North Woods by Daniel Mason published 2023 The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder published 1940 [ Excerpt from North Woods ] Anastasia Rossi, born Edith Simmons, sat upright, her bulk filling the chair to its arms. She was dressed in her typical costume for a séance: silk kimono trimmed with cambric, loops of jet beads cascading down her bosom, “Pocahontas” headband with its diadem and ostrich…
The Concubine by Norah Lofts published 1963 Following on from this post earlier in the week: Anne Boleyn's Imaginary Stepmother (low class and scandalous) - This is the book that set me off in pursuit of Anne Boleyn’s lost stepmother. I read it because of a post I did on childhood reading, and whether children should read whatever they like. Childhood reading and intellectual freedom Here is part…
Elizabeth Howard Boleyn? The Concubine by Norah Lofts published 1963 The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy published 1989 The Lives of the Queens of England by Agnes Strickland published during the 1840s I’ve just been reading a novel about the life of Anne Boleyn: The Concubine by Norah Lofts . I read it after blogfriend Constance/CLM mentioned it in the comments to this post: Childhood reading…
Laura by Vera Caspary book published 1943 film released 1944 My old friend Sergio Angelini has a wonderful podcast called Tipping My Fedora (following on from his blog of that name) looking at All Things Noir. Tipping My Fedora | Sergio Angelini Earlier this year I was a guest on the podcast to discuss the works of Ross MacDonald – and now he has invited me back. This time the subject is a 1940s…
Story of My Life by Jay McInerney published 1988 *** After a blog outage this week, a reminder that this would be a good time to sign up to my Substack (top of the home page), as if anything goes wrong in the future I will use that to keep readers informed. It is free to join up (just say no if you are offered a paid subscription) and all it commits you to is approx one email from me a week. So,…
My blog disappeared from the web for close to 24 hours this week, which was a shock and a worry. Google removed it for breaking community guidelines, something I strongly dispute 😀😀 😀 . I asked for a review, and was re-instated without apology or explanation. Thanks to all who were concerned and contacted me. I very much hope this will not happen again, to state the obvious, but it it does I…
What Did It Mean? by Angela Thirkell published 1954 This one was suggested when we were looking at books with question-marks in the title last year. When I found out it was a later book in Angela Thirkell’s oeuvre, dealing largely with preparations for celebrating the coronation of QEII in 1953, and that Lydia Merton – a great favourite Thirkell character – featured, I was keen to read it. First…
On Beulah Height & Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill published 1998 & 2009 I am working through Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe books, - see more on the project here Dalziel & Pascoe, an Overview: the Early Years And click on the Reginald Hill tag to find other posts on him. I was waiting for On Beulah Height , which I remembered as being a high point, with a complex and extraordinary plot, a…
In the recent sunny weather in the UK I was reminded of a favourite quotation from revered author Peter Dickinson : “Nobody who has not spent a whole sunny afternoon under his bed rereading a pile of comics left over from the previous holidays has any real idea of the meaning of intellectual freedom.” I have mentioned it before, in a piece that explains various aspects of Dickinson and my reading…
The Late Mrs Prioleau by Monica Tindall published 1946 daughter/daughter-in-law in mourning I wish I could remember how I came to buy this book – it’s been sitting on my Kindle for a couple of years. Perhaps it was just that it was a Furrowed Middlebrow/Dean St Press book. Always a sign of quality – this is my goto sentence: And, shoutout as ever to the Dean St Press who have made it available to…
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke published 2026 In my recent piece for the i newspaper on a new Netflix series Little House on the Prairie: Laura had me at the hat I mentioned the concept of the tradwife – an online definition is as follows: The tradwife movement is a social media-driven subculture where women embrace traditional gender roles, focusing on homemaking, child-rearing, and supporting…
Recalled to Life by Reginald Hill published 1992 I’ve worked my way through rereading all the Dalziel and Pascoe books – I explain all in this post Dalziel & Pascoe, an Overview: the Early Years and give a rating for the first 11 books. That brings us to Recalled to Life , which at the moment (and this may change) is my favourite in the series. Over a couple of years he did three masterpieces:…
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen published 1938 This picture is Boredom, 1935 Alexander Deineka – I don’t believe Portia would have worn such a low-cut dress, BUT her elbows feature a surprising amount in the book, and there are several mentions like this one: ‘Portia nursing her elbows as though they had been a couple of loved cats’ I very much enjoyed a recent re-read of Friends and…
