acob2018

Hurrah! On 29 December, I finished A Century of Books – with 1970’s A Tale of Two Families by Dodie Smith. I was a bit ahead of schedule as December started, and got very casual about the whole thing – reading a...

I was reading The Cross of Christ by John Stott for my 1986 entry in A Century of Books, but it’s a big book and felt too important a read to rush through for the sake of a reading challenge. And so I turned to the...

Most authors write the same sort of book over and over again. And I don’t just mean the Ivy Compton-Burnett type, where each novel is resolutely interchangeable (and yet brilliant). Even those who are able to shift in...

One of the things I’ve been occasionally trying to do during A Century of Books is read some of the authors who’ve been waiting on my shelves for years and years. Among those is Alice Thomas Ellis – I have three...

This 1943 book is a play on words that I didn’t spot until I’d finished it, embarrassingly. For it is about following Our Hearts to Hollywood – more specifically, the 1942 book Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, in...

I bought Silence in October by Jens Christian Grøndahl in 2011, and have been intending to read it pretty much every October since. Finally I managed to schedule it in! It needn’t be read in October, of course, but...

Alberto Manguel is up there with Oliver Sacks as one of those writers who exudes so much warmth and humanity in simply writing about himself and the world he observes. I’ve loved reading his books about reading –...

I bought The Millstone (1965) by Margaret Drabble in 2009, in Chester, but I think that must just have been based on name recognition – and on this extraordinary cover. Penguin really did have some interesting cover...

I was given a copy of A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis by Frances (of Nonsuch Book) back in 2011 – I don’t even remember the context for that, but thank you Frances! We did eventually meet each other in 2015, which...

The final of the Betty MacDonald audiobooks from Post-Hypnotic Press is 1955’s Onions in the Stew – the fourth of her four autobiographical books. And it’s just as enjoyable as the others, even if Anybody Can Do...

It was only as I started writing this review that I noticed the title was The Gentlewomen and not The Gentlewoman – which certainly puts a different spin on this 1952 novel by Laura Talbot. When it was in the...

After reading a lot of titles for A Century of Books during my 25 Books in 25 Days, I got too cocky and started reading quite a few that didn’t fit years. And my advantage slipped away. I tend to read about 100 books...

Robert Nathan is one of those names now known only, it seems, to people who’ve enjoyed the films based on his work. Portrait of Jennie and The Bishop’s Wife are both, apparently, regarded as classics in the movie...

Who doesn’t love the British Library Crime Classics? I’m amassing them far faster than I can read them, but earlier this month I did read Excellent Intentions (1938) by Richard Hull, which is one of their more...

People often say that the best thing about book groups is getting to read things you wouldn’t usually pick up. To be honest, I’m not often looking for new things to pick up – I’m in a book group so that I get to...

I can’t remember why I ordered Who Was Sophie? (2008) online, but I can tell you that it arrived on 6th June 2011 – and, while I was browsing and looking for some unusual non-fiction to read, I picked it up. Since...

Last Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to go and spend a bit of time at a National Trust property, enjoying the sunshine and reading a book or two (or three). None of the books I was reading at that juncture felt quite...