On hype
on Nov 9, 2009Sometimes a book arrives steeped in publisher's praise as did Legend of a Suicide by David Vann and my thoughts on that next week, but I look at it and think, do I really want to read that? Then the...

On W.G.Sebald
on Nov 8, 2009 in Persephone Books Remembrance Reading World War II Once I'd read Rings of Saturn I bought all of W.G.Sebald's books. I then read Austerlitz and The Emigrants and still have Campo Santo and Vertigo left unread, saved as you do (well as I do) when I discover a...

Remembrance...
on Nov 7, 2009'They buried him among the kings because he had done good toward God and toward his house' I shall do a further Remembrance post on Wednesday but I recently looked into the history of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior...

Inner Child - November
on Nov 6, 2009What day is it? Where am I? Amazing how a trip to London throws the usual weekly routine and more disruption next week with a work-related excursion to Oxford...it's always cold in Oxford, or perhaps that's because I always seem...

The Professor's House by Willa Cather
on Nov 5, 2009I'm so delighted that The Reader magazine in cahouts with Oxford University Press made me read My Antonia (Anto-nee-a...have I got that right?) last month because it's started something that I know won't stop now. I had promised myself that...

Today I will be...
on Nov 4, 2009here... recording something for BBC Radio 4 for an edition of Off the Page with Dominic Arkwright, and then doing an interview for The Bookseller, more of which when it's all in the can, as they say. There's many a...

High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
on Nov 3, 2009 in Persephone Books 'But there was a point below which Carmen and her colleagues would not go: they referred to this as 'the Whipple line', after Dorothy Whipple, a writer of popular fiction in the Thirties and Forties.' A quote from Carmen Calill...

To Trollope or not to Trollope?
on Nov 2, 2009 in The Reader Do you ever ask yourself this because 'To Trollope or not to Trollope' is a question I often ask myself and I wonder if others see Trollope as I do? Susan Hill has not one but two of the great...

and the winners are...
on Nov 1, 2009The Paw has chosen the three lucky winners of a copy of A Kid For Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz from Bloomsbury Classics and they are 4 betsytacy 11 Cristina 48 Becca Can you e mail your addresses to me...

Demobbed by Alan Allport
on Nov 1, 2009(1) Did you have a good time old chap ?( This is asked with a frowning sort of look which says I know you can't tell me in front of the ladies!) (2) By Jove! You are lucky to have...