Read / December 21st, 2012
The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams, Yale University Press In Crying in the Car there is an essay called ‘YouTube and the Indulgence of Memory’ where I confess my (once) big secret that I adore everything about the Golden Age of Hollywood. I collect coffee table books about the subject, and biographies, too,…
Good Night, Sleep Tight, Mem Fox & Judy Horacek, Scholastic This book, first released over twenty years ago, has recently been released again, largely, I gather, due to popular request. This time Horacek has taken over as illustrator, and it’s a great read by this winning ‘Green Sheep’ combination. A babysitter is trying to put…
Read / November 14th, 2012
Vanished Years is Everett’s new memoir – his first, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, is recognised as one of the best ever celebrity autobiographies. I’ve not read it, although if Vanished Years is anything to go by I can see why it got accolades. He is bitchy and brutally assessing, to others and of…
Read / October 24th, 2012
Slim pickings, I know. I’ve been listless and out-of-sorts this month; there’s a to-do list that’s getting longer and longer and I get spooked every time I think about sitting down to tick something off. Then at bedtime, when I usually do most of my reading – except I’m not supposed to read in bed…
This is what I’ve read so far this month. What, we’ve only just past halfway? I hear you ask. I suppose that’s the only upside of being laid up in bed for practically all this time. Although, if I’m honest, I’m still making my way through Tender is the Night. My feelings about it oscillate…
Alternate title: What I’m Reading August 2012 – the New York version How much reading did I get done on the plane after all the preparation I went through before leaving? Zero. Nothing. Not unless you could the countless scrolling through the entertainment channels at one’s disposal, reading what movies and television shows were on offer….
In what might seem like a shocking departure to my ordinary monthly reading wrap-up, which is to say I normally post pictures of titles that are prefixed by such phrases as ‘hope to get to‘ or ‘in the pile to read‘, I finished four out of the above five titles. The Sweet Hereafter is…
June! Winter! Time to retreat indoors, under the blankets or with a hot water bottle, and do some heavy-duty reading. Or is that just me? Anyway. To continue… The Master and Margarita is by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. I was not familiar with this novel before I picked it up, but neither was the rest…
Any writer who gets themselves written up in a review as being both literary and a genre fiction talent captures my immediate attention. Such was the case last year when I heard of Glen Duncan for the first time and read his novel The Last Werewolf (which I really enjoyed). So I was more than…
