Category: Musings

  • Endpapers

    A strange thing to be writing about I know. Endpapers are fairly obviously the paper at the end of a book (but also the beginning!) that connects the cover to the rest of the book. Sometimes they are completely plain or just solid colour but occasionally you open a book and are offered a real […]

  • Pam Ayres poem

    Dad took me to our local pub in 1953, They had a television set, the first I’d ever see, To watch a Coronation! I knew it sounded grand, And although at six years old, the word was Hard to understand. But little kids like me, and others all Around the world, We saw the magic […]

  • Fun

    I am fascinated by the way in which usage has the power to change language. Now I am old it is very noticeable how the English language has changed since my childhood. France has an institute whose only purpose is to preserve the French language as if it can be held in time and is […]

  • Frabjous day, callooh, callay

    It is indeed a frabjous day because waiting for me when I arrived home was a new Elly Griffiths book: Bleeding Heart Yard. This is the third story about the detective Harbinder Kaur and I am hugely looking forward to reading it. The hardback edition was out last year but I decided to wait for […]

  • Pre-loved

    I have been buying several books from Wob lately: World of Books. They are efficient, deliver quickly, don’t overpack. All good. On the bookmark that they include it says: ‘we love that you’ve just re-homed a book with us. We’re all about reducing waste and helping goods to be reused and re-loved again and again.’ […]

  • Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries

    I don’t have a section for book talks, so this will have to be a musing. I spent the evening a few days ago listening to the author Kate Mosse talking on stage. She was entirely alone. This was not an interview but I’m not quite sure what it was: part performance, part illustrated lecture […]

  • Book Clubs

    So, what do we think about book clubs? They must basically be a ‘good thing’ I feel but going further into it maybe becomes a little complicated. The first and indeed only book club that I have ever belonged to, contained myself and a couple of friends, all aged about 7, and I think we […]

  • Stories of their time

    Amongst all the heaviness of the Ukraine war, the cost of living crisis and the earthquake tragedy in Turkey and Syria, the prime minister took a couple of minutes to give his thoughts about Roald Dahl and his books. He said ‘the books should be preserved and not airbrushed.’ This is referring to the publisher’s […]

  • Love According to Will and Paul

    As it is February and of course St Valentine’s Day, I thought I would share my favourite Shakespearean sonnet with you: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! It is an ever-fixed […]

  • Lockdown finds

    Obviously in crazy lockdown times, particularly the first one (how many were there?) I had swathes of empty time, much of which was filled with extra reading and also following up writers on my iPad. Here are a few of the writers I encountered in that dark time. Somebody somewhere, maybe in a journal or […]