A Little Sale...

Books for Sale!I'm going away for a long weekend (conference down near home, so making the most of it) and thought I'd try something... I've been having a sort-out, and have quite a few books I don't need any more.  I'm also somewhat in need of monies at the moment, what with an unfunded DPhil and all, so I thought I'd copy an idea Rachel had a while ago, and put up my old books for sale.  I think some of them might appeal.  Hope you don't mind this swerve away from normal blog posts - but I think it could be win-win for us both.Because of...

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Five From the Archive (no.4)

Didn't we all get excited over the past couple of days?  Mum and I have very much enjoyed the debates we've been having - your comments have been hilarious.  Some of you I'll never look at in quite the same light again.Anyway, on with the show - and another trip down memory lane for Five From The Archive.  This week...Five... Books About DeathA quick note.  I am definitely not intending to be glib about death or grief - but I think it is fascinating to see the many and varied ways in which death is treated in fiction and non-fiction....

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In Defence of Jean-Benoit (by Anne aka Our Vicar's Wife)

As promised yesterday, my Mum (aka Anne aka Our Vicar's Wife) has written a response to my review of Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier... over to you, Mum!  (Plenty of spoilers ahead...)Of course, Simon has it all wrong!  This book is not about infidelity and selfishness, or greed and violence – it is about the human condition, the cages which surround us, a bid to escape into an unchained world and the difficult moral choices which drag the protagonists back into the world they hoped to escape (with acceptance of their lot).Dona...

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Frenchman's Creek - Daphne du Maurier

You may remember from my first series of My Life in Books (links to both series are here) that my mother picked Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek as one of her choices.  Indeed, she was rather dizzied by her love of one Jean-Benoit Aubrey, the Frenchman (and pirate) of the title.  Tomorrow she will be guest-posting In Defence of Jean-Benoit because, dear reader, I have reservations about him, which I will disclose in time.  What I have fewer reservations about is Frenchman's Creek (1941) as a whole - I thought it wonderful, silly,...

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Songs for a Sunday

I didn't choose the songs for this post - Beryl did.  To round off a very successful Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week (thanks once again, Annabel!) I listened to Bainbridge on Desert Island Discs from 2008.  She wasn't at all what I expected.  You can listen too, and hear her somewhat unexpected song choices, by clicking here.  She appeared twice - I have yet to listen to the first one, from 1986, but you can he...

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Something Happened Yesterday - Beryl Bainbridge

The Beryl Bainbridge Fest ain't over yet, folks, and here's my final review of the week - Something Happened Yesterday.  It isn't a novel, it's a selection of columns which Bainbridge contributed to the Evening Standard in the 1980s and '90s, with short (often quite bizarre) introductory paragraphs to each column, written when the book was published (1993).Well, although it takes a different format, Something Happened Yesterday has the same disjointed, playfully subversive tone that I have come to expect from Bainbridge.  Each column involves...

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Sweet William - Beryl Bainbridge

Sweet William is my second Bainbridge novel, published in 1975 - so, a couple years before Injury Time, which I reviewed earlier this week.  I've read both as part of Gaskella's Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week - and I'm very grateful that she prompted me in this direction.  Although I've only read two, I feel like I'm getting a greater sense of Bainbridge's range. Unlike Injury Time, Sweet William isn't an out-and-out comedy.  There is a certainly a lot of humour in it, but it's a darker humour - where the darkness isn't merely...

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Five From The Archive (no.3)

In honour of Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week - and being a bit teasing about the morose face she seems to have in every photo...Beryl Bainbridge was famously nominated for the Booker Prize five times but never won - and so, also in my honour, this week's five from the archive are...Five... Shortlisted Booker Titles (which didn't win)1.) Loitering With Intent (shortlisted 1981) by Muriel SparkIn short: My favourite Spark novel, as I'm sure you all heard during Muriel Spark Reading Week, it concerns Fleur's somewhat mad involvement with arrogant Sir Quentin,...

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Word Verification

I'm afraid I've had to reactivate word verification.  I know it's a pain, but I've been getting so many spam comments recently that I'm having to bring it back.  Sorry!  To give you a smile, I was amused by one of the spam comments I got today.  Usually they give a link to their website after a vaguely positive comment about 'your site'.  This innovative spammer went with something a bit different...  They still had their link, but before that:The very next time I read a blog, Hopefully it won't disappoint me as much as this particular one. After all, I know it was...

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Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge

It's Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week with Annabel/Gaskella... hope you're joining in!Can you imagine what would happen if the casts of Abigail's Party and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were held hostage in a siege?  Well, if you can't, then read Injury Time and it'll give you a pretty good idea.  The sexual bewilderment of George and Martha is combined with the 1970s would-you-like-an-olive stylings of Beverley et al in Bainbridge's 1977 novel, somewhere in the middle of her writing career.Edward is a somewhat hapless chap,...

