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Category: sociology

Books I Want To Keep

I have read so many duds and books recently that I gave up on because their meh factor was way too high. These are the pearls in a bit of a swamp, the ones I actually finished. Bea Howe, Lady With The Green Fingers. The Life of Jane Loudon I rather unfairly only think of … Continue reading Books I Want To Keep →

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Kate 17thC, 19thC, 20thC, 21stC, Alan Garner, Amy Chavez, Amy Stanley, animals, Anne Hill, Bea Howe, biography, community life, Evelyn Waugh, family saga, fashion history, Heywood Hill, history, letters, nature, Pauline Innis, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, the world of work, travelogue, wartime 5 Comments November 12, 2022November 16, 2022

The Hot Gates, by William Golding

This is a collection of twenty essays, reviews and magazine columns written by the British novelist and Nobel laureate William Golding, from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. It's a time capsule, packed with riches, and one stand-out comic essay on the body-soul dislocation experienced when flying across the USA. (Bourbon is involved.) Much … Continue reading The Hot Gates, by William Golding →

Kate 20thC, archaeology, bildungsroman, book prizes, drinking, essays, fantasy, literary history, memoirs / diaries, nature, outdoor adventure, political / social commentary, science, sociology, the life of the times, the world of work, William Golding Leave a comment January 3, 2022

Inaka. Portraits of Life in Rural Japan

A mention of this book popped up on Twitter, and I went straight to the Camphor Press website and bought it. I've never been to Japan, but two family members have, one for a year, and she's been trying to get back there ever since. Japanese books are stacked up in her bedroom, not just … Continue reading Inaka. Portraits of Life in Rural Japan →

Kate 21stC, animals, architecture, autobiography, community life, essays, myth, nature, outdoor adventure, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, travelogue Leave a comment February 20, 2021February 20, 2021

Liz Williams, Miracles of Our Own Making: A History of Paganism

Liz Williams is a very well respected science fiction and fantasy author (see my review of her wonderful novel Comet Weather here), and (until very recently) the co-proprietor of a witchcraft shop in Glastonbury. I have professional dealings with her, in that she spoke on a panel on women in sff that I was running. … Continue reading Liz Williams, Miracles of Our Own Making: A History of Paganism →

Kate 21stC, animals, archaeology, community life, Liz Williams, myth, nature, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, vaguely horror 3 Comments April 19, 2020November 19, 2021

Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile

If the sign of a good book is that, while partway through it, you buy your own copy and take the library copy back, wondering whether to slide a post-it note inside urging the next borrower to do the same; and that you are mentally raking through the names of friends and family who would … Continue reading Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile →

Kate 19thC, 21stC, Alice Jolly, baroque and dramatic, community life, family saga, feminism, medicine, memoirs / diaries, nature, outdoor adventure, political / social commentary, science, sociology, the life of the times, the world of work, thriller 3 Comments December 20, 2019

Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe

These two books about European natural processes are curiously connected, though I had no suspicion of this when I bought them. I was obviously in the mood for a sustained period of browsing on ancient species ecology and the prospects for reversing the mass extinctions caused by people. Looking for hope in the face of … Continue reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding and Tim Flannery’s Europe →

Kate 21stC, baroque and dramatic, community life, Isabella Tree, memoirs / diaries, nature, outdoor adventure, political / social commentary, science, sociology, the life of the times, Tim Flannery, time travel Leave a comment November 27, 2019

Mary Kelly, The Spoilt Kill

This is a tremendous crime thriller from 1961, that won the Crime Writers' Association Critics' Award for that year. Mary Kelly went on to write more detective novels, but somehow her name has disappeared from sight. Crime fiction historian Martin Edwards says that she stopped writing fiction in her forties, because she chose when and what … Continue reading Mary Kelly, The Spoilt Kill →

Kate 20thC, community life, detective, family saga, fine art, Mary Kelly, passion and secrets, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, the world of work, thriller 5 Comments September 8, 2019

Christina Dalcher, Vox

Update: Vox won the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award on 16 September 2019! The title of this very good thriller is a little misleading: the word 'Vox' (Latin for the voice of, as in 'vox populi', the voice of the people), doesn't appear anywhere in the novel. I was hoping for some time that it would … Continue reading Christina Dalcher, Vox →

Kate 21stC, Christina Dalcher, dystopia, Margaret Atwood, passion and secrets, political / social commentary, science, science fiction, sociology, technology, the life of the times, thriller, vaguely horror Leave a comment August 11, 2019September 17, 2019

Bea Howe, A Galaxy of Governesses

Bea Howe was the dedicatee for Sylvia Townsend Warner's immortal first novel, Lolly Willowes in 1926, and in 1954 she published A Galaxy of Governesses, thanking Sylvia for her support in the acknowledgements. She and Sylvia spent Sylvia's last birthday together, her 84th, in 1977. That's a long and fruitful friendship. Bea published some novels … Continue reading Bea Howe, A Galaxy of Governesses →

Kate 20thC, Bea Howe, biography, community life, family saga, feminism, history, letters, memoirs / diaries, political / social commentary, sociology, Sylvia Townsend Warner, the life of the times, the world of work, travelogue 2 Comments May 22, 2019August 3, 2020

J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Journey Down a Rainbow

I found this book of travel writing about the south-west of mid-1950s USA in The Second Shelf, a new antiquarian bookshop in London specialising in works by women. This was only the second book (partly) by a man I've seen there (the other was a lesbian pulp novel apparently written by a man with a … Continue reading J B Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Journey Down a Rainbow →

Kate 20thC, archaeology, architecture, art, community life, drinking, history, J B Priestley, Jacquetta Hawkes, letters, memoirs / diaries, myth, nature, outdoor adventure, political / social commentary, sociology, the life of the times, the world of work, travelogue 3 Comments April 8, 2019April 7, 2019

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Top Posts & Pages

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    About
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    How to Read Churches: A crash course in Christian architecture

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1920s 1930s 1950s 1960s aliens Angela Thirkell archaeology architecture Barbara Pym biography birds Cambridge detection Dornford Yates Dorothy Richardson drinking duds family life fantasy farming feminism fiction First World War France gender Germany Harry Potter H G Wells history Ireland Japan John Buchan John Lehmann journalism King Arthur literary history London magic memoir middlebrow murder music myth Naomi Mitchison nature newspapers Paris Penguin New Writing poetry politics post-war poverty publishing Rivers of London romance satire science science fiction Scotland Second World War servants small-town America space opera Sylvia Townsend Warner Terry Pratchett translation travel village life Vulpes Libris Wales wartime witchcraft witches women's history women's lives

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