This picture seems to span both my blogs... Marilyn reads James Joyce I’ve decided to hibernate this blog for a while, to concentrate on the other one, which is the continuation of my Style No...
Before I had read one word of this book two unusual events hadoccurred regarding it. First, the person I refer to in my ratings system as ‘Male Friend’ sent me an email out of the blue specifically t...
I ask about reading speed because feeling Im slightly ashamed of how long the gaps are getting between new postings on here and I’m wondering if I’m a slow reader.Certainly my sister, my nieces and s...
I feel I need to apologise to this blog for neglecting it. It’s not that I don’t love it, I do, but I’ve been rather tied up with the new one for my Style Notes column (see link above). Then of cours...
First of all, a small disclaimer. The wonderful India Knight is not a stranger to me. We inhabit the same milieu, have a million mutual pals and have come to be, largely over the marvel that is Twitt...
Gosh, so sorry I’ve left this blog alone for so long.Between my book tour and all the hoo ha over the end of my column and then starting my new Style Notes blog, I just haven’t had time.Ah yes, the n...
I’m sure there must be a quick way to reply personally to each comment that is left on this blog, but I’ve never been able to find it. Which is a big fat bore because I would so like to thank each of...
What a strange day. Much of it spent feeling like George Clooney (but unfortunately not feeling George Clooney…) in Up in the Air, comparing Qantas lounges around Australia.They really should put mea...
Dress? Check. Shoes? Check. Several other dresses? Check. Blow dry appointment? Check. Extra shoes? Yes. OK, I’m ready for my book launch.My new novel Shall We Dance? is in the shops in Australia. Ho...
After months of prevaricating – Kindle? Sony? iPad? books? - I have finally ordered a Kindle. I asked the wonderful Twitterverse for its advice and the Kindle was the overwhelmingly preferred device....
To my very great surprise this is a fail. I’m hoping only a temporary one. I’d like to think I will finish it one day and that my decision to put it down half way through (she’s not even Duchess yet…...
To give the full title: Oh. My. God. This is so wonderful I can hardly find words, so I’ll start with context. My niece Katy told me about it, after she saw it on India Knight’s blog (see list o...
I fell in and out of love with this book constantly while I was reading it. Almost as often as the two main characters do with each other.I’ve been trying to analyse why I started out feeling slightl...
I picked up this book – the first novel length Beatrix Potter I’ve ever seen – at a car boot sale.Although it was a lovely old hardback and only £1, I nearly didn’t buy it, as I thought it would be j...
What an extraordinary book. It’s been on my bookshelves for the twelve years since it came out and there was so much fuss about it, and now I can see what they were all going on about. It’s not like ...
This book is the reason there was a bit of a long lull between posts recently. I was trying to see if I could finish it, but I can’t.I should have known it was going to be a fail when I was about one...
I can’t remember where, why or when I bought this book, but I’m awfully glad I did. I found it recently while browsing in the piles of the great unread which teeter under my bedside table and woofed ...
I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: I get really cross when authors rely on coincidence to bring their plots together. And it’s amazing how many serious literary names do it. Edith Wh...
My great holiday reading treat was to allow myself another taste of my new favourite author. My third.I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the first two and think I may have come into her oeuvre at the...
I picked up this classic espionage thriller genre after having a dream that I wrote a book in that genre. This was inspired entirely by the thrilling recent news story of that young Russian spy Anna ...
Testing testing testing: forgive me loyal followers, Im tooling around on here trying to get the Blog Lovin thing happening on here.Normal service will resume shortly.Follow my blog with bloglovin
When I was a little girl in the early 1960s I used to watch a television programme with my granny called The Black and White Minstrel Show. It consisted of a large chorus of male dancers done up in b...
Whew, its been a while. Ive been on hols in Corsica for two weeks and this is the first of the books I read there. How appropriate that I should have finished it after an afternoon shamelessly goggli...
In just over a week I’m off for a Proper Holiday. Well, I hope it will be that, which for me means days and days lying on a sunlounger reading. So it’s crucial to take the right books.My benchmark fo...
Please forgive the radio silence but I’ve had some reading mishaps, involving two of my previously mentioned personal stumbling blocks: unpleasantess and poor segue.The first was in what I can tell –...
When I grow up, I want to be Elizabeth Taylor. Not the film star, the oddly underappreciated English novelist. Well, maybe I don’t want to be her, she died in 1976 for one thing, but boy, would I lik...
The back of this book tells you that 12 million people have already bought it. Was I really the only one in that multitude to find it, at best, average?I also wonder how my opinion can differ so much...
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