It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.
This month we begin with Elizabeth Day’s exploration of friendship, Friendaholic. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Richard Yates
Things that are making me happy this week
01. New Year’s Eve gin. Continue reading
Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates
It’s time for my AY (that’s Annual Yates, not Young Adult).
I limit my reading of Yates because I find his stories intensely depressing. But I admire them for exactly the same reason.
Given that most of the year has been spent in lockdown, I decided I hardly needed to add a Yates-induced-existenital-crisis to the mix, so chose to re-read one of the first books I read by him (pre-blogging) – Disturbing the Peace. Continue reading
Six Degrees of Separation – from The Turn of the Screw to Yuki Chan.
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Continue reading
A Good School by Richard Yates
If somehow, there came a time when I was *forced* to rank the novels of Richard Yates, I would probably place A Good School at the bottom of my list.
A Good School is one of Yates’s later novels and considered the most autobiographical. While his earlier novels focused on the anxieties of modern suburban life, A Good School examines the awkwardness and pain of teenage boy, William Grove.
William is trying desperately to fit into his new boarding school, Dorset Academy. Located in leafy Connecticut, Dorset appears to be a ‘good school’, however it lacks history, prestige and is on the brink of financial collapse –
Dorset Academy had a wide reputation for accepting boys who, for any number of reasons, no other school would touch. Continue reading
My Best Books for 2018
I did away with ‘top tens’ a few years ago, and instead I finish the reading year with a recap of the books that are still speaking to me (less about four and five-star ratings, more about what has stuck). Continue reading
Reading Challenges 2018
Sure, I might squeeze in another couple of books before midnight on December 31, 2018 but I think I can safely draw a line under the reading challenges for the year.
I participated in six challenges this year – finished four; one is ongoing; and I failed one – not miserably but I didn’t complete the target number of books. Continue reading
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It is a tough act to follow on the short-story front but nonetheless, I figured Jeffrey Eugenides’s first collection, Fresh Complaint, would be a reasonable bet.
The collection opens with Complainers, a gentle story about the decades-long friendship between two women, and how their relationship changes when one is diagnosed with dementia. I feel like I’m reading about dementia at every turn at the moment, but Eugenides’s take on it from the perspective of a friend was refreshingly different.
Dementia isn’t a nice word. It sounds violent, invasive, like having a demon scooping out pieces of your brain which in fact is just what it is. Continue reading
The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner
A conversation overheard in 1975…
Richard Yates: I usually write about men but I’m thinking I’ll do something about a miserable woman…
Anita Brookner: Well Dick, one knows that there’s plenty of material when it comes to miserable women.
RY: And so many tempting themes around misery…
AB (laughing): Misery loves company!
RY: Loneliness, bitterness, regret, jealousy…
AB: Yes, the truly miserable woman has it all. Continue reading
A Family Romance by Anita Brookner
Five things I thought while listening to A Family Romance by Anita Brookner:
01. I can rely on Brookner for the sort of consistency that I love in Yates or Taylor.
02. So, so glad that there’s a bunch of Brookner on my library’s BorrowBox list and that it’s narrated by Fiona Shaw (whose voice has just enough plum to provide deeply satisfying listening). Continue reading