OK OK to save the family hacking the blog and doing it for me. It's come around again, the day has dawned, here it is the very same day but 49 years ago.
4 years old is the first birthday that I can remember and I was given the present of my dreams, there you see me holding it, yes that's right a ball. An ordinary ball, that and a necklace of blue and red plastic beads that popped together and I was beside myself with the excitement of it all.
I expect my mum had knitted an outfit for my doll, Brenda, she always did. Brenda's demise was ultimately tragic, her face was rubber and it perished revealing a load of sawdust(how damaging must that have been for my psyche) but she was replaced by Susan (yes really, some of us loved the name!) and Anne.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if whatever had been the latest craze was out there I'd have wanted it, but life wasn't like that in 1957.
It's the ball and the beads I remember, that and feeding the milkman's horse.Life was that simple.
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Book Thoughts 2020
- ATKINSON Kate ~ Big Sky (audio book)
- BANFFY Miklós ~ They Were Counted
- BLYTON Enid ~ Malory Towers
- DEE Tim ~ Greenery - Journeys in Springtime
- ELDER Josephine ~ Erica Wins Through
- HESSION Ronan ~ Leonard and Hungry Paul
- HURLEY Andrew Michael ~ Starve Acre
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Bring Up the Bodies (redux)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Bring Up the Bodies (redux)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Wolf Hall
- MITCHELL Margaret ~ Gone With the Wind
- MURPHY Dervla ~ Full Tilt - Ireland to India with a bicycle
- OLIVER Jane ~ Business As Usual
- PEARS Tim ~ The Horseman
- POWELL Anthony ~ A Buyer’s Market
- POWELL Anthony ~ A Question of Upbringing ( A Dance to the Music of Time - Book One)
- SELDON Anthony & WALSH David ~ Public Schools and the Great War
- TAYLOR Helen ~ Why Women Read Fiction
- THUBRON Colin ~ Shadow of the Silk Road
- TINDALL Gillian ~ The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts
- TOLKIEN J.R.R. ~ The Fellowship of the Ring (audio book)
- WAUGH Evelyn ~ Officers and Gentlemen (Sword of Honour trilogy)
Book Thoughts 2019
- ANSTRUTHER Eleanor ~ A Perfect Explanation
- ARMITAGE Simon ~ Poet Laureate
- ARMSTRONG Jay ~ Elementum Journal
- BAINBRIDGE Beryl ~ Every Man For Himself
- BLACKBURN Julia ~ Time Song - Searching for Doggerland
- BLAXLAND Juliet ~ The Easternmost House
- BRODESSER-AKNER Taffy ~ Fleishman is in Trouble
- CARR J.L. ~ How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup
- CHEVALIER Tracy ~ A Single Thread
- CLARKE Gillian ~ Zoology
- CONNELLY Charlie ~ Last Train to Hilversum - A journey in search of the magic of radio
- CRUMLEY Jim ~ Barn Owl
- DE WAAL Elisabeth ~ Milton Place
- DEFOE Daniel ~ A Journal of the Plague Year
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ Frost Fair
- EMENY Richard ~ Edward Thomas - A Life in Pictures
- FENTON James ~ A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seed
- GOSS Rebecca ~ Girl
- GOSS Rebecca ~ Her Birth
- GRAHAM Stephen ~ The Gentle Art of Tramping
- GRANT Linda ~ A Stranger City
- GRAY Annie ~ The Greedy Queen - Eating with Victoria
- HARPER Jane ~ The Lost Man (audio book)
- HARRIS Robert ~ Munich
- HARRIS Robert ~ Pompeii (audio book)
- HOLTBY Winifred ~ The Land of Green Ginger
- HOMER ~ The Odyssey
- HYDE Catherine ~ The Hare and the Moon
- JACKSON Shirley ~ The Haunting of Hill House
- JACOBSEN Roy ~ The Unseen
- JAMIE Kathleen ~ Surfacing
- JAMIE Kathleen ~ Surfacing
- JANSSON Tove
- JANSSON Tove ~ The Summer Book
- JANSSON Tove ~ The True Deceiver
- JOLLY Alice ~ Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
- JONES Cynan ~ Cove
- KEUN Irmgard ~ The Artificial Silk Girl
- LE BAS Damian ~ The Stopping Places - A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
- LE BAS Damian ~ The Stopping Places - A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
- LEHMANN Rosamond ~ Invitation to the Waltz
- LONCRAINE Rebecca ~ Skybound - a Journey in Flight
- LOPEZ Barry ~ Horizon
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ The Lost Words ~ Spell Songs
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ Underland - A Deep Time Journey
- MACINTYRE Ben ~ A Spy Among Friends : Philby and the Great Betrayal
- MACKINTOSH Clare ~ Let Me Lie (audio book)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ The World of Wolf Hall
- MARSDEN Philip ~ Rising Ground - A Search for the Spirit of Place (redux)
- MCDERMID Val ~ The Distant Echo
- MILLER Andy ~ The Year of Reading Dangerously
- MORT Helen ~ No Map Could Show Them
- MYERS Benjamin ~ The Offing
- MYERS Benjamin ~ Under the Rock -The Poetry of Place
- NEWMAN Sandra ~ The Heavens
- NICOLSON Adam ~ Sea Room
- ONDAATJE Michael ~ The English Patient
- PALIN Michael ~ Erebus (audio book)
- PARK David ~ Travelling in a Strange Land
- PEEL Sarah ~ Luna Lapin's Friends
- PORTER Max ~ Lanny
- PULLMAN Philip ~ His Dark Materials
- PULLMAN Philip ~ Dæmon Voices - Essays on Storytelling
- ROBSON Jennifer ~ The Gown
- ROONEY Sally ~ Normal People
- RUTTER Esther ~ This Golden Fleece - A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History
- SETTERFIELD Diane ~ Once Upon a River
- SIMMONS Gail ~ The Country of Larks
- SMITH Ali ~ Spring
- SMITH Jonathan ~ Summer in February (redux)
- STROUT Elizabeth ~ My Name is Lucy Barton
- STROUT Elizabeth ~ Olive Kitteridge
- TEY Josephine ~ The Franchise Affair
- THOMAS Edward ~ In Pursuit of Spring
- THOMAS Scarlett ~ Oligarchy
- TOWERS Katharine ~ The Remedies
- TRETHEWEY Rachel ~ Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women
- WATLING Sarah ~ Noble Savages
- WATLING Sarah ~ Noble Savages - The Olivier Sisters
- WAUGH Evelyn ~ Brideshead Revisited
- WAUGH Evelyn ~ Scoop
- WEYMOUTH Adam ~ Kings of the Yukon - An Alaskan River Journey
- WHIPPLE Dorothy ~ Every Good Deed
- WILLNER Nina ~ Forty Autumns
- WOODCOCK Alex ~ King of Dust - Adventures in Forgotten Sculpture
- YAFFE David ~ Reckless Daughter - A Portrait of Joni Mitchell
- ZIERVOGEL Meike ~ The Photographer
Book Thoughts 2018
- ATKINSON Kate ~ Transcription
- ATWOOD Margaret ~ The Penelopiad
- BARBA Andres ~ Such Small Hands
- BLACK Sue ~ All That Remains - A Life in Death
- BOURNE Hope ~ Living on Exmoor & A Moorland Year
- BOYD Alex ~ St Kilda - The Silent Islands
- BRISCOE Susan ~ The 1718 Coverlet
- BURTON HILL Clemency ~ Year of Wonder - Classical Music for Every Day-
- CAREY Edward ~ Little
- CARR J.L. ~ A Month in the Country
- CARTER Brian ~ A Black Fox Running
- CHEVALIER Tracy ~ The Sleep Quilt
- CLARE Horatio ~ The Light in the Dark
- COOPER Susan ~ The Dark is Rising #thedarkisreading
- COPE Wendy ~ Anecdotal Evidence
- Darkest Hour (film)
- DAVIES Kate ~ Handywoman
- DAY LEWIS C. ~ The Otterbury Incident
- DE WAAL Kit ~ The Trick to Time
- dovegreyreader ~ The Library of My Childhood
- DRAYTON Joanne ~ Ngaio Marsh - Her Life in Crime
- DUNMORE Helen ~ Inside the Wave
- ELLENDER Lullah ~ Elisabeth's Lists - A Family Story
- ELLIS Clarence ~ The Pebbles on the Beach - A Spotter's Guide
- FERMER Anthony ~ Inside the Bone Box
- FORSHAW Alec ~ An Address in Bloomsbury
- FREMLIN Celia ~ The Hours Before Dawn
- GEORGE Rose ~ Nine Pints (pre-read)
- GLICKMAN Susan ~ The Smooth Yarrow
- GOWAR Imogen Hermes ~ The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
- GREENE Graham ~ The Human Factor
- GREIG Andrew ~ At the Loch of the Green Corrie
- HAMMERSTEIN Willyne ~ Millefiori Quilts 3
- HARPER Jane ~ The Dry
- HARRISON Melissa ~ All Among the Barley (pre-reading)
- HARRISON Melissa ~ At Hawthorn Time
- HARRISON Melissa ~ Clay
- HEANEY Seamus ~ 100 Poems
- HENSHER Philip ~ The Friendly Ones
- HERRON Mick ~ Slow Horses
- HEXHALL J. & MCNAUGHT B. ~ Treelines - A Collection of Poetry
- HOMER (Trans: WILSON Emily) The Odyssey
- HOWARD Elizabeth Jane ~ The Long View
- HUGHES Shirley ~ Dogger
