Category: Bookends
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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 […]
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June 2021
Breathtaking is maybe an overused adjective. It is often applied to views and sometimes to stories. My interest in this word right now is that several times whilst reading these books I found that I had stopped breathing. My breath had been taken away. Not something that happens frequently at all. It started when non-essential […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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December 2021
You will be relieved to know that I have survived my reading crisis*. (see last month’s Bookends.) I have found some feel-good books and I want to tell you about them. The first is ‘Sweet Sorrow’ by David Nicholls. This is for me the antithesis of Sally Rooney writing about young love. It is highly […]
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January 2022
On one idle afternoon in lockdown (can’t remember which one!) I decided to count my books. It took some time and I rather lost interest by the time I reached 2,500. This isn’t counting books belonging to other members of the family. I then badly needed a cup of tea. And, rather on the back […]
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February 2022
I am reading Mary Wesley. On my bookshelves there are the 10 novels written by this author in the 1980s and 90s, written by her and published late in life. Having just worked my way through Penelope Fitzgerald, it occurred to me that there are many writers who were not published until at least middle […]