Ramblings of a Bookworm
Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Daphne Du Maurier, Non-fiction on Mar 10th, 2010
Why do writers write? How do they go about it? What inspires them? The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories gives a glimpse into the mind of Daphne Du Maurier.
Du Maurier began to write Rebecca in 1937 when she was thirty years old, living in Alexandria and feeling homesick for Cornwall. She jotted down chapter summaries [...]
Posted in Books, Cookery, Food, Non-fiction, Weekend Cooking on Mar 6th, 2010
Last week for my Weekend Cooking post I wrote about Italian cookbooks, so this week I thought I’d stay on the Continent and write about my French cookbooks. I only have four – two over 20 years old and two more recent. Three are by British food writers and one by a French woman writer.
The [...]
Posted in Biography, Book Reviews, Early Reviewer, LibraryThing, Non-fiction, Poetry on Mar 4th, 2010
I didn’t know much about Shelley before I read Poetic Lives: Shelley by Daniel Hahn. This biography gives brief details of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s short but extraordinary life, from his birth in 1792 to his early death in 1822, shortly before his thirtieth birthday.
The opening paragraph caught my immediate attention in pointing out that Shelley was not that far away [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, Memoirs, Non-fiction on Feb 2nd, 2010
The Music Room must have been a difficult book to write and in parts it’s a difficult book to read. It’s lyrical and strong in setting the scene – the castle with its battlements, secret rooms and spiral staircases where William grew up and the landscape, the moat, the fields and birds all came vividly to [...]
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction, Ian Rankin, Non-fiction, Sunday Salon, cross stitch on Jan 17th, 2010
This week I’ve been reading just two books. Often I read more than this but I’ve decided for the time being to stick to one or two at a time. It’s been easy this week as one of the books is compelling reading – Black and Blue by Ian Rankin.
It’s a real page-turner and very [...]
Posted in Books, Crime Fiction, Fiction, Memoirs, Non-fiction on Nov 12th, 2009
I’ve read a few books recently and not written about them.They’re library books and due back very soon so I thought I’d jot down a few notes about each one.
Not in the Flesh by Ruth Rendell (audio book)
Dave and I listened to this in the car whilst travelling to Northumberland and back. This is an [...]
Posted in Crime Fiction, Non-fiction, Religion, Sunday Salon on Nov 1st, 2009
I thought I would remind myself of the concept of the Sunday Salon. So I’ve copied this from the Sunday Salon home page - imagine yourself in some university library’s vast reading room. It’s filled with people–students and faculty and strangers who’ve wandered in. They’re seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they’re all [...]
Posted in Book Reviews, History, Non-fiction on Oct 29th, 2009
The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911 by Juliet Nicolson is a fascinating look at life in Britain during the summer of George V’s Coronation year, 1911.
When I finished reading this book I decided that the summer of 1911 was not “the perfect summer”. It was one of the hottest years of the twentieth century, making [...]
Posted in Books, Fiction, Musing Mondays, Non-fiction on Oct 5th, 2009
Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post from Just One More Page is about books on your wishlist…
Last week we talked about keeping a wishlist. Why not pull out that list and show us some of the books you’ve been eyeing off?
I have a wishlist on Amazon, just adding books every now and then. Actually I forget [...]
Posted in Books, Non-fiction, Religion, Sunday Salon on Oct 4th, 2009
Just as we’ve been all over the place physically – up and down England with occasional forays into Scotland, so my mind and reading has wandered around and I now find that I’ve started several books at once. Some of them are listed on the sidebar over on the right. I’m going to leave them [...]
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Ramblings of a Bookworm
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