- JAMES Clive ~ Injury Time
- JAMES Clive ~ The River in the Sky
- KANG Han ~ The White Book
- KAY Adam ~ This is Going to Hurt (pre-reading)
- KING Lily ~ Euphoria
- KNAPP Florence ~ English Paper Piecing
- KUWAMARA Genki ~ If Cats Disappeared From the World
- LEE Tom ~ The Alarming Palsy of James Orr
- LEIGH FERMOR Patrick ~ A Time to Keep Silence
- MACFARLANE Robert & MORRIS Jackie ~ The Lost Words (in London)
- MACLAVERTY Bernard ~ Midwinter Break
- MANGAN Lucy ~ Bookworm - A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- MANN Thomas ~ The Magic Mountain (1)
- MANNING Olivia ~ The Balkan Trilogy
- MANTEL Hilary ~ A Place of Greater Safety (in progress)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ The Masterclass
- MAUGHAM Somerset ~ Up at the Villa
- MAYO Simon ~ Mad Blood Stirring
- MCEWAN Ian ~ The Children Act
- MCGRATH Patrick ~ The Wardrobe Mistress
- MCGREGOR Jon ~ Reservoir 13
- MILLER Madeline ~ Circe
- MITCHELL David ~ Black Swan Green
- MITCHELL David ~ Slade House
- MYERS Benjamin ~ The Gallows Pole
- NELSON Maggie ~ Bluets
- NICOLSON Adam ~ The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters
- OLIVER Mary ~ A Thousand Mornings
- ONDAATJE Michael ~ Warlight
- PEACOCK Charlotte ~ Into the Mountain- A Life of Nan Shepherd
- PEARS Tim ~ In a Land of Plenty
- PERRY Sarah ~ Melmoth
- PLATH Sylvia ~ The Letters of Sylvia Plath - Volume II : 1956-1963
- PROTHEROE Keren ~ Petal Power : Floral Fashion and Women Designers at The Silver Studio 1910-1940
- PULLMAN Philip ~ The Book of Dust Volume One - La Belle Sauvage
- RABAN Jonathan ~ Coasting
- ROBERTSON Robin ~ The Long Take
- ROPER Lynne ~ Wild Woman Swimming
- SEBALD W.G. ~ The Rings of Saturn
- SEBALD W.G. ~ The Rings of Saturn
- SIMENON Georges ~ Maigret Enjoys Himself
- SIMENON Georges ~ Maigret Travels
- SLIMANI Leila ~ Lullaby
- SPARK Muriel ~ A Far Cry From Kensington
- SPARK Muriel ~ Memento Mori
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Abbess of Crewe
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Ballad of Peckham Rye
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Driver's Seat
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Girls of Slender Means
- SPRACKLAND Jean ~ Green Noise
- STAMM Peter ~ To the Back of Beyond
- THOMAS Edward ~ In Pursuit of Spring (1)
- THOMAS Edward ~ In Pursuit of Spring (2)
- TIMPANY Emma ~ Travelling in the Dark
- TRETHEWEY Rachel ~ Pearls Before Poppies - The Story of the Red Cross Pearls
- TROLLOPE Joanna ~ Sense & Sensibility
- VOWLER Tom ~ Dazzling the Gods
- WATSON Christie ~ The Language of Kindness (pre-reading)
- WAYLAND BARBER Elizabeth ~ Women's Work - the First 20,000 Years
- WILSON Eliane ~ Edward Thomas : A Mirror of England
- WINN Raynor ~ The Salt Path
- WOOLF Virginia ~ To the Lighthouse
- WORTH Jennifer ~ Call the Midwife
Book Thoughts 2017
- ADEBAYO Ayòbámi ~ Stay With Me (Baileys Prize Short List 2017)
- BANNERMAN Isabel ~ Landscape of Dreams - The Gardens of Isabel and Julian Bannerman
- BATES H.E. ~ Dulcima
- BEACHAM Peter & RAVILIOUS James ~ Down the Deep Lanes
- BELBEN Rosalind ~ Our Horses in Egypt
- BUNTING Madeleine ~ Love of Country - A Hebridean Journey (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- Candlestick Chapter - Christmas Crackers - Ten Poems to Surprise and Delight
- Candlestick Chapter - Christmas Garland - Ten Evergreen Poems
- Candlestick Chapter - Christmas Stocking
- Candlestick Chapter - Fourteen Festive Sonnets
- Candlestick Chapter - Gift of the Old One
- Candlestick Chapter - Holly and Ivy
- Candlestick Chapter - Ten Poems About Birds
- Candlestick Chapter - Ten Poems About Clouds
- Candlestick Chapter - Ten Poems of Kindness
- Candlestick Chapter - Ten Poems on the Telephone
- Candlestick Chapter :: Ten Poems about Friendship
- Candlestick Chapter :: Ten Poems about Home
- Candlestick Chapter :: Ten Poems From Ireland
- Candlestick Chapter :: The Wood in Winter ~ John Lewis Stempel
- CARTER Brian ~ Where the Dream Begins
- COOPER Simon ~ The Otter's Tale (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- COOPER Susan ~ The Dark is Rising
- CRUMLEY Jim ~ The Company of Swans
- CRYSTAL David ~ The Story of Be (Budleigh LitFest)
- DE WAAL Kit ~ My Name is Leon
- DEE T. ~ Four Fields (1)
- DICKENS Monica ~ The Winds of Heaven
- DIDION Joan ~ Live and Learn
- DONALDSON Carol ~ On the Marshes - A Journey Into England's Waterlands
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ Pablo Picasso’s Noel
- DUNMORE Helen ~ Birdcage Walk
- DUNMORE Helen ~ Inside the Wave
- Elementum
- GAIMAN Neil ~ Neverwhere
- GAIMAN Neil ~ Norse Mythology
- GARWOOD Tirzah ~ Long Live Great Bardfield
- GREEVES Tom ~ The Three Hares - A Curiosity Worth Regarding
- GRINDROD John ~ Outskirts - Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt
- HARRIS Robert ~ Conclave (audio book)
- HEGARTY Neil ~ Inch Levels
- HERVEY Jane ~ Vain Shadow
- HILL Susan ~ Jacob's Room is Full of Books
- HOBB Robin ~ Assassin's Apprentice
- HONEYMAN Gail ~ Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (audio book)
- HOWARD Elizabeth Jane ~ The Cazalets (BBC audio dramatisation)
- JENKINS Elizabeth ~ Harriet
- JENKINS Elizabeth ~ The View From Downshire Hill - A Memoir
- JOHNSON Denis ~ Train Dreams
- JONES Cynan ~ The Long Dry
- KELLY Matthew ~ Quartz and Feldspar
- KNOWLES Elizabeth ~ Stanhope Forbes : Father of the Newlyn School
- LEIGH FERMOR Patrick ~ A Time of Gifts
- LESLIE Anita ~ Train to Nowhere
- LEWIS- STEMPEL John ~ Where the Poppies Blow - The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- LEWIS-STEMPEL John ~ The Running Hare (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- LONDON Joan ~ The Golden Age
- MACFARLANE Robert & MORRIS Jackie ~ The Lost Words
- MACKAIL Denis ~ Greenery Street
- MILLER Betty ~ Farewell Leicester Square
- MILLER Betty ~ The Exile
- MITCHELL Emma ~ Making Winter - A Creative Guide for Surviving the Winter Months
- MOSS Stephen ~ Wild Kingdom - Bringing Back Britain's Wildlife (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- MOSS Stephen ~ Wonderland - A Year of Britain's Wildlife ( Budleigh LitFest)
- OSWALD Alice ~ Dart
- OSWALD Alice ~ Falling Awake
- PATCHETT Ann ~ Commonwealth
- PRESTON Alex ~ As Kingfishers Catch Fire (Budleigh LitFest)
- RAVILIOUS Robin ~ James Ravilious - A Life
- RILEY Gwendoline ~ First Love (Baileys Prize Short List 2017)
- SAWDAY Alastair ~ Travelling Light ( Budleigh LitFest)
- SEDGWICK Marcus ~ Snow
- SHERRIFF R.C. ~ Greengates
- SHERRIFF R.C. ~ The Fortnight in September
- SHERRIFF R.C. ~ The Hopkins Manuscript
- SIMENON Georges ~ A Maigret Christmas
- SMITH Dominic ~ The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
- SOMERVILLE Christopher ~ The January Man - A Year of Walking Britain (Wainwright Prize Short List 2017)
- STANCEY Helen ~ The Madonna of the Pool
- STEGNER Wallace ~ Crossing to Safety
- STEGNER Wallace ~ Remembering Laughter
- SWIFT Graham ~ Mothering Sunday
- Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017
- THOMAS Edward ~ 9th April 1917
- TOLSTOY Leo ~ Anna Karenina
- Washing Lines ~ a collection of poems
- WHITEHEAD Colson ~ The Underground Railroad
- WILSON Ethel ~ Hetty Dorval
- WILSON Ethel ~ Swamp Angel
Book Thoughts 2016
- 100 Prized Poems ~ Twenty Five Years of the Forward Books
- ALLAN M.E. ~ The School on North Barrule
- ATKINSON Kate ~ A God in Ruins (audio book)
- ATKINSON Kate ~ When Will There Be Good News? (audio book)
- BALCH Oliver ~ Under the Tump - Sketches of Real Life on the Welsh Borders
- BARRY Sebastian ~ A Long Long Way (redux)
- BOOTHBY Dan ~ Island of Dreams
- BRADBURY J. & MAEDER E. ~ American Style & Spirit - Fashion & Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850-1995
- BRAY Carys ~ The Museum of You
- CANDLESTICK PRESS ~ The Twelve Poems of Christmas - Volume Eight
- CHEVALIER Tracy ~ At the Edge of the Orchard
- CHIDGEY Catherine ~ In a Fishbone Church
- CORBEL STONE PRESS ~ Reliquiae - Volume Four
