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A Poem for a Thursday #166
I can’t remember where I came across this poem. I think I might have read it on someone else’s blog so, if it was you, thank you. I love it. I think every reader and book lover can relate to this. I now want to spend my day browsing through stacks of books and searching for treasures. To be honest, that is how I would like to spend most days. Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open--that one and that--and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a…
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Book Review//The Love Child by Edith Olivier
When Agatha Bodenham’s mother dies Agatha is alone and lonely. She is reminded of another time in her life when she felt the same way. When Agatha was fourteen her governess found out about her imaginary friend, Clarissa, and “the caustic drops of Miss Marks’ common sense fell like weed killer upon the one blossom of Agatha’s imagination.” Clarissa was put aside and forgotten. But Agatha remembers her now. And now, after eighteen years, Agatha felt once more the same desolation. She felt more moved than she had been at her mother’s funeral. There arose in her a spirit of rebellion, a sense of injustice. How dared Miss Marks play…
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A Poem for a Thursday #165
I have featured Wendy Cope’s poems three times before. You can read those posts here, here, and here. Cope is described as having “remarkable talents for parody, word play, dexterity with received forms, and the use of humor to address grave topics.” Some men never think of it. You did. You'd come along And say you'd nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers. It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But look, the flowers you nearly…
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Two British Library Crime Classics
Sometimes days, or weeks, simply call out for a good mystery. Thankfully, when days, or weeks, are like that the British Library can always provide a lovely selection of republished mystery novels from the Golden Age of crime. Last week, I read two of their books in a row and enjoyed them both greatly. Murder by the Book: Mysteries for Bibliophiles is a collection of short stories edited by Martin Edwards. All the stories have a literary connection whether that be a library, publishing house, bookseller, or an author as a character. The blurb on the back says: There is no better hiding place for clues–or for red herrings– than…
