Category: Bookends

  • June 2020

    I think I have read all of Tracy Chevalier’s novels and particularly enjoyed Falling Angels and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Thus I eagerly awaited my copy of her latest work: A Single Thread. It did not disappoint. Chevalier does not write to any formula and her stories are all different and various. It is […]

  • July/August 2020

    All these extra hours and days that many of us have had over the past few weeks and indeed months, should have been an absolute gift to anyone who loved reading. However, for many it seems, this has been a slightly bewildering time. I have read of serious readers who cannot for the life of […]

  • September 2020

    I have no idea what made me pull ‘I’m the king of the castle’ off the shelves of my college library in Cheltenham in the early 1970s but it was the beginning of a deep interest in the writing of Susan Hill. I remember reading the extremely scary book late into the night and going […]

  • October 2020

    I wonder if you are familiar with the term ‘slightly foxed’. It is frequently used by sellers of second hand books and refers to the gingery, freckle like marks that can appear on the pages of a book, usually near the spine. They are caused by deterioration in the quality of the paper, damp and […]

  • November 2020

    I wonder what makes someone write their autobiography? Money, obviously is a frequent motivation but you presumably must also feel that you have something of interest to share with others. Famous people are the ones that publishers and literary agents focus upon but actually I think ‘ordinary’ lives might be just as consuming to read. […]

  • December 2020 / January 2021

    So, fellow readers, in my literary Christmas stocking are three books, two new and one not so. Down in the toe of the stocking is a small hardback, quite heavy with beautiful endpapers of butterflies. It is The Lost Spells with words by Robert Macfarlane and illustrations by Jackie Morris. If this all sounds rather […]

  • February 2021

    Regular readers of this column will not be surprised to know that the Christmas list my family asked me to provide in December, contained several books. I was fortunate enough to receive them all: Barack Obama’s autobiography; poems by Michael Rosen about refugees; Patchwork, a fascinating memoir by a curator at the V&A; and the […]

  • March 2021

    I wonder where you were in the winter of 1962/3? I was in Sevenoaks in Kent and I have a clear memory of pressing my nose to a very cold window and trying to count the snowflakes as they started to fall. This was the evening of Christmas Eve and I remember thinking that this […]

  • April 2021

    Last month I shared with you two books that were brand new, hot off the press. This time the whole series of books is out of print!  I have however checked that actually that are all still available on line as second-hand copies. The advantage here being that they only cost a couple of pounds […]

  • May 2021

    I find that I am rather partial to a book of essays. I think they have several advantages. They can be quite random in subject matter which is fun and if one essay doesn’t resonate with you then maybe the next one will. They also of course tend to be quite short which can be […]