I love me some Noel Streatfeild. Turns out, she wrote several fictionalized autobiographical books about her life, and I just read two of them, A Vicarage Family and On Tour. I think there is one more but my library very unobligingly does not have it. She was the second of four children, and often felt out of place in her family. Her older sister, Isobel, had asthma and as they had not yet invented the glory that is Albuterol, she was often an invalid. The younger sister, Louise, was the beauty of the family and apparently never gave any trouble…
20 CommentsTag: England
My sister has this magical ability to get people to do things for her. It is amazing. Everyone in my family does stuff for her even when we have just said, “No! Lazy! Do it yourself! My God you are so lazy!” Like, we’ll both be at my parents’ house, and I’ll be curled up comfortably on the couch reading something, and she’ll be all, “Why are you reading that? It looks stupid. What’s it about? Sounds stupid. You should be reading something with quality like Whatever Happened to Janie. Will you get me a bowl of ice cream? Please? …
13 CommentsI’m sure someone told me about this book – probably a number of someones, as it is old and famous – but I haven’t got the faintest idea who. It is also an impossible book to review; so I will just say, It was very funny (as it intended to be), and I enjoyed it a lot. Here is an excerpt. The whole thing is like this: The selfishness of the riparian proprietor grows with every year. If these men had their way they would close the River Thames altogether. They actually do this along the minor tributary streams and…
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