Archive for May, 2011
Review: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ by Charles Dickens
Think of Victorian novels and which one author leaps immediately to mind? For me, and I suspect for many others, it is Charles Dickens. When taking part in a reading challenge which relates to Victorian literature, it seems only right to read something by the great man of Victorian literature himself. However, I have a [...]
‘The Salzburg Tales’ by Christina Stead
Well, it’s finally happened: the honeymoon period is over. I suppose the day had to come when I encountered a Virago Modern Classic for which I didn’t particularly care, and it seems that that day is today. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I actively disliked The Salzburg Tales by Christina [...]
‘Alice Hartley’s Happiness’ by Philippa Gregory
There are a lot of authors whose books I can pick up without knowing any specifics but with a fair idea of how the book will go. Dickens? Deserving poor, a host of comedic supporting characters with amusing names, and a downtrodden central character who is elevated through their own goodness. Angela Carter? A twisted, chaotic storyline [...]
‘Up at the Villa’ by W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes my reasons for choosing books are incredibly shallow; I bought the Vintage Somerset Maugham collection because of the rather attractive covers (not to mention they were incredibly good value from The Book People, of course), and I chose to read first because, at a mere 120 pages, it is by far the shortest one of the [...]
TBR Lucky Dip: May
As I explained in my post about reading plans for the new year, each month I’m going to be using a random number generator to select a book from my TBR pile for me to read, to help me read more widely from my shelves. This month, the deities of www.random.org have ordained that I should [...]
‘Miss Mapp’ by E. F. Benson
Although I only discovered E. F. Benson this year (and I still wonder why it took me so long) he’s fast become one of my go-to writers when I need a comfort read. When I was feeling ill and in need of some cheering recently I turned to the next book in Benson’s Mapp and [...]
‘The Nutmeg Tree’ by Margery Sharp
How do you arrange the books on your shelves? Do you organise alphabetically by author? By colour of the spine? Do you separate out your TBR pile from the main library? On my shelves, the unread books rub shoulders happily alongside those that I have read, and instead I organise them thematically by vague genre. [...]
‘Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies’ by Hallie Rubenhold
When I was reading Michael Faber’s novel The Crimson Petal and the White recently, I was struck by the frequent references to the infamous More Sprees in London, a little book detailing the different prostitutes available around the town, where to find them, what they charged and to which particular specialties each one would cater. [...]
‘At Freddie’s’ by Penelope Fitzgerald
While I enjoy books of all shapes and sizes I am especially fond of the really fat or the really thin: big, plump chunky books are great because it means I can spend an extended period of time in the same place, really getting to know the scenery and characters, but little thin ones are [...]
‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ by Michel Faber
I hate to seem prejudiced, but there are certain literary devices which I tend to find very off-putting in a book. The first is present tense narration: logically the action of the book can have taken place in the past or it could be going to take place in the future, but I’m always very aware [...]