Desperate Reader

The last couple of weeks have been somewhat stressful (floods from an upstairs neighbours unsatisfactory plumbing and all the attendant ha...

 In 2005 Virago re-printed Mary Renault's 'The Friendly Young Ladies' which I read and loved. On the back of that I went hun...

I first read ' August Folly ' almost exactly 3 years ago - I guess it's the August in the title that makes it seem like the righ...

Over the last few years I've amassed a small collection if books about confectionary - some of them are specifically chocolate based b...

'H is for Hawk ' feels like one of those books which has come from nowhere and is suddenly everywhere. I saw a particularly pretty...

I blame my mother for this - she keeps leaving copies lying around - but I'm developing something of a 'Country Life' habit,...

It might well be that Vera Caspary is the best writer you've never read, if you have read her you'll know exactly what I mean. She...

The weather has finally broken, after what must have been 10 hours or more of solid rain even when the sun finally came out again the temp...

This is the third Zola I've read, but the first by a different translator - in this case Valerie Minogue rather than Brian Nelson - an...

I had meant to finish Zola's ' Money'  and write about it this weekend but things got in the way. Yesterday we girded our loin...