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Finishing off #ABookADayInMay
Well, here we are! For the third? fourth? year in a row, I’ve finished a book a day in May. I’ll get onto some thoughts about this year’s experience in a moment, but let’s rattle through the final...
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StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany
It’s been a while since I did a Weekend Miscellany – I had a few thoughts for them in May, but A Book A Day took over. I also realised I was going to reflect on A Book A Day In May and haven’t yet....
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Tea or Books? #128: Do We Read Plays? and Fifty Sounds vs The Housekeeper and...
Polly Barton, Yoko Ogawa, and plays – welcome to episode 128! https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/tea-or-books-128.mp3 In the first half of today’s ‘Tea or Books?’ episode, Rachel...
View ArticleEverything’s Too Something! by Virginia Graham
Towards the end of A Book A Day in May, I read Virginia Graham’s Everything’s Too Something! (1966) and said I wanted to write about it a longer length – because it is such a delightful book, and I...
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StuckinaBook’s Weekend Miscellany
Hello! I’ve been very quiet in June, perhaps as a reaction to all those book reviews (albeit mini reviews) during A Book A Day in May. It’s also been a really busy time – but good things. I saw Taylor...
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How is A Century of Books going, then?
We are somehow halfway through 2024 (which doesn’t SOUND real, but the calendar says it is) – and that means I’m halfway through my timeline for A Century of Books. For the uninitiated, that’s a year...
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Come and see me at the Marlborough Literary Festival!
Friends, I have exciting news! I’m going to be speaking at the Marlborough Literary Festival on 29 September – discussing all things British Library Women Writers. As you can imagine, I leapt at the...
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Tea or Books? #129: Authors Who Wrote Too Much vs Not Enough and A Room of...
Virginia Woolf, Jane Cholmeley, and authors who wrote too much or not enough – welcome to episode 129! https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/tea-or-books-129.mp3 In the first half, we...
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A trip to Bookcase, Carlisle
Gosh, July has been busy. I spent a week up in the Lake District with work, and I’m just off on holiday for a week shortly – unusually for me, since I usually only take holidays during the cheap,...
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The Visitors by Mary McMinnies
On 13 May 2018, Barb at the wonderful Leaves and Pages blog wrote about The Visitors (1958) by Mary McMinnies. According to the note I’ve made inside my copy, it arrived at my flat on 18 May 2018. If...
View ArticleMy Darling Villain by Lynne Reid Banks
It’s well-documented that I deeply love Lynne Reid Banks’ The L-Shaped Room and its sequels – and somehow it has taken me quite a few years to properly explore the rest of her output. Partly that’s...
View ArticleMy favourite books of the 21st century
Perhaps we’ve all moved on from the discourse launched by the New York Times’ list of best books of the 21st century. But, well, better late than never (and I haven’t seen enough people criticising the...
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New British Library Women Writers book – now published!
The latest British Library Women Writers title is now out – and I think strong competition for being the most beautiful cover design yet. Here is The Camomile: an invention by Catherine Carswell: This...
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#130: Do Books Need Romance? and The Ladies’ Paradise vs Babbacombe’s
Emile Zola, Noel Streatfeild, and romantic books – welcome to Tea or Books? episode 130! https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tea-or-books-130.mp3 In the first half of this episode,...
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A Meeting By The River by Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood is one of those authors everyone knows about, and you sometimes see mentioned, but whose wide-ranging catalogue of books doesn’t seem to get as much attention as you’d expect....
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Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson
I started seeing Moomins popping up in reviews all over the place, and discovered that that it is #Moominweek! Literary Potpourri and Calmgrove have set this up, and even though I was late to the...
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Rereadings by Anne Fadiman
I imagine quite a lot of you have read Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman, and hopefully you loved it as much as I did. It was one of the earliest examples of those little books-about-reading that have...
View ArticleIt’s another A Century of Books round-up!
My century of books is much healthier than it looks, and that’s cos I have been reading a whole heap of books I’ve not been writing about. And these eleven books aren’t gonna get a whole blog post out...
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Some spinsters for Spinster September
It’s September, which means it’s officially Spinster September! It’s the brainchild of Nora (@pear.jelly on Instagram) and it’s a celebration of all the wonderful spinsters of literature. You know I...
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Treasures of Time by Penelope Lively
One of the things I love about my book group is how varied our book choices are – not just the latest hit novels, but ranging back over a century and more. Somebody suggested we read some Penelope...
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