Dimanche and other stories

Short stories aren’t generally my favorite genre, but even so I have a small collection of story collections, from writers such as Alice Munro, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Mollie Panter-Downes, and now Irène Némirovsky. I decided to read a story here and there in the week leading up to Persephone Reading Weekend, and in the [...]

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My Persephones

I love all my books and bookshelves, but my one little shelf of Persephones might just be my favourite. My first Persephone was a gift from a dear friend, who learned about Persephone Books when she lived in England in the early 2000′s. As I’ve mentioned before, that book was The Wise Virgins by Leonard [...]

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The Village by Marghanita Laski

Here we are in the middle of Persephone Reading Weekend, hosted by Claire of The Paperback Reader and Verity of Cardigan Girl Verity. I have just spent a delightful evening & morning with The Village by Marghanita Laski. I haven’t seen it mentioned in the PRW round-ups so far, but I hope more readers will [...]

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What I’m reading

Afterwards they had a late tea on the lawn outside the dining-room windows, and nobody wanted to get up and go to the Berrys’ for drinks. ‘Some of you must, at least,’ said George. ‘It was all fixed up yesterday.’ ‘Well, ring up and unfix it,’ said Rupert, surprised that his father should have overlooked [...]

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Persephone plans

How fortuitous that I should have two un-read Persephones, and we’re coming up on Persephone Reading Weekend, to be hosted by Claire and Verity. In anticipation, bloggers are chiming in with their Persephone plans, so I thought I’d add mine: The Village by Marghanita Laski was the book I chose with the book token my [...]

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If it had not rained on a certain May morning…

…Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. Of course, as we learn soon into The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, “entirely different” means “worse,” for Valancy’s life is much improved by the rain on that May morning and the events that ensued. Because it rained, Aunt and Uncle Wellington’s annual picnic does not [...]

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Reading Week

Oh, Mother Nature, you trickster, you! You sent those few warm days last week to make us think that spring was on its way, and just when we were starting to think about maybe not wearing winter boots any more and maybe getting back on our bikes – bam! – more snow.   But perhaps [...]

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The last American man by Elizabeth Gilbert

And what a man this is! This is the story of Eustace Conway, who lives in the North Carolina Appalachian mountains, and talk about living in the mountains – he hunts, gathers, wears buckskin clothes. He lived in a teepee for seventeen years. He rode a horse across the country. He knows everything there is [...]

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How to quickly reduce my magazine pile

In a recent post, I talked about the ever-growing pile of magazines to be read. Well, I had only one magazine in the pile this week, and in the time it took for me to shower yesterday morning, the dog got that down to half a magazine: It was cute when she was opening her [...]

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Indecision

I can’t decide what to read! And since I read all the time (even while brushing my teeth), this is a problem. I suppose, more precisely, the problem is that I can’t decide what I’m in the mood for. A few days ago I started reading The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore, but I [...]

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