- DUFFY Carol Ann (Ed) ~ Off the Shelf - A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse
- DUNMORE Helen ~ Exposure
- ELDER Josephine ~ Doctor's Children
- ELEMENTUM ~ A journal of nature & story
- FARRE Rowena ~ Seal Morning
- FORTEY Richard ~ The Wood For the Trees
- FORTEY Richard ~ The Wood for the Trees ~ Richard Fortey - The Long View of Nature From a Small Wood
- FRANCIS J. & ANDREWS M. ~ Rena Gardiner - Artist and Printmaker
- FRANKOPAN Peter ~ The Silk Roads - A New History of the World
- GANNON Angela & GEDDES George ~ St Kilda : The Last and Outmost Isle
- GRANT Linda ~ The Dark Circle
- GUNNER Janice ~ Shibori for Textile Artists
- HARRIS Alexandra ~ Weatherlands - Writers & Artists Under English Skies (Wainwright Prize 2016)
- HARRISON Melissa ~ Rain- Four Walks in English Weather
- HARUF Kent ~ Benediction
- HARUF Kent ~ Eventide
- HARUF Kent ~ Plainsong
- HAWKSLEY Lucinda ~ Bitten By Witch Fever - Wallpaper and Arsenic in the Victorian Home
- HAWKSLEY Lucinda ~ Lizzie Siddal - The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel
- HOWARD Elizabeth Jane ~ The Light Years
- HOWARD Elizabeth Jane ~ The Long View
- IHIMAERA Witi ~ The Whale Rider
- KNIGHT Lynn ~ The Button Box (1)
- LEIGH Julia ~ Avalanche - A Love Story
- LEWIS-STEMPEL John ~ The Running Hare
- LEWIS-STEMPEL John ~ The Running Hare - The Secret Life of Farmland
- LIPTROT Amy ~ The Outrun
- LIPTROT Amy ~ The Outrun (almost)
- LIVINGSTONE Natalie ~ The Mistresses of Cliveden - Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue
- LUNDBERG Ulla-Lena ~ Ice
- MANNING Olivia ~ The Balkan Trilogy
- MARSH Ngaio ~ Surfeit of Lampreys (audio book)
- MAXTONE GRAHAM Ysenda ~ Terms & Conditions - Life in Girls' Boarding Schools, 1939-1979
- MCCARTHY Michael ~ The Moth Snowstorm (Wainwright Prize 2016)
- MENMUIR Wyl ~ The Many
- MITCHELL David ~ The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
- MOSS Sarah ~ The Tidal Zone
- MURRAY Rosalind ~ The Happy Tree
- NORBURY Katharine ~ The Fish Ladder (Wainwright Prize 2016)
- OSWALD Alice ~ Falling Awake
- PAVORD Anna ~ Landskipping - Painters, Ploughmen and Places
- RANKIN Ian ~ Knots and Crosses (audio book)
- RANSOME Arthur ~ Swallows and Amazons
- Requiescat in pace ~ William Trevor
- RICHARDS Dan ~ Climbing Days
- SEETHALER Robert ~ A Whole Life
- SLANEY Di ~ Reward For Winter
- SMILEY Jane ~ Some Luck
- SOYINKA Susan ~ From East End to Land's End
- STOCKETT Kathryn ~ The Help
- STROUT Elizabeth ~ My Name is Lucy Barton
- TREMAIN Rose ~ The Colour
- Washing Lines ~ A collection of poems
- WROE Ann ~ Six Facets of Light
- WROE Ann ~ Six Facets of Light
Book Thoughts 2015
- ARMITAGE Simon ~ Walking Away
- AUDIN Heather ~ Patchwork & Quilting in Britain
- BALDWIN Monica ~ I Leap Over the Wall
- BALFOUR-PAUL Jenny ~ Indigo
- BICKFORD-SMITH Coralie ~ The Fox and the Star
- BLACKBURN Julia ~ Threads - The Delicate Life of John Craske
- BRISCOE Susan ~ The 1718 Coverlet
- Candlestick Press
- CATTON Eleanor ~ The Luminaries (1)
- CHAPMAN Chris ~ Wild Goose and Riddon
- CHATWIN Bruce ~ On the Black Hill
- CLARE Horatio ~ Orison for a Curlew
- CLARE Horatio ~ Running for the Hills
- CLARKE Susanna ~ Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- CLEVELAND-PECK Patricia ~ Auriculas Through the Ages
- COWEN Painton ~ English Stained Glass
- DE WAAL Edmund ~ The White Road - a pilgrimage of sorts
- DEAKIN Roger ~ Waterlog - A Swimmer's Journey through Britain
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ The Wren Boys
- FERRANTE Elena ~ My Brilliant Friend
- FIENNES William ~ The Snow Geese
- GALSWORTHY John ~ The Forsyte Saga
- GALSWORTHY John ~ The Man of Property
- GOUDGE Elizabeth ~ The Dean's Watch
- GRAHAM Winston ~ Poldark's Cornwall
- GUNN Kirsty ~ My Katherine Mansfield Project
- HENSHER Philip (Ed) ~ The Penguin Book of the British Short Story
- HIRAIDE Takashi ~ The Guest Cat
- HOSKINS W.G.~ The Making of the English Landscape
- HYAMS Jacky ~ Frances : The Tragic Bride
- JACKSON Shirley ~ Let Me Tell You
- JAMES Peter ~ Dead Simple
- JONES Lloyd ~ The Book of Fame
- LEE Harper ~ Go Set a Watchman
- LEE Laurie ~ Village Christmas & Other Notes on the English Year
- LOPEZ Barry ~ Arctic Dreams
- LOPEZ Barry ~ Arctic Dreams (2)
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ Landmarks
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ Landmarks (2)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ 'My Life in Books' (BudleighLitFest 2015)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ The Mirror and the Light (an update)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Beyond Black (Audio book)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Beyond Black (Audio book)
- MARSDEN Philip ~ Rising Ground - A Search for the Spirit of Place
- MARTIN R.R. George ~ A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire - Book One)
- MITCHELL David ~ The Bone Clocks
- MORRISON Van ~ Lit up Inside
- MOSS Sarah
- MOSS Sarah ~ Night Waking
- MURDOCH Iris ~ The Bell
- MURDOCH Iris ~ The Italian Girl
- REBANKS James ~ The Shepherd's Life - A Tale of the Lake District
- SHEPHERD Nan ~ The Living Mountain
- SMIT Tim ~ The Lost Gardens of Heligan
- The BBC National Short Story Award 2015
- TURNER Angela ~ The Swallow
- WHIPPLE Dorothy ~ Greenbanks
- WILLES Margaret ~ The Gardens of the British Working Class
- WILLIAMS Colin ~ Shadows in the Hay
- WILLIAMS Kit ~ Masquerade
- WINTERSON Jeanette ~ The Gap of Time
- WOOD Beryl ~ Let's Preserve It
- ZOOB Caroline ~ Virginia Woolf's Garden
Book Thoughts 2014
- ANGEL Marie ~ Cottage Flowers
- ATKINSON Kate ~ Case Histories
- ATKINSON Kate ~ One Good Turn
- BEACHAM Peter & PEVSNER Nikolaus ~ The Buildings of England - Cornwall
- BEACHAM Peter ~ Down the Deep Lanes (Port Eliot 2014)
- BENSON Richard ~ The Farm (Port Eliot 2014)
- BENSON Richard ~ The Valley (Port Eliot 2014)
- BOSTON Diana ~ The Patchworks of Lucy Boston at The Manor, Hemingford Grey
- BRITTAIN Vera ~ Testament of Youth
- CANFIELD FISHER Dorothy ~ The Home Maker (Persephone Lunch Talk : Part 3)
- CANNAN Joanna ~ Princes in the Land
- CARPENTER Louise ~ An Unlikely Countess (Port Eliot 2014)
- CARPENTER Louise ~ An Unlikely Countess - Lily Budge & the 13th Earl of Galloway
- CARR J.L. ~ A Month in the Country
- CHISHOLM A.H. ~ Mateship With Birds
- COCKER Mark ~ Claxton
- COLWILL Jo ~ Cushions & Quilts
- COOKE Rachel ~ Her Brilliant Career (Port Eliot 2014)
- DAWSON Jill ~ The Tell-Tale Heart
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ Ritual Lighting
- FAIRLIE-BRUCE Dorita ~ Nancy at St Bride's
- FAIRLIE-BRUCE Dorita ~ The Girls of St Bride's
- FILER Nathan ~ The Shock of the Fall
- FITZGERALD Penelope ~ The Blue Flower
- FORSTER E.M. ~ Howards End
- Forward Poetry Anthology 2015
- FRAME Janet ~ Living in the Maniototo
- GARFIELD Simon ~ To the Letter (Port Eliot 2014 - Happy Campers)
- GIBSON Anthony ~ With Magic in My Eyes -West Country Literary Landscapes
- GOSLING Lucinda ~ Knitting for Tommy: Keeping the Great War Soldier Warm
- GROOM NICK ~ The Seasons - A Celebration of the English Year
- HADFIELD Chris ~ You Are Here
- HANNAH Sophie ~ A Room Swept White (audiobook)
- HARRISON Melissa ~ Clay
- HAYCOCK David Boyd ~ A Crisis of Brilliance
- HAZZARD Shirley ~ The Bay of Noon
- HEMERY Eric ~ High Dartmoor - Tavy Cleave
- HOLDEN Edith ~ The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady
- HOLTBY Winifred ~ The Crowded Street
- LASKI Marghanita ~ The Victorian Chaise-Longue
- LEE Hermione ~ Penelope Fitzgerald - A Life
- LEIGHTON Claire ~ Four Hedges
- LUKENS-NOONAN Meg ~ The Coat Route
- MACDONALD Helen ~ H is for Hawk
- MACLEOD Judyth ~ In a Unicorn's Garden
- MAGEE Audrey ~ The Undertaking
- MARSDEN Philip ~ Rising Ground
- MASH Julian ~ Portobello Road (Port Eliot 2014 - Barbara)
- MCFARLANE Fiona ~ The Night Guest
- MINSHULL Duncan ~ While Wandering - A Walking Companion
- MINSHULL Duncan ~ While Wandering - Rhythm of the feet...
