Author: Susan Brice

  • To Be Othered

    I love the way language ebbs and flows. In many ways usage is all. The function of language is to communicate and maybe if it does that then it can’t be wrong. However, as I get older, it can be quite startling to realise that a word that has been used as an adjective and […]

  • The Years – Annie Ernaux

    I don’t think I have read too many works by Nobel prize winners in literature but here is one example. It took me a little time to get into this book maybe because in the beginning I thought I was going to be reading fiction. This is not a story in that sense but it […]

  • Moving Forward

    I really can’t remember how I moved from looking at the shelves of children’s books in the library to those of adults. I certainly didn’t get any help or advice; not that I asked for it of course. Walking the bookshops (not the library you note. There is a change in culture and economic wealth) […]

  • Time To Keep Silence – Patrick Lee Fermor

    Some people are so much larger than life that they seem to be fictional. TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, comes to mind, and, in the same mould, Patrick Lee Fermor. One reviewer of his work described him as a cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. As a baby he was left with a random […]

  • The Woman in the Fifth – Douglas Kennedy

    My Douglas Kennedy shelf is in the bookcase in my hall. That row of books is quite full of itself. There are many hardback books and even the paperbacks are large. Somehow this seems quite suitable as these are big stories with a capital B. It also seems apt that they are written by an […]

  • Fitzcarraldo

    Fitzcarraldo is a small publishing house, only about 10 years old, based in Deptford, a yet to be gentrified area of London. It had ambitions from the very beginning: to remain independent, a tricky aim for any publishing company, and to specialise in literary fiction, in both original English and in translation. They were prepared […]

  • April 2025

    I have recently been down a long and convoluted Virginia Woolf shaped rabbit hole and what a fascinating journey it has been. It began with ‘The Memory Library’ by Kate Storey, (visit: beyondtheairing cupboard.co.uk to read my thoughts on that book and a musing about ‘Mrs Dalloway,’) and led me to have another go at […]

  • May 2025

    When I set up my blog about books and reading a couple of years ago, I did of course need a name for it. Over a cup of coffee I played about with some rather obvious titles: cover to cover, turning the page etc etc. They had of course all been taken by existing blogs […]

  • Like it or not

    Have you noticed how the word ‘like’ is now used in significantly different ways than a generation ago? I started to read up about ‘like’ and almost wished I hadn’t! There is so much going on with this word. I am quite aware that language ebbs and flows, changes, grows etc etc but this particular […]

  • Shakespeare and Co.

    A victim of its own success. This is what has happened to this fascinating and historical bookshop opposite Notre Dame Cathedral, on the Left Bank in Paris. Because it is so well known it has become just too popular. I have been into the shop on several occasions. It is a warren with many small […]