of a gentle way into the day. He is of course Cornish and I was interested as to how he would approach […]

  • What do I want in a story?

    Having just read Margaret Forster’s book ‘Is there anything you want?’ (and written about it,) I have been thinking around this tricky question … and also wondering if the answer has changed with age. There was a book I was reading recently that suddenly involved a situation in my life of which I didn’t want […]

  • Is there anything you want? – Margaret Forster

    This book was on my shelves with half a dozen others by the same author. I must have read it before but I really don’t remember it. Margaret Forster, who died a few years ago was married to Hunter Davies, writer for the Times and Sunday Times and (much more importantly) biographer of The Beatles! […]

  • Thrones, Dominations – Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh

    A short while ago I read the four novels by Jill Paton Walsh about her Cambridge quasi detective Imogen Quy. I loved them, and looking for more by the same author I came across novels that she had written with Dorothy L Sayers. With, and then by herself in the style of, once the older […]

  • August 2024

    ‘The Signora had no business to do it, no business at all.’ Many of you will recognise this as Charlotte Bartlett’s words at the beginning of EM Forster’s ‘A Room with a View.’ Well, when we recently stayed in Florence, our room nearly had a view of the River Arno … almost. However, we had […]

  • Enough – Stephen Hough

    I like a good memoir and I haven’t read one for some time. So, there I was in the London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury and looking for what I might buy. Not sure I am really capable of going into a Bookshop and not buying something. Elif Shafak took my eye … and there is […]

  • Bookish Treats in Bloomsbury

    I like the feel of Bloomsbury, one of London’s many ‘villages.’ Every area of the city has its own distinct flavour and Bloomsbury is full of interesting learning with UCL and the British Museum. The museum remains free and is obviously very popular. In the middle of the piazza is a round, domed building and […]

  • Learning from Fiction

    If a book provides me with a good story and also teaches me something, then that  is a 5 star rating. Fiction is of course just that; made up, possibly without a shred of reality. However, most of my reading has a historical background and it is that that sends me to delve further. The […]

  • The Last Runaway – Tracy Chevalier

    I have great admiration for Tracy Chevalier. In my opinion she is an accomplished writer. As with most people I think, the first novel of hers that I read was ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’. This was the backstory created from the luminous picture by Vermeer. It was a convincing historical read and I […]