January: a momentous month, synonymous with fresh starts and good intentions, clean slates and new chapters, New Year’s resolutions and the triumph of hope. If, like me, you spent most of December eating too much, drinking too much, and moving too little, you might be spending January in thrall to the triple tyrants of Diet, … More Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
If it wasn’t for my friend Sara, I might never have discovered this gem of a writer. Sara loaned me Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain by Roger Deakin. Deacon’s journey was inspired by Cheever’s short story ‘The Swimmer’. I wasn’t that fussed about Waterlog but was instantly captivated by the idea behind ‘The Swimmer’, … More ‘Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor’ by John Cheever (from his Collected Stories).
In July, Hubby and I spent a week in the city of Cork, Ireland’s second-city (though with a population of only 300,000 it feels more like a large town). I love exploring new places. Aside from the joy to be had from the main sights, there’s the thrill of simply wandering around a strange city, … More Fools of Fortune by William Trevor
If you follow my blog you’ll probably realise that I mostly read prize-winning books. That’s not because I think prize winners are the only books worth reading (sometimes I don’t even rate them all that highly). No, I read the prize winners because I get to read books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up – … More Heart Lamp Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq translated by Deepa Bashti
Earlier this year I was on a walk with my friend Hal when he brought up my blog post on Orlando. If you read my post, you might remember I confessed to not liking Woolf’s major novels, Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931). (I did acknowledge I might have been … More To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
A couple of months ago (at the time of writing) Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer made a speech about how Britain risks becoming an “island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together” due to uncontrolled immigration. He later said he deeply regretted his choice of words, but it got me thinking about the … More American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The ancient Greeks had a theory about soul-mates. It was said the first humans were spherical and twice the size of present-day humans, and were cut in half by Zeus as a punishment for misbehaviour – literally cut down to size – splitting their souls between two bodies. A variation of the same myth said … More Normal People by Sally Rooney
A couple of months ago I was in Madrid with my friend, Cath. It was a joy to visit Spain with her not least because she’s a fluent Spanish-speaker and knows a lot about the culture. In the Prado we lingered over the museum’s most famous artwork Las Meninas (the Ladies-in Waiting) by Velazquez, which … More Orbital by Samantha Harvey
“False information can be just as useful, influential, as telling, transforming or as damaging as true information…how could you tell what was genuine and what was the product of a clever, devious and determined mind?” Barely a day goes by, it seems, without talk of fake news and disinformation, and services such BBC Verify exist … More Restless by William Boyd
Liverpudlians of a certain age will remember Blacker’s department store. Spread over six floors on the corner of Elliot Street and Great Charlotte Street, it was Liverpool’s answer to New York’s Macy’s. As a child, I adored the place. There was ‘Blackie’ the rocking horse that you could ride while the mums shopped – it … More The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge
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