- MORTIMER Ian ~ Centuries of Change: Which Century Saw The Most Change?
- MOSLEY Nicholas ~ Julian Grenfell
- NEMIROVSKY Irene ~ The Fires of Autumn
- NOBLE Barbara ~ Doreen ( Persephone Lunch Talk : Part 2 )
- O'NAN Stewart ~ Last Night at the Lobster
- ONDAATJE ROLLS Jans ~ The Bloomsbury Cookbook
- OSWALD Alice
- PARR Martin (Port Eliot 2014)
- PARR Susie ~ Black Country Allotment Society
- PAVORD Anna ~ The Curious Gardener
- PETERS Ellis ~ A Morbid Taste for Bones
- PREECE Roy ~ The World is a Bundle of Hay
- RACKHAM Oliver ~ The Ash Tree
- RANYARD Ben ~ Mr Higgledy Gardens (Port Eliot 2014)
- RAPPAPORT Helen ~ Four Sisters (Port Eliot 2014)
- RAPPAPORT Helen ~ Four Sisters - The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses
- ROBERTSON James ~ 365 stories
- ROTHSCHILD Hannah ~ The Baroness (Port Eliot 2014)
- SELVEDGE
- SELZNICK Brian ~ Wonderstruck (Port Eliot 2014)
- SETH Vikram ~ A Suitable Boy
- SHEPHERD Nan ~ The Living Mountain
- SMITH Jonathan ~ Summer in February
- SMITH Jonathan ~ Wilfred and Eileen
- SPALDING Frances ~ Virginia Woolf - Art, Life and Vision
- SPRACKLAND Jean ~ Sleeping Keys
- STEEL Tom ~ The Life and Death of St Kilda
- STREATFEILD Noel ~ Saplings (Persephone Lunch Talk : Part 1 )
- TARTT Donna ~ The Goldfinch
- TEBBUTT Judith ~ A Long Walk Home
- The Great War in Portraits ~ @NPGLondon
- THORPE Adam ~ On Silbury Hill
- THORPE Adam ~ On Silbury Hill
- WOOTTEN'S ~ The Plantsman's Handbook
- ZUSAK Markus ~ The Book Thief (film)
Book Thoughts 2013
- ATKINSON Kate ~ Behind the Scenes at the Museum
- ATKINSON Kate ~ Life After Life
- AUSTEN Jane ~ Emma
- BADGER Ros ~ Hook, Line and Crochet
- BAGNOLD Enid ~ National Velvet
- BAGNOLD Enid ~ The Squire
- BEACHAM Peter & RAVILIOUS James ~ Down the Deep Lanes
- BELL Quentin & WOOLF Virginia ~ The Charleston Bulletin Supplements
- BERTHOULD E. & ELDERKIN S. The Novel Cure - An A - Z of Literary Remedies
- BOSTON Diana ~ The Patchworks of Lucy Boston
- BOSTON Lucy M.
- BOYT Susie ~ The Small Hours
- BRAGG Melvyn ~ Grace and Mary
- BROWN Jane ~ Gardens of a Golden Afternoon
- CALDWELL Lucy ~ All the Beggars Riding (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- CARTWRIGHT Anthony ~ How I Killed Margaret Thatcher (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- CHAPMAN Lesley ~ The Living History of Our Hedgerows
- CHEVALIER Tracy ~ The Last Runaway
- COLBY Averil ~ Patchwork
- COMYNS Barbara
- COOKE Rachel ~ Her Brilliant Career - Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
- CROSSING William ~ Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor
- DE WAAL Elisabeth ~ The Exiles Return
- DEAKIN Roger ~ Wildwood
- DUNN Nell
- ELDER Josephine ~ Sister Anne Resigns
- ELIOT George ~ Middlemarch
- FASSETT Kaffe ~ Quilt Grandeur
- FESTING Sally ~ Gertrude Jekyll
- FLYNN Gillian ~ Gone Girl
- Forward Book of Poetry 2014
- GALLICO Paul ~ Coronation
- GLENDAY John ~ Grain
- GOSS Rebecca ~ Her Birth
- GOVINDEN Niven ~ Black Bread White Beer (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- HARUF Kent ~ Plainsong
- HEANEY Seamus
- HILL Susan ~ Black Sheep
- HILL Susan ~ The Magic Apple Tree
- HOUSTON Keith ~ Shady Characters
- HUGHES Gerald ~ Ted and I: A Brother's Memoir
- HUNT John ~ Our Everest Adventure
- LALWANI Nikita ~ The Village (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- LEYSHON Nell ~ The Colour of Milk (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- LIVELY Penelope ~ Ammonites & Leaping Fish - A Life in Time
- LYON Annabel ~ The Sweet Girl
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ Holloway
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ The Wild Places
- MACQUEEN Susan ~ The Children's Nurse - The True Story of a Great Ormond Street Nurse
- MADDOCKS Fiona ~ Hildegard von Bingen
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Every Day is Mother's Day
- MARSH Kate (Ed) ~ Writers and Their Houses
- MATUSIAK John ~ Henry VIII - The Life and Rule of England's Nero
- MCGREGOR Jon ~ This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You
- MEEK James ~ The Heart Broke In (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- MILLER Betty ~ The Exile
- MURDOCH Iris
- NEMIROVSKY Irène ~ The Misunderstanding
- NEWLYN Lucy ~ All in Each Other - William and Dorothy Wordsworth
- PAVORD Anna ~ The Curious Gardener
- Persephone Book of Short Stories
- RAPPAPORT Helen ~ No Place For Ladies (Redux)
- SACKVILLE Amy ~ Orkney (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- SACKVILLE-WEST Vita ~ All Passion Spent
- SHUKMAN Henry ~ Archangel
- SMITH May ~ These Wonderful Rumours - A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries
- SMITH Zadie ~ NW
- SPIERS Virginia & MARTIN Mary ~ Burcombes, Queenies and Colloggetts
- STEDMAN M.L. ~ The Light Between Oceans
- THOMSON Rupert ~ Secrecy (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
- TURNEY Chris ~ 1912 - The Year the World Discovered Antarctica
- VOWLER Tom ~ What Lies Within
- WHARTON Edith ~ The House of Mirth
- WILSON A.N. ~ The Potter's Hand
- YORKE Malcolm ~ Edward Bawden and His Circle
- YOUNG D. ~ Philosophy in the Garden
- ZOLA Emile ~ The Fortunes of the Rougons
- BLACKER Sue ~ Pure Wool
- The Novel Cure - An A - Z of Literary Remedies
- Harper's Bazaar
- SEBBA Anne ~ Laura Ashley - A Life By Design
- TODD Janet ~ Jane Austen - Her Life, Her Times, Her Novels
- MAYO Jonathan ~ The Assassination of JFK - Minute by Minute
- OZICK Cynthia ~ The Shawl
- Shadow Script - Twelve Poems for Lindisfarne & Bamburgh
Book Thoughts 2012
- ACKROYD Peter ~ London Under
- ALDRIDGE Kitty ~ A Trick I Learned From Dead Men
- ALEXANDER Caroline ~ Mrs Chippy's Last Expedition 1914-1915
- AUSTEN Jane ~ Emma (intro)
- BAILEY Paul ~ At the Jerusalem (redux)
- BALDING Clare ~ My Animals and Other Family
- BARRY Kevin ~ Beer Trip to Llandudno
- BAWDEN E. & RAVILIOUS E. ~ Design
- BORODALE Jane ~ The Knot
- BORODALE Sean ~ Bee Journal
- BOWEN Elizabeth ~ The House in Paris
- BROWNING Robert (200)
- BYATT A.S. ~ Possession
- BYATT A.S. ~ Still Life
- BYATT A.S. ~ The Virgin in the Garden
- CARTER Angela ~ The Magic Toyshop
- CARTER Angela ~ Wise Children
- CHEVALIER Tracy ~ Girl With a Pearl Earring
- CLAPP Susannah ~ A Card From Angela Carter
- CLARK Peter ~ Dickens's London
- DARLINGTON Miriam ~ Otter Country
- DAVIES Kate ~ Colours of Shetland
- DE KAT Otto ~ Julia
- DU MAURIER Daphne ~ Vanishing Cornwall
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ Wenceslas - A Christmas Poem
- EAVES Will ~ This is Paradise
- ECO Umberto & CARRIERE Jean-Claude ~ This is not the end of the book;
- FASSETT Kaffe ~ Dreaming in Colour: An Autobiography
- FITZGERALD Penelope ~ Human Voices
- FRENCH Dawn ~ Oh Dear Silvia
- GARDAM Jane ~ The Man in the Wooden Hat
- GMEYNER Anna ~ Manja
- GOLDING William ~ Lord of the Flies
- GOOLEY Tristan ~ The Natural Navigator (Trees)
- HARDING Paul ~ Tinkers
- HARRIS Alexandra ~ Virginia Woolf
- HART Josephine ~ Damage
- HART Josephine ~ Sin
- HENSHER Philip ~ The Missing Ink - The Lost Art of Handwriting (and Why it Still Matters)
- HERMANN Judith ~ Alice
- HODGSON Vere ~ Few Eggs and No Oranges - Wartime Diaries 1940 - 1945
- JAMIE Kathleen ~ Findings
- JAMIE Kathleen ~ Sightlines ...The Hvalsalen
- JOHNSON Alex ~ Bookshelf
- LARSON J. Edward ~ An Empire of Ice
- LEE Celia (Ed) ~ Women in War - From Home Front To Front Line
- LEWIN Angie ~ Plants and Places
- LONG James ~ Ferney redux
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot (Part One)
- MACFARLANE Robert ~ The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot (Part Two)
- MANTEL Hilary ~ Bring Up the Bodies
- MARKOVITS Anouk ~ I am Forbidden
- MARS - JONES Adam ~ ¶ Pilcrow
- MARTIN Mary & SPIERS Virginia ~ Silver River: An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty - Tamar Valley Diaries
