How to live alone and get by, Brookner style…

This post was edited and republished into my blog’s original timeline from my old blog lost posts archive. 16 July 2011, will be Anita Brookner’s 83rd birthday, and has been renamed International Anita Brookner Day by Thomas at Hogglestock and Simon at Savidge Reads.  To celebrate this author, they have set up the IABD Website with a competition to win AB books Read More

Stephen King’s Dark Tower #2

The Dark Tower Book 2: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King It’s month 2 of the Dark Tower Readalong hosted by Teresa and Jenny at Shelf Love.  If you want to catch up with the first book, click to my review here, as I won’t re-explain what happened before. Book 2 starts exactly where we left Roland, the Read More

A Wartime Romance

This post was edited and republished back into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons In the same way that we all rejoiced when the TV powers that be gave us Downton Abbey and resurrected Upstairs Downstairs, not to mention the Oscar-winning success of The Read More

The spirit of Sir Humphrey lives on …

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (republished into its original place in the time-line from my lost post archive) This was our Book Group choice to read in May, and all those who made it, enjoyed this book. There were different degrees of love ranging from a good read to fantastic, but no-one Read More

Vinyl Memories – the 7″ single…

I originally published this post back in 2011. With the resurgence in popularity of records on vinyl, despite having kept just a small box full out of the 100s I sold, I’m acquiring a record deck again! All those pictured below still survive in my ‘If I ever had a juke-box’ pile. Nostalgia of a Read More

Is this a case of middle-aged disappointment?

This post was edited and republished back into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Now my daughter is ten, she tends to read books to herself, but  I still read to her at bedtime when there’s a book she requests.  We’ve had great fun revisiting some of her Read More

The spirit of Hemingway lives on…

Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson There’s no mistaking it – Tomorrow Pamplona is a very masculine novel. It combines boxing and bull-running with two men on a road-trip; but thankfully, there is much more to it than just those testosterone-fuelled scenarios. With these subjects, you can’t not compare it to Read More