Another in an irregular series of reviews of books I have not enjoyed. Links to earlier episodes are at the end. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Beyond the Northlands. Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas This book, bought at the British Museum’s bookshop, was so promising, with such a good pedigree: an exciting young(ish) scholar; a … Continue reading Raging aggravations
I don't think I've ever read this Barbara Pym before, yet it's been sitting in my bookselves for at least nine years, because I know when I bought it. I call that irresponsible book-buying. It is a very good one, one of her 1950s London office worker novels with added anthropology. It's also about selfish … Continue reading Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels
An Unsuitable Attachment is Barbara Pym's seventh novel. She sent it to her usual publisher, Jonathan Cape, in February 1963, and to her embarrassment and distress they rejected it, and her, as being too behind the times, no longer likely to sell. Her confidant Philip Larkin was as annoyed as she was, but she wouldn't … Continue reading Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment
If you like the gentle narratives about English rural life in the early part of the twentieth century by 'Miss Read', you'll like Achachlacher. It's an epistolary novel about life in the Inner Hebrides, so gentle as to be barely there, and contains hardly anything said in anger, or that might cause controversy. Emma L … Continue reading Achachlacher, by Emma L Menzies
Several years ago, I was interviewed about my practice as a print culture researcher. I've updated my Q&A preparation notes, as a reintroduction to why I read the way I do, and why I spent so many years as an academic researching a particular kind of book. What do you do and why? I was … Continue reading Recovery research and publishing
Business as Usual, a very enjoyable novel of 1933 by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, is about a world of working women in London in the early 1930s, with the breadline looming very close, and the terror of knowing that one week's salary lies between you and the street. Pennies are counted, stockings are darned, … Continue reading Business as Usual: Selfridges in the 1930s
I pounced on this short story collection in a second-hand bookshop in the Lanes in Brighton, silently crying 'Why have I never heard of you before?' (and on typing that I realised that I really must, MUST join the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, and did so.) I hadn't paid enough attention to STW's short story … Continue reading Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney
