Book-lovers! Serial monogamy or a more free-wheeling approach?
Are you a serial monogamist or do you like to have several books on the go at the same time? For myself, I am rarely reading just one book. Sometimes I must admit that I spread myself too thin. Here’s a snapshot of what I am reading at the moment. I am approaching the halfway […]
The Consolation of Art
These are dark days. I was in London when the results of the referendum came out. I was still reeling with shock and dismay that afternoon when I went to the Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds exhibition at the British Museum. For an hour and a half I lost myself in this wonderful exhibition. The […]
A bit of cross-blogging
Once again my good blogfriend Moira (at Clothesinbooks.blogspot.com) and I are indulging in a bit of cross-blogging, in which we choose a book for both of us to read and put up a post about it on the same day. This time it is Happy Ending by Italian writer, Francesca Duranti (1987), also the book […]
Short-listed!
I didn’t win, but it was – and still is – a thrill to have my story ‘Faceless Killer’ long-listed and then short-listed for the Margery Allingham Short Story Competition. It’s not quite the first time I’ve been short-listed for something – but it was the first time I’d been there when the winner was announced, […]
The one-sitting read
These I rarely read a book in one sitting. Maybe sometimes on holiday, but otherwise it tends to be when I am not very well. Such a day came last week – just a cold, but I didn’t feel up to much. I retired to bed with Ellie Griffith’s The Outcast Dead, which I’d been […]
Judging a book by its cover
It is always a slightly anxious moment when your publisher sends you the cover for your new book and asks for your comments. But when I saw the cover for Deep Water a couple of weeks ago, all I could say was ‘Wow!’ It’s simple, elegant, and striking. The novel begins with a death in a […]
Me and Mrs Jones
Billy Paul has died and hearing him singing ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ on the radio sent me straight back to 1972, when the song was everywhere. The exams were over and there were long hot summer days when I seemed to have all the time in the world to hang out with my friends, to read, […]
The day I met Mr Rochester
Last weekend North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in Derbyshire, was open to the public. The hall, a late Elizabethan tower house, is thought to be the inspiration for Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë visited it several times when she was staying with her friend Ellen Nussey. It resembles the fictional Thornfield in having […]