20th Century & Contemporary BritLit
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit – Performed by Andy Serkis
Like its magnificent sequel, The Hobbit is, I think, many things to many people: the first exposition of the universe that would become Middle-earth; prelude to The Lord of the Rings; a bite-sized visit to Middle-earth whenever you don’t feel up to the full blow of the War of the Ring(s); one of the most […]
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Karen Wynn Fonstad: The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
Blurb: “Find your way through every part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s great creation, from the Middle-earth of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to the undying lands of the West … The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an essential guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days – as […]
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J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings – Performed by Andy Serkis
In another online community, we recently talked about the new Andy Serkis Lord of the Rings recordings. Well, it turns out that the pull of The Ring is still mighty strong, for however much it may have been destroyed in Mount Doom. I had barely gotten my hands on these audios and I found I […]
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Terry Pratchett: I Shall Wear Midnight
Tiffany Aching is growing up — finally! To be fair, it never felt like Pratchett was writing “down” to Tiffany or to a younger audience in the first three books of this subseries; for one thing, Pratchett was probably constitutionally incapable of writing down to anybody to begin with, and the fact that Tiffany (being […]
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D.E. Stevenson: Miss Buncle’s Book
Next to the Golden Age mystery writers, another group of seemingly long-forgotten writers who seem to be experiencing a mini-renaissance in recent yeas are the women writers of the interwar years — Winifred Holtby, Angela Thirkell, Stella Gibbons, Dorothy Whipple, Mollie Panter-Downes, Miss Read, and, well, D.E. Stevenson are all seeing a renaissance of their […]
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Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap
Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot. (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.) So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]
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Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West: Love Letters
The final entry of my exploration of Vita Sackville-West’s life and literature, and part 2 of circling back to Virginia Woolf, here via the two writers’ personal relationship. Both writers’ letters had previously been published individually; so had their diaries — you’d think an edition collecting their correspondence with each other in one volume, […]
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Virginia Woolf: Orlando
As I said elsewhere, given the fact that Virginia Woolf was a 2021 (M)DWS author in residence, too, as part of my exploration of the life and work of Vita Sackville-West’s life and work I decided to circle back to Woolf; or rather, to the link between the two writers, which far exceeds their almost […]
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Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings
An anthology giving a taste of every aspect of Sackville-West’s considerable oeuvre, from her memoirs and diaries, letters and travel writing to her literary criticism, her writing on gardening, her fiction (both longer works and short fiction), her poetry, and finally her reflection on animals (which she loved). I haven’t read the whole anthology yet […]
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Vita Sackville-West: Seducers in Ecuador & The Heir
Two novellas from 1922 (The Heir) and 1924 (Seducers in Ecuador) that both deal with transformative experiences — and I suppose that is why they are typically published together –; however, in tone and setting they couldn’t be any more different. Seducers in Ecuador was the first piece of fiction writing by Vita Sackville-West published […]
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Vita Sackville-West: All Passion Spent
The lovely, understated and gently ironic story of a woman who has had to lead a life opposite to the one that she wanted to live — that of an artist — for over 60 years, and who is at last liberated from the forces of social and family convention by the death of her […]
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Terry Pratchett: Wintersmith
Blurb: Tiffany Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake … and now the spirit of winter is in love with her. He gives her roses and icebergs, says it with avalanches and showers her with snowflakes — which is tough when you’re 13, but also just a little bit … cool. And just […]
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Agatha Christie: Come, Tell Me How You Live
Blurb: Agatha Christie’s personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels. Think you know Agatha Christie? Think again! To the world she was Agatha Christie, legendary author of bestselling whodunits. But […]
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Terry Pratchett: A Hat Full of Sky
Blurb: ‘WE SEE YOU. NOW WE ARE YOU . . .’ No real witch would casually step out of their body, leaving it empty. Tiffany Aching does. And there’s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can’t die. To deal with it, Tiffany has to go to […]
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Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men
Hogfather meets H.C. Andersen’s Snow Queen; also, Tiffany is to a certain extent a rewrite of Esk from Equal Rites. Hogfather says the same things as this book better and way more pithily, but this one is still amusing, and the Nac Mac Feegles are a hoot, of course. Surprisingly, I’m not disturbed by Tiffany’s […]
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Nancy Mitford: Wigs on the Green
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE What a great read! It’s easy to see how Nancy Mitford’s witty and merciless skewering of her brother in law Oswald Moseley’s fascist movement (along with the Victorian attitudes of parts of 1930s British aristocracy) would have infuriated parts of her family and driven a lasting wedge between […]
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Beryl Bainbridge: According to Queeney
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 7 — Gift Giving & Wrapping: Read a book with a cover that would make beautiful wrapping paper; or read a book that you would have enjoyed giving or receiving as a gift: This is less a fictional biography than a portrait of manners and […]
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Festive Tasks: Door 12, Task 2 – Snow Covers
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 2: Make us a collage or display of your favorite snowy book covers. Prepare to be snowed in …
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May 2021 Reading Recap
Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post). So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May. However, the time-consuming back end […]
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Daphne Du Maurier: My Cousin Rachel
Oh, I wanted to like this so much better than I ultimately did; for its glorious Cornish and Italian (Florence) settings alone, as well as for the fact that Du Maurier (as she herself insisted) apparently identified so much with this novel’s first person narrator, Philip Ashley, that at times she almost felt like she […]
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