04/12/2006

I have been discussing Cold Comfort Farm, which I loved - though few years since I read it. I don’t think Stella Gibbons wrote anything else. It was very much in the same vein as the early Nancy Mitfords - they are quite similar. - Love in a Cold Climate etc . Also similar is Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle – a much under-rated book which I read a couple of months ago; which bears no resemblance at all to 101 Dalmations.

2/12/06

I have just read: The Da Vinci Code -
The New Sonia Wayward - Michael Innes.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Marina Lewycka( brilliant - and not in Ukranian - if you see what I mean............)

I Am Now about half way through The Eighth Circle - by Stanley Ellin.

I am trying to zigzag through my unread dectective/ thrillers - so I go modern British - Golden Age American - Golden age British - Modern American - something completely different and then back to the beginning again - System doesn't work as I keep getting distracted.............. or forgetting where I was..........

28/11/2006

I had a devastatingly depressing thought as I was shifting books about the other day so I could get across my half-a-flat.... that I probably haven't got long enough left to reread all the books I've got - let alone read all the ones I want to that I haven't read yet ..... and as I am a bit of a rereader of old favourites this does nothing to uplift my spirit......what a happy thought! My favourite books are the copies I have reread till they are dropping to bits - the most precious copy of a book I have is the one I actually read - whatever condition it is in - and some - like Sweet Danger and Greenmantle I have had to buy 2nd copies of to read in bed as the pages are all falling out of the originals ......I have to keep the originals of course.