Category: My Reading

  • The Road to Lichfield – Penelope Lively

    This was the author’s first adult novel, published in 1977 and it was shortlisted for the Booker prize, not a bad start, but of course she had already been very successful as a children’s writer. I have to say this is not my favourite of her books but I can certainly appreciate the skilled writing. […]

  • The Memory Library – Kate Storey

    I don’t always follow through when someone recommends a book to me, for the same reason that I don’t belong to a book group (much as I love talking about books); I don’t want to be told what to read. However, sometimes I do listen and read a book that has excited another reader. I’m […]

  • Killing Time – Alan Bennett

    I try hard to avoid heavy, expensive hardback books but a round, wooden table artfully styled with small, beautifully produced hardbacks, well, that’s another matter … and very hard to resist. Such a table was near the checkout in Daunts the other day and just as so many people would in indulge in chocolates as […]

  • Caledonian Road – Andrew O’Hagan

    I had read lots of glowing reviews of this book and planned to buy it when it came out in paperback. As it happened I received the hardback for Christmas, all 600 pages, not then a book to read in bed, fall asleep and drop on one’s face! That was not going to happen actually […]

  • Into The London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City – Edited by Elizabeth Dearnley

    On a lovely London Day just before Christmas we were killing time in Waterstones Piccadilly before going to see a matinee of The Mousetrap. Unusually for me, we found ourselves on the sci-fi and horror floor. Not my natural home but with books it’s always good to be open minded. I was drawn to a […]

  • Raising Hare – Chloe Dalton

    When I was a teenager in West Somerset, my father would drive me to the school bus stop each morning, about a mile away. During March and April we were frequently alarmingly late…and it was a logistical nightmare if I missed the bus! The reason for our tardiness was that we were watching hares from […]

  • By Any Other Name – Jodi Picoult

    It is the well-known title for many a university thesis or dissertation: Did Shakespeare write the works that are today attributed to him? And, of course, if he didn’t then who did? I will declare my personal position before we go any further: I really don’t care that much. I am very fond of some […]

  • Two Women in Rome – Elizabeth Buchan

    I asked some time ago: what book should I have taken on my visit to Rome as I read ‘A Room with a View’ whilst in Florence. Well, I think I have answered my own question, I should have had ‘Two women in Rome’ with me by Elizabeth Buchan. It would have been perfect I […]

  • The Lincoln Highway – Amor Towles

    For the first time ever I found a book I wanted in Waterstone’s bargain box. Hardback, heavy, 500 pages and costing £3.00. This is the second Amor Towles book I have read, The Gentleman in Moscow being the first. I fell in love, totally, with that novel but this was utterly different. It is a […]

  • Angels of Mud – Vanessa Nicolson

    The art history based introduction to the book I have just read: Florence- Ordeal by Water. Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, was written by Vanessa Nicolson and was very informative. The colophon gave further details of both writers and said that Vanessa Nicolson lived in Sissinghurst and London. At that point I suddenly thought oh right, those […]