May I tell you a cute story? It’s very cute, and I can’t proceed with this review until I tell you the cute story, so if you are not in the mood for a sweet story, you should depart precipitously. Once upon a time there was an Italian priest called Don Giovanni Calabria who read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and loved it. He wanted to write to C. S. Lewis to express his admiration for the book, but he didn’t speak English, and he suspected (rightly) that C. S. Lewis didn’t speak Italian. Knowing that Lewis was a scholar…
26 CommentsTag: letters
In 1935, a mother wrote in to a British motherhood magazine saying this: Can any mother help me? I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbors. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading, but with no library am very limited with books. I dislike needlework, though I have a lot to do! I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed and I am alone in the house….Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and exclude ‘thinking’ and cost nothing? In response, a group of women formed…
25 CommentsAck, I am so behind on reviews. I am working on a project that requires a lot of attention (fortunately I can work on it while still watching classic Doctor Who), which is the excuse I’m using for my negligence. Feel free to be distracted from this by a picture of my beautiful hat: Gerald Morris’s The Squire’s Tale and The Quest of the Fair Unknown Essentially, Gerald Morris writes very sweet retellings of King Arthur legends from various sources, making fun of impractical chivalry rules and having Gawain be the coolest knight of all the knights. Instead of Lancelot,…
10 CommentsMy 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 CommentsThe other day I was reading through my blogroll, and the double-barrelled Elaine Simpson-Long – who reads L.M. Montgomery’s journals and so shall I soon, I dearly hope, and who lives in Colchester, my old Colchester, darling Colchester! – had received a cute pink copy of one of Ada Leverson’s books. From Bloomsbury which apparently has put it back into print as part of a series of delightful charming books that I want to read all of. (Pls ignore that sentence.) Ada Leverson is amazing. Out of all of Oscar Wilde’s friends, Ada Leverson is maybe my favorite. I do…
3 CommentsA book I acquired in spite of my firm and as-yet-unbroken book-buying ban. My lovely grandmother (my mum’s mum) sent it to me, all shiny and beautiful and hardback, along with an equally shiny and beautiful and hardback book about Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots not liking each other (I am excited about this as it has been quite some time since I read anything about the Tudors). My grandmother loves to read. She inherited booklust from her father, my great-grandfather, who loved Rafael Sabatini and who gave a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to my grandmother…
5 CommentsWow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed. Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist. That isn’t easy. I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Which are two of my all-time favorite books. The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then…
22 Comments