Author: Susan Brice

  • Small Things Like These

    When a friend pressed this book into my hand, urging me to read it, I had never heard of Claire Keegan. The book was a one night read, 114 pages. I noticed it had been on the 2022 Booker shortlist but I find this is not always a good recommendation for me. I have before […]

  • The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders

    I have written before about Doctor Ruth Galloway, the most delightful and beautifully written character in the detective novels by Elly Griffiths, all set on the Norfolk coast. I have talked to several others who have read all the books and love them as I do. (I think there is a carefully defined difference between […]

  • Reading the classics …

    … well, being forced to actually. Wandering around my local Waterstones recently, I noticed a whole section on exam notes of various kinds: 11+ practice, SATs revision and various parts of the GCSE and A level English syllabi…syllabuses sounds more natural doesn’t it? Anyway, I had a look and found that all the literature was […]

  • Why do we read fiction?

    I have on more than one occasion talked to friends about this question, some of whom are committed fiction readers and others not. It has been an important part of my life for decades but I have never really thought about why I want to spend hours reading stories. There are many websites that wish […]

  • Chick Lit

    What does this term mean to you I wonder? To me it has a slightly derogatory nuance to it. When I researched a little, it became clear that it was applied to novels that were aimed at young women and mostly written by women, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s. Since then the term has […]

  • July/August 2021

    I have bought a good few violins over the years. Several that were tiny fractions of the whole. They were all Chinese, of one make or another, and trundled backwards and forwards to school and music lessons. And then there was the European violin, from a German workshop. This one was a far finer piece […]

  • 170 something years on

    From history lessons I knew all about the 1815 Corn Laws and the1832 Reform Act but The Libraries Act of 1850 obviously passed me by. It gave boroughs the power and indeed the responsibility to establish free libraries giving access to literature and information to all. It should be understood that this was not something that […]

  • September 2021

    If you ever choose to read the Sunday Times, you might be familiar with the columnist India Knight (once expelled from Wycombe Abbey School, but that is irrelevant). Sounds fun to me to be allowed to write about what ever you wish, as she does, often in a very opinionated manner. Or, maybe not, there […]

  • October 2021

    I have read that Jane Austen thought one should only write about one’s own life experiences, hence the microcosms we find within Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. Jane writes exquisitely about life within the upper middle class of the provincial gentry, both its luxury and its occasional and accidental penury. However, if we extrapolate […]

  • November 2021

    I have had a reading crisis. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it throws me somewhat. I started reading ‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart which is the recent winner of the Booker prize. The novel has a very autobiographical basis, is exceedingly well written and the description is intense and powerful, but […]