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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Anita Loos

Amongst my towering pile of current (but not very active) reads, I mentioned Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos.  One or two of you encouraged me to return to it, and I am never one to turn down the call to read a short novel from the 1920s.Lorelei is the blonde in question, going around America and Europe bewitching rich men and thinking deep thoughts.  These thoughts she has been encouraged to note down in her diary... she is admirably determined to educate herself, but rather more determined to secure diamond tiaras etc. from the gentlemen...

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Song for a Sunday

Like everyone else in the world, it seems, I have Adele's albums.  I bought 19 after hearing her beautiful cover of 'Make You Feel My Love' at my cousin's wedding.  Well, little did I know that, buried deep in my iTunes, I had a duet called 'Water and a Flame' which Adele sang with Daniel Merriweather on his album Love & War.  And it's rather ni...

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend (Minimalist) Miscellany

It's been a long day, so I'm going to leave you with a very minimalist miscellany.  Follow the links to find out more...1.) 60 Years in 60 Poems - can you help?2.) Remember how much I loved Life in a Day?  Now there is Britain in a Day.  Not as good, but still definitely worth watching.3.) Have you seen Karyn's new bookshelves yet?4.) Tove Jansson AND Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?  Yes please!  (click the picture for more info.)5.) Claire shares How To Write A Novel by Georgette Heyer - very funny!  And...6.) Michelle shares...

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On Sylvia Townsend Warner and Virginia Woolf

Bea Howe (c.1925) by Duncan Grant"What inspired and intrigued most about Sylvia was her way of talking.  I had never heard anybody speak like her before.  Some chance remark or an artfully-posed question by Tommy – who loved to argue with her – and Sylvia was off in a fantastic flight of her own.  Poetic words, colourful phrases, an apt quotation, extraordinary similes poured forth from her in a way I did not meet again till I came to know, and dine with, Virginia Woolf.  But where Sylvia kept her conversational flights of fancy more...

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M for Mother - Marjorie Riddell

Why is it that I love books about motherhood from 50+ years ago?  I'm not likely ever to be either a mother or a time traveller.  I blame the Provincial Lady books, which set me off on a literary path from which I have never looked back.  I can't remember who mentioned Marjorie Riddell's M for Mother (1954) - was it you? Own up! - but I enjoyed adding it to the fold.  This one is actually from the other perspective - the daughter narrates.  She has recently left home, and each short chapter begins 'My mother writes to me...

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Five From The Archive: Index

I thought it might be useful to have a central index post for Five From The Archive... so here it is!  Not much here at the moment... but it does mean I break the pattern of doing it every Wednesday early on, and won't feel wracked with guilt if I miss week 34, or something!1.) Five... Books featuring Twins or Doubles2.) Five... Books set in World War II3.) Five... Shortlisted Booker Titles4.) Five... Books about Death5.) Five... Books by Canadians6.) Five... Books about Family7.) Five... Books about Pairs of Women 8.) Five... Books about Hands9.) Five......

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How To Review a Book

I've seen many bloggers work out their own approach to reviewing books, covering all aspects - from whether or not you ought to say where you got a book, to whether or not negative reviews should feature at all on a blog.  Some bloggers (wisely) just outline their own preferences - others, at the shoutier end of the blogosphere which I frequent very seldom and to which none of you belong, lay down the law for all bloggers.  I'm not going to attempt to do either, but today I stumbled across John Updike's criteria for writing a review (which first appeared in the introduction to his essay...

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Books On Hold

I've mentioned quite a few times that I'm one of those readers who can't commit to just one book at a time.  I always have a few on the go - usually four or five that I'm reading in earnest, as it were - but there is also a second batch of books which I have started, and intend to finish, but somehow drift into the background of my reading.  Sometimes I started and the book got sidelined somehow, dropping from those four or five into the hinterland of will-finish-one-day; sometimes they're books which, from the outset, I intended only to dip into...

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Song for a Sunday

Colin, my brother, recently described something (I forget what) as "like your Song for a Sunday - people wish it wasn't there."  To heap coals on his head, today's song is one he told me about.  We don't share a taste in music any more than we share a taste in books, but occasionally there is something we both like - step forward 'Rainy Days and Mondays' by The Carpente...

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

I wonder how many Weekend Miscellanies I've done now?  It feels like nearly 100, but I daresay it isn't that many yet.  I hope you're still finding them useful - I know that I enjoy people's round-up posts, and I also like being able to collect together bits and pieces rather than scattering them through the week.  This weekend I'll be at work on Saturday, but not up to very much on Sunday.  I'm in a bit of a reader's block at the moment - or, rather, reading a couple of books that I'm finding dull but have to finish - so perhaps I'll...

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Daunt Books

You may not know, but Daunt Books have branched out into reprints.  Indeed, they did so in 2010.  It's been mentioned a few times around the blogosphere - I have an inkling that I may have mentioned it in passing here, actually - but today is the first time I have set eyes on the books they've printed.  Having seen my review of Ann Bridge's Illyrian Spring, they very kindly got in touch and offered to send me a copy - as well as two novels by Sybille Bedford: A Favourite of the Gods and its sequel A Compass Error.  When I went...

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