Category: My Reading

At a recent U3A session that I go to about poetry, prose and plays, someone read a poem by Helen Dunmore. I hadn’t thought about this author for a long time but I knew I had  book of her poetry. I found it, enjoyed dipping into it and realised there was a poem at the […]

This is another in the series by Alexander McCall Smith and I went to this recently as an antidote to the many crime fiction books I had consumed in quick succession. You know that there will be no grisly deaths, accidental or intentional in this story. The author has even confessed that he doesn’t really […]

Like most people I met Kate Atkinson through her early books: Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet. These books were award winners and much lauded. Later, much later, I found the Jackson Brodie stories and devoured as many as I could find, loving them all. Recently I picked up a fairly old […]

When we were in Boston a couple of years ago, we went out of the city to Concord to see the house of Louisa May Alcott. In the little high street was a lovely bookshop and inevitably we browsed and bought. At the time of paying I must have given my email address because ever […]

My granddaughter and I worked our way through Narnia, Harry Potter and the Hobbit during lockdown times and then she swiftly moved onto Katherine Rundell and I felt I ought to follow. I loved ‘The Rooftoppers’ but ‘Impossible Creatures’ is really something else. I would never say that fantasy is my favourite genre but if […]

I wonder if you remember 84 Charing Cross Road? It was a delightful film with Anthony Hopkins in his London bookshop during the stringent times of the Second World War and Anne Bancroft as a jobbing writer sitting for the most part alone at her typewriter in her small New York City apartment. The book […]

I was enjoying my U3A literature session where we had been asked to bring prose on the theme of doors. I was as usual enjoying the variety and the obscure tangents that lead people to new discoveries. Interestingly, everyone had avoided going through the wardrobe door to Narnia but we did go down the rabbit […]

I have bought several paperbacks lately and I can’t quite remember where I picked up this one. I think it caught my eye because I had just written an article about ‘cosy crime.’ Was Anthony Horowitz jumping on the bandwagon I wondered. I associated this writer with children’s books, specifically aimed at boys, the most […]

I don’t always follow through when people recommend books to me. The older I get, the more I want to make my own choices. However, I’m very glad I picked this one up. I had recently read ‘The Hours’ by Michael Cunningham and loved it (and the film) so I had high expectations of this […]

I am a longtime fan of William Boyd, so I was pleased and intrigued to find this new paperback, not quite so hefty as most of his other volumes. There is a new hero, if that is the right word for him, Gabriel Dax and I found him both interesting and appealing. Chelsea, London, is […]