Thoughts on books and reading, book recommendations, writer profiles and litereary trivia
A few years ago, I discovered that Georgette Heyer, who I had long associated with regency romance, wrote murder mysteries as well. I came across a few of her books in the crime section of my local bookshop. I picked one up, read it and loved it. She’s an excellent writer. I’ve read a few …
Continue reading "Book recommendation: Behold Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer"
This is an unassuming, but charming book. It’s about a middle-aged man, Tim Gandy, with grown children who’s just retired and is finding life rather flat. He and his wife have grown apart over the years. He finds that he has somehow, become a spectator in his own life and now that he no longer …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Mr Gandy’s Grand Tour by Alan Titchmarsh"
"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to …
William Ernest Henley was born in Gloucester, England, in 1849. He was a poet, critic, and editor who introduced the early work of many of the great English writers of the 1890's. He was the son of a Gloucester bookseller and a pupil of the poet T.E. Brown. Henley contracted a tubercular disease in his …
The full title of this book is The Way home: Tales from a Life Without Technology, and that is essentially what it is, the record of a year of the writer’s life that he lived without any of the conveniences of modern life; no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no computer, internet, smart phone …
Continue reading "Book recommendation: The Way Home by Mark Boyle"
Food writing is one of my favourite genres, and few writers today, are as good at it, as Michael Pollan. He’s written several books about the production of food and the eating of it, but like he says in the introduction to Cooked, he hadn’t thought much about the middle part of this chain, the …
Continue reading "Book recommendation: Cooked by Michael Pollan"
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly …
As detectives in fiction go, Lord Peter Wimsey is unique. He’s an aristocrat, a gentleman-scholar, and a lover of rare books. He’s a literary expert who can quote at will from Catullus, Shakespeare, Donne, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and a host of others. He’s a fine musician who plays Bach, Scarlatti, and the Beggar’s Opera, among …
Continue reading "In Focus: Literary Detectives: Lord Peter Wimsey"
This is the second book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series and it is one of the best. Lord Peter is off on vacation with his manservant, Bunter when this story begins. They have just left Corsica after a month there, and landed in Paris when they learn that Lord Peter's older brother Gerald, the …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers"
Many people today do not know who David Grayson was, but in the early 20th century he was one of the most famous writers in America. His work featured tales of his simple, rural life in Amherst, Massachusetts which appealed to people across the country. He first wrote essays that were published in The American …
“I came here eight years ago as a renter of this farm, of which I soon afterward, become the owner. The time before that, I like to forget. The chief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growing indistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel…” So begins this account of …
Continue reading "Book Recommendation: Adventures in Contentment by David Grayson"
"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it …
between the pages 