Ramblings of a Bookworm
Posted in Book Reviews, Kate Summerscale, Non-fiction, Sunday Salon on Oct 5th, 2008
It’s raining and cold here for today’s Sunday Salon post. Summer wasn’t very long this year but then it often isn’t. It wasn’t in England in 1860 according to my reading today in Kate Summerscale’s remarkable book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, when summer was brought to an [...]
Posted in Non-fiction on May 21st, 2008
I read too quickly and it stems from the time when I learnt to speed read, scanning the page, picking out the key words, not reading all the letters in each word and so on. This has its drawbacks - I don’t actually read headlines in newspapers properly, nor chapter headings. I’ve realised though that I [...]
Posted in Books, Britain, Non-fiction, Thursday Thirteen on May 1st, 2008
For a while now I’ve been reading “Thursday Thirteen” posts on a number of blogs and wondering about writing one myself. Until last week there was no theme to Thursday Thirteen, it could be whatever you wanted it to be. They have now introduced a theme, but I’ve been writing this list on books on [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Hilary Mantel, Memoirs, Non-fiction on Apr 30th, 2008
In the first chapter of Hilary Mantel’s memoir she writes, “I hardly know how to write about myself. Any style you pick seems to unpick itself before a paragraph is done.” She then advises herself to trust the reader, to stop spoon-feeding and patronising and write in “the most direct and vigorous way that you [...]
Posted in Books, Edward Gibbon, National Trust, Non-fiction on Feb 24th, 2008
Each day during this last week I’ve been reading one of Virginia Woolf’s essays from the collection in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Each one has provided some fascinating glimpses into the lives of a number of writers including Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794), about whom I know very little. In fact [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction on Feb 18th, 2008
Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: the Left Bank World of Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer (Phoenix 2006 paperback 260 pages).
I read about this book on Ann’s Blog and was intrigued enough to read it for myself. It’s a remarkable memoir of the author’s refuge at the Paris bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. on the banks of [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction on Nov 10th, 2007
Lewis Carroll: a biography by Morton N Cohen (1995)
It has taken me a long time to read this biography of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). At times I nearly stopped reading it as Cohen makes so many assumptions and speculates seemingly with little evidence to support his interpretation of the facts. His account of Charles Dodgson’s [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction on Oct 25th, 2007
I became very fond of the Verneys as I read Adrian Tinniswood’s book The Verneys, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2007. If you’re interested in seventeenth century England you simply must read this book, or if you like reading biographies and family histories read this book. I think it would make a [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction on Oct 4th, 2007
1. Letters to Malcolm by C S Lewis2. Speaking of Love by Angela Young3. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson4. Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott5. Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson6. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott7. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett8. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher and The [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction on Oct 1st, 2007
Whilst in Stratford last week I browsed the bookshops, one of my favourite pastimes, and couldn’t resist buying The Complete Stories and Poems of Lewis Carroll. I have my old and well-worn copy of Through The Looking Glass but I don’t have the copy of Alice in Wonderland that I read as a child. So [...]
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Ramblings of a Bookworm
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