It’s usually slim-pickings in February – the return to school and uni generally means less reading time but I guess it’s about quality over quantity. Here’s the Feb rewind –
2012: Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany – she writes with such simplicity and power. Continue reading
Do you start singing a certain Kenny Loggins hit when you hear the words ‘comfort zone’? I do. Even though comfort and danger are pretty much opposites… Anyhoo, my comfort zone is contemporary literature. I don’t stray often but there have been some notable (and excellent) exceptions in the last year or so –
Speculative Fiction Continue reading
It’s that time of year, the time when I remind people of all the books that I’ve been pushing on them over the last twelve months. The first nine are in no particular order: Continue reading
Every year I say I’m not going to do reading challenges and then I do. Why? I like a list. I like a reason to look through lists. I like discovering books that I might have otherwise overlooked.
I participated in five reading challenges this year and completed all of them. Continue reading
In the end notes of Priya Parmar’s book, Vanessa and Her Sister, the author says “It is not easy to fictionalise the Bloomsbury Group, as their lives are so well documented. They were prolific correspondents and diarists, and there is a wealth of existing primary material. The difficulty came in finding enough room for fiction in the negative spaces they left behind.”
It may not have been easy but Parmar makes it appear effortless. Her novel, a fictional diary by Vanessa Bell, painter, and sister to author Virginia Woolf is so convincing, so compelling, that my ‘belief’ never wavered for a moment. The diary entries are interwoven with correspondence between members of the Bloomsbury Group – letters, telegrams and postcards.
I’ve picked Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar based on the fact that it is likened to Loving Frank (and The Paris Wife, which I still haven’t read!). It begins –
“I opened the great sash window onto the morning pink of the square and made a decsion.
Yes. Today. Continue reading
I’ve made a to-do list. To give me strength to get through the next fortnight. Continue reading