- MEAD Margaret ~ Coming of Age in Samoa
- MURGIA Michela ~ Accabadora
- PARK David ~ The Light of Amsterdam
- PRICE Angharad ~ The Life of Rebecca Jones
- RAVILIOUS Eric
- REILLY Catherine (Ed) ~ Scars Upon My Heart
- ROBERTS Michèle ~ Daughters of the House
- ROE Nicholas ~ John Keats
- ROTHSCHILD Hannah ~ The Baroness - The search for Nica, the rebellious Rothschild
- ROWLING J.K. ~ The Casual Vacancy
- RUSSELL James ~ Ravilious in Pictures - A Country Life
- SELZNICK Brian ~ The Invention of Hugo Cabret
- SMITH Ali ~ There but for the
- SUMMERSCALE Kate ~ Mrs Robinson's Disgrace
- TALBOT Mary & TALBOT Bryan ~ Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
- TAYLOR Elizabeth ~ A Game of Hide and Seek
- TAYLOR Elizabeth ~ Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont
- TAYLOR Elizabeth ~ The Devastating Boys
- TAYLOR Kressman ~ Address Unknown (redux)
- WATSON Larry ~ White Crosses
- WEST Chris ~ First Class - A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps
- WHARTON Edith ~ Ethan Frome
- WHARTON Edith ~ Fighting France
- WHARTON Edith ~ The Age of Innocence
- WILLIAMS Merryn ~ Effie : A Victorian Scandal, From Ruskin's Wife to Millais's Muse
- WRIGHT John ~ Hedgerows
- ZOLA Emile ~ The Ladies Paradise Redux
Book Thoughts 2011
- ADICHIE Chimamanda Ngozi ~ Half of a Yellow Sun
- BADAUDE ~ London Walks!
- BARKHAM Patrick ~ The Butterfly Isles - A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals
- BARNES Julian ~ The Sense of an Ending
- BARNES Simon ~ Bird Watching With Your Eyes Closed
- BARRY Sebastian ~ On Canaan's Side
- BATES H.E. ~ Through the Woods
- BEARD Richard ~ Lazarus is Dead
- BERRY Helen ~ The Castrato and His Wife (first)
- BERRY Helen ~ The Castrato and His Wife (final)
- BLACKBURN Julia ~ Thin Paths - Journeys in and Around a Mountain Village
- BLACKBURN Julia ~ Thin Paths - Journeys in and Around a Mountain Village
- BORODALE Sean ~ Pages From a Bee Journal
- BRISCOE Joanna ~ You
- CAMILLERI Andrea ~ The Shape of Water
- CAPLE John ~ The Light, The Dusk, The Dark (exhibition)
- CLOAKE Felicity ~ Perfect Christmas Day - 15 Essential Recipes
- DARKE Jane ~ Held By the Sea
- de WAAL Edmund ~ The Hare With Amber Eyes
- DESIGN MUSEUM ~ Fifty Bags That Changed the World
- DESIGN MUSEUM ~ Fifty Hats That Changed the World
- DICKSON WRIGHT Clarissa ~ A History of English Food
- DOCX Edward ~ The Devil's Garden
- DU MAURIER Daphne ~ The Doll - Short Stories
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ The Bees
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ The Bees {2}
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ The Christmas Truce
- DUFFY Carol Ann ~ The World's Wife
- FITZGERALD Penelope ~ The Bookshop
- FORD Jamie ~ Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
- FRAME Janet ~ Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun
- FREUD Esther ~ Lucky Break
- GOBLE Fiona ~ Knit Your Own Royal Wedding
- GOODWIN Daisy ~ My Last Duchess
- GRANT Linda ~ We Had It So Good
- HAMPTON Janie ~ How the Girl Guides Won the War
- HARRIS Jane ~ Gillespie and I
- HARRIS Jane ~ Gillespie and I
- HARRIS Robert ~ The Fear Index
- HART Josephine ~ The Truth About Love
- HENDERSON C. & TOVEY H. ~ Searching for Grace
- HILL Susan ~ The Shadows in the Street
- HOLLIS Matthew ~ Now All Roads Lead to France
- HUSTVEDT Siri ~ The Summer Without Men
- IBBOTSON Eva ~ One Dog and His Boy
- JACOBS Alan ~ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
- KEEGAN Claire ~ Foster
- KENNEDY Richard ~ A Boy at the Hogarth Press
- KITAMURA Katie ~ The Longshot
- KRAUSS Nicole ~ Great House (Orange shortlist 2011)
- LARKIN Philip ~ A Girl in Winter
- LARKIN Philip ~ Letters to Monica
- LIVELY Penelope ~ How It All Began
- MATAR Hisham ~ Anatomy of a Disappearance
- MAYNE Michael ~ The Enduring Melody
- MCCLAIN Paula ~ The Paris Wife
- MCINTYRE Ben ~ Agent Zigzag
- MILLER A.D. ~ Snowdrops
- MOORE Susanna ~ My Old Sweetheart
- MURAKAMI Haruki ~ 1Q84
- NESS Patrick ~ A Monster Calls
- NORTON Sally ~ 101 Things to Do Before You Are Five
- NORWICH John Julius ~ A History of England in 100 Places
- O'CROHAN Tomas ~ Island Cross -Talk
- O'FARRELL Maggie ~ After You'd Gone
- ONDAATJE Michael ~ The Cat's Table
- PARR Susie ~ The Story of Swimming
- PATERSON Don ~ Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets - A New Commentary
- PATON Alan ~ Cry, the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation
- PAVER Michelle ~ Dark Matter - A Ghost Story
- PITCHER Annabel ~ My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
- PRICE Leah (Ed) ~ Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books
- QUINN Anthony ~ Half of the Human Race
- RAPPAPORT Helen ~ Magnificent Obsession - Victoria and Albert and the Death That Changed the Monarchy
- RATTIGAN Terence ~ Flare Path (Theatre)
- REID Christopher ~ A Scattering
- ROBERTS Andrew (Ed) ~ Letters to Vicky (Folio Society)
- ROTH Philip ~ Nemesis
- ROUD Steve ~ The Lore of the Playground
- SLOVO Gillian ~ Black Orchids
- SOUHAMI Diana ~ Edith Cavell
- SPELLER Elizabeth ~ The Return of Captain John Emmett
- SPELLER Elizabeth ~The Sunlight on the Garden - A Memoir of Love, War and Madness
- ST AUBYN Edward ~ At Last
- TAYLOR Elizabeth ~ The Soul of Kindness
- THOMPSON Flora ~ Lark Rise to Candleford
- TOEWS Miriam ~ Irma Voth
- TOLSTOY Leo ~ War and Peace
- TOMALIN Claire ~ Charles Dickens - A Life
- TOMALIN Claire ~ Charles Dickens - A Life
- TOWNSEND WARNER Sylvia ~ Mr. Fortune's Maggot
- VANN David ~ Caribou Island
- WALSH Helen ~ Go To Sleep
- WASTVEDT Patricia ~ The German Boy
- Why Willows Weep - Contemporary Tales from the Woods
- WIESEMAN Marjorie E ~ Vermeer's Women - Secrets and Silence
- WILSON Kevin ~ The Family Fang
- WINCHESTER Simon ~ The Alice Behind Wonderland
- WINTER Kathleen ~ Annabel (Orange shortlist 2011)
- WOODWARD Gerard ~ Nourishment
Book Thoughts 2010
- ALEXIE Robert Arthur ~ Porcupines and China Dolls
- ANDREWS Elizabeth ~ A Woman's Work is Never Done
- AUSTER Paul ~ Invisible
- BAGGOTT Jean ~ The Girl on the Wall - One Life's Rich Tapestry
- BARBELLION W.N.P. ~ Journal of a Disappointed Man
- BEAUMAN Ned ~ Boxer Beetle
- BELL Adrian ~ Corduroy
- BENNETT Alan ~ Enjoy (on stage)
- BUCKLEY Jonathan ~ Contact
- CLAUDEL Philippe ~ Brodeck's Report (NTTVBG)
- COE Jonathan ~ The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
- COOPER Lettice ~ The New House
- CURTIS Anthony ~ Virginia Woolf
- CUSK Rachel ~ The Bradshaw Variations
- DEE Jonathan ~ The Privileges
- DOUGHTY Louise ~ Whatever You Love
- DUFFY Stella ~ Theodora
- FARNDALE Nigel ~ The Blasphemer
- FERGUSON Ruby ~ Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary
- FRAME Janet ~ Living In the Maniototo
- GALLIE Menna ~ The Small Mine
- GARFIELD Simon ~ Just My Type
- GILLESPIE Grant ~ The Cuckoo Boy
- GRAHAM Eleanor ~ The Children Who Lived in a Barn
- GROSSMAN Edith ~ Why Translation Matters
- GROVE Valerie ~ So Much to Tell
- GUTCHEON Beth ~ Still Missing
- HALL M.R. ~ The Coroner
- HARRIS Alexandra ~ Romantic Moderns
- HILL Susan ~ The Woman in Black @ The Theatre Royal
- HUDSON W.H. ~ A Shepherd's Life
- HUNT Rebecca ~ Mr Chartwell
- ISHIGURO Kazuo ~ A Pale View of Hills
- JACKSON Mick ~ The Widow's Tale
- JOHNSTON Jennifer ~ The Illusionist
- JOSS Morag ~ The Night Following
- JOYCE James ~ Ulysses
- KENNEDY AL ~ What Becomes
- KESSNER Thomas ~ The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of American Aviation
- LARSSON Stieg ~ The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
- LELIC Simon ~ Rupture
- LESSER Wendy ~ Nothing Remains the Same - Rereading and Remembering
- LEVY Amy ~ Reuben Sachs
- LEVY Andrea ~ The Long Song (Booker L/L)
- LOCKLEY R.M. ~ Letters From Skokholm
- MANGUEL Alberto ~ A Reader on Reading
- MANSFIELD Katherine ~ The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks.
