Here are the books that I enjoyed most in 2021. You can read about those I liked best in 2020 here. Biography/memoir/autobiography/history The Element of Lavishness, Letters between Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell was a Christmas present from 2020 that got shunted into the waiting room while I read her letters to and from … Continue reading The Good Books 2021
Tag: fantasy
Liz Williams, Comet Weather
Comet Weather scooped me up and ran away with me. I was up two nights in a row reading it until I was too tired, or I'd reached the end. It's a meaty read, not a slithering skinny thing, but a proper novel, filled with delight and tension and fascinating things. I thoroughly enjoyed it, … Continue reading Liz Williams, Comet Weather
Bea Howe, A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee
Bea Howe was Sylvia Townsend Warner's oldest friend. They met in the 1920s when Bea was 19 and Sylvia was in her middle twenties, and Sylvia spent her 84th birthday having a nice quiet day with Bea, shortly before Sylvia died in 1978. When they met is important, because Sylvia would soon publish her much … Continue reading Bea Howe, A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee
Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor
I can't remember how this truly excellent fantasy novel found its way into our house. We know it was at EasterCon this year, but while my husband claims the credit for buying it, I'm not sure. Maybe I looked at it so often in the Books on the Hill bookstall that I merely think that … Continue reading Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor
Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
This strange and beautiful novel was published in 1921, perfectly positioned among Stella Benson's Living Alone (1919), David Garnett's Lady Into Fox (1922) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes (1926). All belong to the category of fantasy that allows the fantastical to live alongside the mundane, without comment or criticism, although mild resentment may be present, … Continue reading Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
Reading some Ursula Le Guin
Ursula Le Guin has died, and I’m currently living in a different country to all my copies of her books. So I had recourse to my reading diaries to find out what I’d read of her work in the past ten years. Lavinia (2008) This is the only one of Le Guin’s historical fantasy … Continue reading Reading some Ursula Le Guin
Re-reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising
About 18 months ago I wrote about Susan Cooper's five-novel sequence called The Dark Is Rising. If published today they would be classified as children's / YA fantasy fiction. In the 1960s and 1970s when the five individual novels first came out - my editions are the slim 1980s Puffins with tight leading and a … Continue reading Re-reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising
Sorrow and anger: Books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t started
I don’t usually write negative reviews of books, because (1) it’s usually not fair on a writer to pillory them in public, (2) why waste the reader’s time? But sometimes writing a reasoned critical appraisal for the record can be a public service. For those searching online to find out if anyone else hated this book … Continue reading Sorrow and anger: Books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t started
Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes: An Interim Reading
I’ve struggled hard to get through Cloud & Ashes by Greer Gilman. I’ve already written about her seventeenth-century historical novellas starring Ben Jonson, which I consider completely brilliant. Cloud & Ashes is different, in that its setting is pre-industrial, magical and timeless, rather than in the English court of James I and VI. Its three … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes: An Interim Reading
Greer Gilman’s Jonsonian fantasies
Greer Gilman’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear was published in 2014, preceded by Cry Murder! In A Small Voice in 2013. These are historical novels published by the estimable and alluring Small Beer Press, in saddle-stitched chapbooks of high quality and good design (e-book versions are also possible). They share a protagonist, the English playwright … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Jonsonian fantasies
Kate Macdonald 