Stuck in a Book

There’s always a danger, when reading a novel almost 70 years old on a potentially sensitive topic, that it will not be readable by today’s standards. When I saw that The Friend in Need (1957) by Elizabeth Coxhead was about a social worker I was torn – it would be fascinating to read a novel on this topic from the 1950s, but would elements of classicism,...

Back-to-back haul posts! Though there was quite a gap between the book-buying excursions – and this one was all the way to Canada. I’ve just come back from a couple of weeks visiting Calgary, Banff, and Vancouver, which were really fun. Some lows along the way (emergency dental trip; heavy rain and storms in apparently-usually-sunny Calgary) but lots of highs (beautif...

I went to Hay-on-Wye at the beginning of the month, but it’s taken me a good while to get around to listing all my spoils. And, goodness, I bought a lot of books. I was actually really encouraged by my trip this time. Usually, there are slightly fewer bookshops and over the past 20 years, there has been a creeping sense that Hay’s identity is slipping away. But not this time!...

I always knew I wouldn’t be able to post for the final days of A Book A Day In May, but entered into it optimistically anyway. Frankly, I’m amazed that I have managed to post every day for almost the whole month, rather than my usual round-ups. It definitely helped that I went for shorter books than usual this year – I didn’t feel the need to go for a 180-pager on a day with ...

I read all of Ordeal By Innocence (1958) on a long coach journey, and what better way to make the hours go by than with Agatha?

I didn’t know anything about this Christie, nor had I seen the TV adaptation from a few years ago, so it was quite fun to go in totally blind.

It opens with a man called Arthur Calgary going to visit a family in a house called ...