- MASS OBSERVATION ~ First Year's Work 1937-1938
- MAXWELL William ~ So Long, See You Tomorrow
- MAXWELL William ~ They Came Like Swallows
- MAXWELL William ~ Time Will Darken It
- MCCANN Colum ~ Let the Great World Spin
- MCGREGOR Jon ~ Even the Dogs
- MOORE Charlotte ~ Hancox
- MOORE Lisa ~ February
- MORPURGO Michael ~ War Horse @ the New London Theatre
- NEMIROVSKY Irene ~ Jezebel
- O'FARRELL Maggie ~ The Hand That First Held Mine
- OGAWA Yoko ~ The Housekeeper and The Professor
- OLMI Veronique ~ Beside the Sea
- OSWALD Alice & GREENWOOD Jessica ~ Weeds and Wild Flowers
- OSWALD Alice ~ Dart :: Part 2
- OSWALD Alice ~ Dart :: Part One
- PAVEL Ota ~ How I Came to Know Fish
- PETTERSON Per ~ I Curse the River of Time
- PICARDIE Justine ~ Coco Chanel - The Legend and the Life
- PRICHARD Sue (ed) ~ Quilts 1700 - 2010 Hidden Histories, Untold Stories
- RAPPAPORT Helen ~ Beautiful For Ever
- ROBINSON David ~ In Cold Ink - On the Writer's Tracks
- ROBINSON Marilynne ~ Home
- ROTHMAN Claire Holden ~ The Heart Specialist
- SANSOM Polly ~ Perfect Lives
- SHAW Ali ~ The Girl with Glass Feet (NTTVBG)
- SHIELDS Carol ~ The Stone Diaries
- SIMMONDS Posy ~ Tamara Drewe
- SKLOOT Rebecca ~ The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- SOLOMONS Natasha ~ Mr Rosenblum's List
- SPARK Muriel ~ Memento Mori
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Abbess of Crewe
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Ballad of Peckham Rye
- SPARK Muriel ~ The Driver's Seat
- STEGNER Wallace ~ Crossing to Safety
- STICKLAND Eugene ~ Queen Lear : A play
- SWAN Mary ~ The Boys in the Trees (NTTVBG)
- THOMAS Helen ~ Under Storm's Wing
- TREMAIN Rose ~ Trespass
- WATNEY Simon ~ Bloomsbury in Sussex
- WATTS Anne ~ Always the Children
- WATTS Marjorie Ann ~ Are they funny, are they dead?
- WESTON Gabriel ~ Direct Red
- WILLIAMS John ~ Stoner
- WONG Alison ~ As the Earth Turns Silver
- WOOLF Virginia ~ Flush , a biography
- WYLD Evie ~ After the Fire a Still Small Voice
Book thoughts 2009
- ADELAIDE Debra : The Household Guide to Dying (Orange L/L)
- AIKEN Joan : The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
- ALLPORT Alan : Demobbed
- ALVTEGEN Karin : Shadow
- ATWOOD Margaret : The Robber Bride
- ATWOOD Margaret : The Year of the Flood
- BADOE Yaba : True Murder a novel
- BAINES Elizabeth : Balancing on the Edge of the World (dgr asks...)
- BARBER Lynn : An Education
- BAUM Louis : I Want to See the Moon.
- BEAUMAN Nicola : The Other Elizabeth Taylor
- BENN Melissa : One of Us
- BERNSTEIN Hilda : The World That Was Ours
- BOLING Dave : Guernica
- BOLLMANN Stefan : Women Who Read Are Dangerous
- BOWLT John E. : Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia's Silver Age
- BOYDEN Joseph : From Mushkegowuk to New Orleans - A Mixed Blood Highway
- BRADLEY Alan : The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
- BULGAKOV Mikhail : White Guard
- BYATT A.S. : The Children's Book (Booker S/L 09)
- CAPLE John : The Nightingale's Song
- CATHER Willa : My Mortal Enemy
- CATHER Willa : My Ántonia
- CATHER Willa : The Professor's House
- COETZEE J.M. : Summertime (Booker S/L 09)
- COLLINS Norman : London Belongs to Me
- COOPER Duff : Operation Heartbreak
- CRAIG Amanda : Hearts and Minds
- CRAIG Amanda : Hearts and Minds (dgr asks...)
- DAWSON Jill : The Great Lover
- DAY LEWIS C : The Otterbury Incident
- DUFFY Carol Ann : Mrs Scrooge
- DUFFY Stella : State of Happiness
- DUFFY Stella : The Room of Lost Things
- DUFFY Stella : The Room of Lost Things (dgr asks...)
- EKMAN Kerstin : The Dog
- EVANS Lissa : Their Finest Hour and a Half (Orange L/L)
- FELDMAN Ellen : Scottsboro (Orange L/L - S/L)
- FIENNES William : The Music Room
- FIENNES William : The Snow Geese
- FIORATO Marina : The Glassblower of Murano
- FORMAN Gayle : If I Stay
- FOULDS Adam : The Quickening Maze (Booker S/L 09)
- GARDNER Sally : The Red Necklace
- GARNER Helen - The Spare Room (dgr asks...)
- GIBBONS Stella : Cold Comfort Farm
- GILBERT Paul : The Compassionate Mind
- GRENVILLE Kate : The Lieutenant
- GRINDROD John (Ed) : Shouting at the Telly
- HAGEGE Claude : On the Death and Life of Language
- HALL Lee : The Pitmen Painters (in performance)
- HALL Sarah : How to Paint a Dead Man (Booker L/L 09)
- HAMSUN Knut
- HARDING Georgina : The Spy Game
- HARNETT Cynthia : The Wool-Pack
- HEARNE & TRITES : A Narrative Compass - Stories That Guide Women's Lives
- HILL Susan : Howards End is on the Landing
- Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary
- HODGSON BURNETT Frances : The Secret Garden
- HOGAN Edward : Blackmoor
- HUGHES Ted
- HUMBERT Agnes : Resistance
- HUNT Samantha : The Invention of Everything Else (Orange shortlist 2009)
- JEKYLL Agnes: Kitchen Essays
- JENKINS Elizabeth : The Tortoise and the Hare
- JONES Sadie : The Outcast (audio)
- KASTNER Erich : Emil and the Detectives
- KAY Francesca : An Equal Stillness
- KEILLOR Garrison : Pontoon
- KEUN Irmgard : Child of All Nations
- KEY Sarah : The Backsufferer's Bible
- KIBERD Declan : Ulysses and Us, The Art of Everyday Living
- LAMBERT Charles - The Scent of Cinnamon
- LAMBERT Charles - The Scent of Cinnamon (dgr asks...)
