Category: My Reading

  • The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton – Anstey Harris

    It is always good to have a book recommended by a friend as this was. I looked up the author and discovered she taught creative writing at the University of a Kent in Canterbury. And then I turned to the first page. My friend had not mentioned that this book, primarily about friendship of various […]

  • The Gardener – Salley Vickers

    I have read several books by Salley Vickers including ‘The Cleaner of Chartres’, ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’ and ‘Mr Golightly’s Holiday.’ I enjoyed them all: imaginative, well constructed stories. This book is the author’s latest offering and continues in a similar vein, just slightly fey, just a touch of magic realism. ‘The Gardener’ is a novel […]

  • A Far Cry From Kensington – Muriel Spark

    I read this book immediately after reading ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner. The difference in style hits you quite full in the face and added to my thoughts that Brookner shows great elegance in her writing. I wouldn’t say that the writing here is elegant but the narrative is certainly interesting, the story well […]

  • 3 Short Books

    All of these were really impulse buys and 2 of the three were successful so that is pretty good I think. In Daunts beautiful bookshop in Marylebone High Street, where one could go simply to admire the gorgeous Edwardian architecture, they arrange their travel section in a very particular fashion. There is a bookshelf of […]

  • Bibliomaniac – Robin Ince

    I sometimes enjoy reading a book about books and book lovers. This is a wide church of course. There are very different members of this club. I came across this book through Daunts Bookshop inviting me to a talk Robin Ince was giving. I very nearly went but the trains had other ideas; it was […]

  • Rooftoppers – Katherine Rundell

    I first heard of this book, and indeed this writer, at a U3A session. Coincidentally the author was then a guest of Michael Berkeley on Radio 3s Private Passions and I realised that she had written the introduction to a Michael Morpurgo book I had read recently. I have not worked out quite why she […]

  • My Salinger Year – Joanna Rakoff

    It is always good to receive news from Slightly Foxed. The book that caught my eye this time was called ‘My Salinger Year’ written by Joanna Rakoff. It is a memoir of a year spent working in an esteemed literary agency in New York City in the 1990s. The author was an intern, an assistant […]

  • Rebecca / Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne du Maurier

    This is a minor Daphne du Maurier fest about 2 of her novels: Rebecca and Frenchman’s Creek. I will leave Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel for another time. (There are of course many others but those are the four famous stories.) Looking along my bookshelves I found I had all 4 stories in a […]

  • Treacle Walker – Alan Garner

    And now for something totally different. You may know the author Alan Garner from his children’s book ‘The Owl Service’ which was important to several generations and subsequently became a television series. However, there have been very many books since then and Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, written as Alan Garner […]

  • Saplings – Noel Streatfeild

    Along with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women books and the Heidi stories, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild looms large in my childhood reading. Goodness knows how many times I read it. I still have the rather battered paperback; my original copy. Reading it again a few years ago, two thoughts came to mind. Firstly, what […]