I have had some wonderful holidays in my life, and yet I am secretly always longing to jump into my favourite books and share a holiday there. I once wrote a post about a destination resort with the title There may be murderers, but no riff raff which pretty much sums it up, right? Can you work out which trip-based book that was without checking ? I’m looking at these particular choices - not…
I decided a while back to reread all Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe books – partly because I’m trying to reduce the number of books in the house, so have to make decisions. Keep or give to Oxfam? The end result is always (boringly) – keep some, ditch others. Giving away isn’t always a mark of displeasure in a book, as there is also the question of whether I will ever want to read them again. I…
There's been a short CiB hiatus while I attended an important family event, but now we are back in business with very important TV-watching The Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are a phenomenon: always in print, beloved by generations of young people. Then came a legendary TV series in the 1970s and the 1980s: 10 years, hundreds of episodes, forever being re-discovered -…
A Bullet for Rhino by Clifford Witting published 1950 ****IF YOU HAVE READ THIS BOOK, THERE IS A FASCINATING DETAILED DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS BELOW BETWEEN BLOG REGULARS ADRIANDOMINIC AND SOVAY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. THEY ARE CAREFUL NOT TO SPOILER, BUT IT WOULD BE OF MOST INTEREST TO THOSE WHO HAVE READ IT*** When I first became aware of the works of Clifford Witting a few years ago I heard…
My reading of Gladys Mitchel l had been blocked by my inability to get hold of Printer’s Error : I had read many of them, darting all over the place in the list, but was now trying to fill in the gaps. Printer’s Error seemed impossible – but my Secret Santa solved the problem. What Went Right, What Went Wrong: Printer's Error And now I am back on track, and today am bringing two books to the table…
I have been holding back from posting another entry, because the previous post Spelling Grammar Words Language was so popular - the number of comments is heading for 100, the sign of high interest. A key feature is that the word 'fancy' does not appear in the post, but does appear in a response I made: Uncle Matthew (ie Farve) says in The Pursuit of Love 'Fancy hearing one's wife talking about…
We started a discussion in the comments on certain word usages…. Villages, Reginald Hill, and Pictures of Perfection Reginald Hill a great one for using obscure words, and I had mentioned ‘wrack’ and ‘desert’ used in a specific and unusual way. Everyone had a lot to say. One of the matters I mentioned was that when I was writing for a US magazine, I used the word spelt - as in 'he spelt it…
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence published 1928 Lady C - outside in the grounds dressed in blue I explained in my previous post Lady Chat Chat – Uncensored how I was inspired to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover again by Guy Cuthbertson’s work about it. It was more than 50 years since I first read it, and some parts were very memorable – flowers on the lovers’ bodies, dancing naked in the rain.…
Lady C : The Long Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Guy Cuthbertson published 2026 Oh what perfect joy this was. I read DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was a teenager, because of course we all did – banned for years, controversial and full of sexy bits. I was a keen reader of Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970s literary feminism at its finest) and she had a long section…
Expiation by Elizabeth Von Arnim published 1929 There is one book by this author that I really love: Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther. Others – not so much; My notes on one of them read: Dreadful. Absolutely awful. Two horrible girls. Dire. I didn’t like Enchanted April , or her Garden . I do like the fact that her books are numerous and very varied: Vera (1921) was an unexpected, compelling…
Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill published 1994 The Lord of the Manor We’ve been looking at jumble sales in books, drifting also into church fetes and village bazaars (many entries - this is the most recent , with links back). Unconnected, I’d been re-reading the works of Reginald Hill – the Dalziel and Pascoe series – and happen to have come to this one, which is wholly concerned with…
The Lily of St Pierre by Damon Runyon short story, published 1930 [ excerpt, based in a Manhattan late-night club ] Well, naturally, we finally get around to torch songs, as guys who are singing in quartet are bound to do, especially at four o’clock in the morning, a torch song being a song which guys sing when they have the big burnt-up feeling inside themselves over a battle with their dolls.…