- LANE Patrick : Red Dog, Red Dog
- LE CARRE John : A Murder of Quality
- LE CARRE John : Call for the Dead
- LEWIS Eiluned : Dew on the Grass
- LLOYD Marjorie : Fell Farm Holiday
- MADDEN Deirdre : Molly Fox's Birthday (Orange L/L - S/L)
- MANKOWITZ Wolf : A Kid for Two Farthings
- MANTEL Hilary : Wolf Hall (Booker S/L 09)
- MANTEL Hilary on Wolf Hall
- MARAI Sándor : Esther's Inheritance
- MARRYAT Florence : The Dead Man's Message
- MAWER Simon : The Glass Room (Booker S/L 09)
- MELVILLE Pauline : Eating Air
- MICHAELS Ann : Fugitive Pieces
- MORGAN Alistair : Sleeper's Wake
- MORGAN Jude : The Taste of Sorrow
- MULLIN Chris : A View From the Foothills
- MURPHY Peter : John the Revelator
- MYERSON Julie : The Lost Child
- NEMIROVSKY Irene : Le Bal
- NEMIROVSKY Irene : Snow in Autumn
- NEMIROVSKY Irene : Suite Francaise
- NEMIROVSKY Irene : The Courilof Affair
- NESBIT E. : Five Children and It
- O'LOUGHLIN Ed : Not Untrue and Not Unkind (Booker L/L 09)
- ORWELL George : Shooting an Elephant
- PAASILINNA Arto : The Year of the Hare
- PANTER-DOWNES Mollie : Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories
- PANTER-DOWNES Mollie : Minnie's Room
- PANTER-DOWNES Mollie : One Fine Day
- PERKINS GILMAN Charlotte : The Yellow Wallpaper
- PIZZICHINI Lilian : The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys
- POTTER John : Tenor, History of a Voice
- PYM Barbara : Excellent Women
- PYM Barbara : No Fond Return of Love
- REYNOLDS Tom : More Blood More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea
- RHYS Jean : After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
- RHYS Jean : Smile Please
- ROBINSON Marilynne : Gilead
- ROGERS Bill : The Cleansing
- RUNCIE James : East Fortune
- SEBALD W.G. : On the Natural History of Destruction
- SHAMSIE Kamila : Burnt Shadows (Orange L/L - S/L)
- SHOWALTER Elaine : A Jury of Her Peers
- SJON : The Blue Fox
- SMITH Emma : The Great Western Beach
- SMITH Lyn : Voices Against War
- SMITH Zadie : Changing my Mind - Occasional Essays
- SMYTH Amanda : Black Rock
- SPARK Muriel : A Far Cry from Kensington
- SPARROW Dr Michael : Country Doctor Tales of a Rural GP
- STRACHAN Mari : The Earth Hums in B Flat
- STUCLEY Elizabeth : Magnolia Buildings
- SUMMERSCALE Kate : The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
- TAYLOR Alan (ed) : The Country Diaries - A Year in the British Countryside
- TAYLOR Craig : One Million Tiny Plays About Britain
- TAYLOR Elizabeth : In a Summer Season
- THOM Eleanor : The Tin-Kin
- THOMAS Aeronwy : My Father's Places
- THOMSON Keith : The Young Charles Darwin
- TOBIAS Lily
- TOBIAS Lily : Eunice Fleet
- TOEWS Miriam : The Flying Troutmans (Orange L/L)
- TOIBIN Colm : Brooklyn (Booker L/L 09)
- TREVOR William : Love and Summer (Booker L/L 09)
- TYLER L.C.: A Very Persistent Illusion
- VANN David : Legend of a Suicide
- VERITY Jo : Sweets from Morocco
- WALLER David : The Magnificent Mrs Tennant
- WATERS Sarah : The Little Stranger (Booker S/L 09)
- WEISGARBER Ann : The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (Orange L/L)
- WHIPPLE Dorothy : High Wages
- WOOD James : How Fiction Works
- WORGUL Doug : Thin Blue Smoke
- ZWEIG Stefan : Burning Secret
- ZWEIG Stefan : The Post Office Girl
Book Thoughts 2008
- ABRAMS Rebecca : Touching Distance
- ADAMS Poppy : The Behaviour of Moths
- ADAMSON Gil : The Outlander
- ADIGA Aravind : The White Tiger
- ANDERSON Sarah : Halfway to Venus
- BAGGINI Julian
- BAGNOLD Enid : The Squire
- BAINES Elizabeth : Balancing on the Edge of the World
- BALZAC Honore de : Eugenie Grandet
- BANKS Russell : The Reserve
- BARKER Nicola : Clear
- BARRETT Andrea : The Air We Breathe
- BARRY Sebastian : The Secret Scripture
- BATES H.E. : The Triple Echo
- BEARD Mary : Pompeii, The Life of a Roman Town
- BELBEN Rosalind : Our Horses in Egypt
- BENN Tony
- BERGER John : From A to X - A Story in Letters
- BIRCHALL Diana : Mrs Darcy's Dilemma
- BLACKBURN Julia : The Three of Us
- BLOCK Stefan Merrill : The Story of Forgetting
- BOLTON Janet - Textile Pictures
- BORDEN Mary : The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War
- BOYDEN Joseph : Through Black Spruce
- BRITTAIN Vera : Testament of Youth
- BRONTE Anne : The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- BROOKS Geraldine : People of the Book
- BROWN Gordon : Courage
- BURNS Richard : A Dance for the Moon
- CALKIN JAMES Margaret
- CANFIELD FISHER Dorothy
- CANFIELD FISHER Dorothy : The Bedquilt & Other Stories
- CAREY John : What Good are the Arts?
- CAREY Peter : His Illegal Self
- CETIN Fethiye : My Grandmother
- CHESTER Len : Bugle Boy
- CLAYE Gina : Don't Let Them Tell You How To Grieve
- COCKAYNE Emily : Hubbub : Filth, Noise & Stench in England
- CONE Libby : War on the Margins
- CRAWFORD Dorothy : Deadly Companions - How Microbes Changed the World
- CRUMEY Andrew : Sputnik Caledonia
- CUSACK Dymphna : Jungfrau
- DE KRETSER Michelle : The Lost Dog (Orange L/L 09)
- DILLARD Annie
- DORWARD Peter : Nightingale
- DOWD Siobhan : Bog Child
- DU MAURIER Daphne : Letters from Menabilly : Portrait of a Friendship (Ed. Oriel Malet)
- DU MAURIER Daphne : Letters from Menabilly : Portrait of a Friendship (Post 1)
- DU MAURIER Daphne : My Cousin Rachel
- DU MAURIER Daphne : The Loving Spirit
- DU MAURIER Daphne : The Parasites
- DU MAURIER Daphne : The Scapegoat
- ELON Emuna : If You Awaken Love
- EPSTEIN Joseph : Fred Astaire
- FENOGLIO Beppe : A Private Affair
- FERGUSON Rachel : The Brontes Went to Woolworths
- FERRIER Carol (ed) : As Good as a Yarn With You :Selected Letters of Five Australian Women Writers.
- FRAME Janet : An Angel at my Table (film)
- FRAME Janet : Owls Do Cry
- FRAME Janet : The Lagoon
- FRAME Janet : Towards Another Summer
- GALGUT Damon : The Impostor
- GALLOWAY Steven : The Cellist of Sarajevo
- GANESHANANTHAN V.V. : Love Marriage (Orange L/L 09)
- GARNER Helen : The Spare Room
- GHOSH Amitav : Sea of Poppies
- GILBAR Steven (Ed) : Reading in Bed, Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading
- GISSING George : The Nether World
- GLASPELL Susan
- GREER Andrew Sean : The Story of a Marriage
- HAIEN Jeannette : The All Of It
- HALL Lee : The Pitmen Painters
- HARDY Thomas : Under the Greenwood Tree
- HELLER Zoe : The Believers
- HENSHER Philip : The Northern Clemency (1)
- HENSHER Philip : The Northern Clemency (2)
- HILL Rosemary : Stonehenge
- HILL Susan : The Battle for Gullywith
- HILL Susan : The Beacon
- HILL Susan : The Vows of Silence
- HUTH Angela (Ed) : Well-Remembered Friends, Eulogies on Celebrated Lives
- JENKINS Robin : The Changeling
- KELLY Richard T : Crusaders
- KELLY Richard T : Crusaders (half-way thoughts)
- KLEIN Yvonne (Ed) : Beyond the Home Front
- LAMBERT Charles : Little Monsters
- LANDSMAN Anne : The Rowing Lesson
- LE CARRE John : A Most Wanted Man
- LEIGH Julia : Disquiet
- LEYSHON Nell : Devotion
- LIGHT Alison : Forever England Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars
- LISPECTOR Clarice : The Hour of the Star
- LIVELY Penelope : Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived
- LODGE David : Deaf Sentence
- LONG James : Ferney
- LUDWIG Sidura : Holding my Breath
- MAGUIRE Elizabeth : The Open Door
- MALONE Nancy : Walking a Literary Labyrinth
- MANKELL Henning : Faceless Killers
- MANSFIELD Katherine
- MAZETTI Katarina : Benny & Shrimp
- McGAHERN John : Amongst Women
- MCGRATH Patrick : Trauma
- MCMASTER Rhyll : Feather Man
- MEGGED Aharon : The Flying Camel and the Golden Hump
- NOTHOMB Amelie : Sulphuric Acid
- O'NEILL Joseph : Netherland
- ONDAATJE Michael : Anil's Ghost
- ONDAATJE Michael : Divisadero
- ONDAATJE Michael : In the Skin of a Lion
- OSBORNE Frances : The Bolter: Idina Sackville
- OXFORD WRITERS : The Sixpenny Debt & other Oxford stories
- PALEY Grace : Collected Stories
- PALMER Ben : Friday's Child
- PATCHETT Ann : Run
- PERKINS Emily : Novel About My Wife
- PICARDIE Justine : Daphne
- PICARDIE Justine : My Mother's Wedding Dress, The Life and Afterlife of Clothes
- POWELL Violet : The Life of a Provincial Lady
- PYM Barbara : Quartet in Autumn
- PYMER Louise : Emotional Thump
- RAISIN Ross : God's Own Country
- RAPPAPORT Helen : Ekaterinburg, The Last days of the Romanovs
- RAVEL Edeet : Ten Thousand Lovers
- REES Matt : The Bethlehem Murders
- ROBYN Fiona : Small Stones
- ROTH Joseph : Rebellion
- ROUD Steve : The English Year
- SEBALD W.G.
