Posted in Friday Potpourri on July 29, 2011|
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I’ve been having a delightful time reading through Lauren Willig’s old posts from the now defunct AccessRomance’s All A-Blog. Written between 2006 and 2010, they were recently added to Willig’s own website and I’m loving them. If you only read one of them, let it be Where, oh where did my Gothics go! The post are all bookish in one way or another, with some focusing on Willig’s writing, some on her reading. Willig is the only author whose (frequently updated, always entertaining) blog/news feed I follow and, I have to say, I think I find her even more interesting than I do her characters. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that she’s always talking about and recommending other books!
Be sure to check out Christopher Morely’s essay ‘On Visiting Bookshops’, which Simon T posted on Thursday. It’s absolutely wonderful. Here’s my favourite passage from it:
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find. Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, ‘I want you to love her, too!’ It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little indignant if he finds that anyone else has discovered the book also. He sees an enthusiastic review – very likely in The New Republic – and says, with great scorn, ‘I read the book three months ago.’ There are even some perversions of passion by which a booklover loses much of his affection for his pet if he sees it too highly commended by some rival critic.
Finally, I found the most marvellous summer reading list from the Financial Times. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best list produced by anyone this summer, with dozens of titles, all organized by category (including, excitingly, a fiction in translation section). The only thing it’s missing is gardening books, which, if you have sections devoted to pop music and film, seems a sad omission.
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The Captive Reader 