The Book Trunk

chrisharding53

  • The Company She Keeps

    I love Mary McCarthy’s ‘The Group’, and her autobiography, ‘Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood,’ but I could not get along at all with The Company She Keeps. I got this from the library, and renewed it several times, as I… Continue reading

  • Do You Clean Vegetables With Soap?

    Today’s novel was described as ‘a real oddity’ and ‘a book unlike any other’ when it was discussed on the Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’. House-Bound, by Winifred Peck, (published by Persephone), is the second in my loosely-themed ‘housework’ quartet.… Continue reading

  • Discovering Miss Read

    Following the death of Miss Read (the nom de plume of Dora Saint) earlier this year, I realised I had never read any of her work so, deciding to remedy the situation, I headed for the library where I found… Continue reading

  • Witches, Woods, and a Big Cat (Saturday Snapshots)

    I’ve been at my mother’s for a few days, and I scheduled these Saturday Snapshots to appear early this morning, but forgot to press publish, so they just saved themselves and stayed hidden away!  They  were taken a week or… Continue reading

  • Do You Have An Odd Book Shelf? (Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman)

    The late-great Flann O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan, aka Myles na Gopaleen) would, I feel have approved wholeheartedly of Anne Fadiman and her family. The idiosyncratic exponent of the art of Professional Book Handling (http://chriscross-thebooktrunk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/i-want-to-be-book-handler.html) would have been delighted by their… Continue reading