- SEBALD W.G. : Austerlitz
- SHAFFER Mary Ann : The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- SHEERS Owen : Resistance
- SKOLKIN-SMITH Leora : Edges, O Israel O Palestine
- SMITH Tom Rob : Child 44
- SNOW Stephanie J : Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World
- SOUCY Gaetan : Atonement
- STAMP Gavin : The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme
- STEIN Sarah Abrevaya : Plumes
- SURI Manil : The Age of Shiva
- SWIFT Katherine : The Morville Hours
- TOBIN Betsy : Ice Land
- TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA Giuseppe : The Leopard
- TYRER Nicola : Sisters In Arms
- VASQUEZ Juan Gabriel : The Informers
- WHITEHORN Katharine : Selective Memory
- WILLIAMS Conrad : The Concert Pianist
- WOOLF Virginia : Death of the Moth
- WOOLF Virginia : The Mark on the Wall
- WOOLF Virginia : To the Lighthouse
Book Thoughts 2007
- ACOCELLA MARCHETTO Marisa : Cancer Vixen
- ADICHIE Chimamanda Ngozi : Half of a Yellow Sun
- AHMAD Imran : Unimagined
- ALMOND David : My Dad's a Birdman
- ALVTEGEN Karin : Shame
- ANAM Tahmima : A Golden Age
- ANTHONY Peter : A Town Called Immaculate
- APPELFELD Aharon : The Retreat
- ARDIZZONE Heidi : An Illuminated Life, Belle Da Costa Greene's Journey From Prejudice to Privilege
- ATWOOD Margaret : Moral Disorder
- BAIL Murray : Eucalyptus
- BAILEY Paul
- BAILEY Paul : At the Jerusalem
- BAILEY Paul : Old Soldiers
- BAILIN Miriam : The Sickroom in Victorian Fiction, the Art of Being Ill
- BAINBRIDGE Beryl : Master Georgie
- BARICCO Alessandro : An Iliad
- BARKER Nicola : Darkmans
- BARRETT Angela
- BENNETT Alan : The Uncommon Reader
- BOWER Sarah : The Needle in the Blood
- BOYD Pattie : Wonderful Today (audio)
- BOYD William : Restless
- BRYSON BILL : A Short History of Nearly Everything
- BULLER Frederick : The Domesday Book of Giant Salmon
- CALDWELL Janis McLarren : Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Britain from Mary Shelley to George Eliot
- CALKIN JAMES Margaret : At the Sign of the Rainbow
- CANDAPPA Rohan : Rules Britannia
- CAPLE John : Somerset
- CARTER Angela
- CASSIDY Sheila : Made For Laughter
- CAVANAGH Mary : The Crowded Bed
- CECIL David : The Fine Art of Reading
- CHABON Michael : The Final Solution
- CHARPAK Nathalie : Kangaroo Babies
- CLARKE Brian : On Fishing
- COE Jonathan : The Rain Before It Falls
- COLETTE : Claudine's House
- COLLINS Warwick : Gents
- COUPERUS Louis : Inevitable
- CROSSLEY-HOLLAND Kevin : The Seeing Stone
- DAHL Roald : Collected Stories
- DANIEL Mark : French Letters & the English Canon
- DE LA MARE Walter : Missing
- DEVER Caroline : Death & the Mother From Dickens to Freud
- DICAMILLO Kate & IBATOULLINE Bagram : Great Joy
- DICKSON WRIGHT Clarissa : Spilling the Beans (audio)
- DOCX Edward : Self Help
- DU MAURIER Daphne
- DUNNETT Dorothy
- DYLAN Bob : Chronicles Vol 1 (audio)
- EDWARDS Kim : The Memory Keeper's Daughter
- EL SAADAWI Nawal : Woman at Point Zero
- ELIOT George : Silas Marner
- ENG Tan Twan : The Gift Of Rain
- ENGEL Matthew : Extracts From The Red Notebooks
- ENRIGHT Anne : The Gathering
- FIGES Orlando : The Whisperers
- FITZGERALD Penelope
- FITZGERALD Penelope : House of Air / The Blue Flower / Collected Letters
- FOSS Brian : War Paint : Art, War, State and Identity in Britain 1939-1945
- FREUDENBERGER Nell : The Dissident
- GAINES Ernest.J. : A Lesson Before Dying
- GALLICO Paul : The Snow Goose
- GASKELL Elizabeth : Cranford
- GERAS Adele : Facing The Light
- GERAS Adele : Yesterday, A Teenage Memoir
- GLASS Lisa : Prince Rupert's Teardrop
- GREGSON Jessica : The Angel Makers
- HAMID Mohsin :The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- HARRIS Jane :The Observations
- HILL Susan : The Man in the Picture
- HO DAVIES Peter :The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
- HORWOOD William, RAPPAPORT Helen : Dark Hearts Of Chicago
- HUGHES Ted : Selected Letters
- INDRIDASON Arnaldur : Jar City
- IZNER Claude : Murder on the Eiffel Tower
- JACOBBI Paola : I Want Those Shoes
- JAMES Henry : Washington Square
- JEROME K. Jerome : The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
- JONES Lloyd : Mister Pip
- JONES Susanna : The Missing Person's Guide to Love
- KAPLAN Justin : When the Astors Owned New York
- KARNEZIS Panos : The Birthday Party
- KAVAN Anna : Guilty
- KAVAN Anna : The Parson
- KAVAN Anna : Who Are You?
- KELLY Christine (Ed.) : Mrs Duberly's War
- KENNEDY Jonny : The Story of the Boy Whose Skin Fell Off
- KEUN Irmgard : After Midnight
- KING Rachael : The Sound Of Butterflies
- KNEALE Matthew : When We Were Romans
- LALWANI Nikita : Gifted
- LAM Vincent : Bloodletting And Miraculous Cures
- LAWSON Mary - Crow Lake
- LECLAIRE Anne : The Law Of Bound Hearts
- LEHMANN Rosamond : The Gipsy's Baby
- LESSING Doris
- LEYSHON Nell : Black Dirt
- LIPMAN Elinor : My Latest Grievance
- LONG Haniel : The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vaca
- MACINTYRE Ben : Agent Zigzag, The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy
- MANNING Jo : My Lady Scandalous
- MAX D.T. : The Family That Couldn't Sleep
- McEWAN Ian : On Chesil Beach
- MCGRATH Melanie : The Long Exile, A True Story of Deception and Survival Amongst the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic
- MCGREGOR Jon : So Many Ways to Begin
- MENDELSON Charlotte : When We Were Bad
- MENGESTU Dinaw : The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- MILES Betty: The Sign of the Rainbow-Margaret Calkin James
- MILLER Candi : Salt and Honey
- MILLER Miranda : Loving Mephistopheles
- MONROE P.K. : The Thursday Night Letters
- MONTGOMERY Lucy Maud
- MOSTERT Natasha : Season of the Witch
- NEMIROVSKY Irene : Suite Francaise
- NICHOLSON Virginia : Singled Out, How Two Million Women Survived Without Men After the First World War
- NOTHOMB Amelie : Loving Sabotage
- O' CONNOR Flannery : The Complete Stories
- O' FARRELL Maggie : The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox
- O'FLYNN Catherine: What Was Lost
- O'NEILL Onora : A Question of Trust
- ODENT Michel : Birth Reborn
- PECK Winifred : House-Bound
- PENNEY Stef : The Tenderness Of Wolves
- PERKINS GILMAN Charlotte : What Diantha Did
- PETTERSON Per : In the Wake
- PETTERSON Per : Out Stealing Horses
- PIRANDELLO Luigi : The Turn
- RABINOVITCH Dina : Take Off Your Party Dress
- RADIGUET Raymond : The Devil in the Flesh
- RAPPAPORT Helen : No Place For Ladies
- REDHILL Michael : Consolation
- REES Celia : Witch Child
- REYNOLDS Tom : Touch Me I'm Sick
- RHYS Jean
- ROTH Joseph : Flight Without End
- ROTH Joseph : Job, The Story of a Simple Man
- ROTH Joseph : The Wandering Jews
- RUBENS Bernice
- SADLER Allen : Bless 'Em All
- SAGAN Francoise
- SATRAPI Marjane : Persepolis
- SAUERWEIN Leigh : Song for Eloise
- SAVAGE Sam: Firmin
- SCOTT CHESSMAN Harriet : Lydia Cassatt Reading The Morning Paper
- SEBALD W.G.
- SEBALD W.G. : The Emigrants
- SEBOLD Alice
- SEBOLD Alice : The Lovely Bones
- SERVANT Bob : Delete This at Your Peril
- SEWELL Kitty : Ice Trap
- SHEFFIELD Rob : Love is a Mix Tape
- SINHA Indra : Animal's People
- SLOUKA Mark : The Visible World
- SMAILES Caroline : In Search of Adam
- SMITH Craig : The Painted Messiah
- SOFER Dalia : The Septembers of Shiraz
- SONTAG Susan
- SOSEKI Natsume : Kokoro
- SPALDING Frances : Gwen Raverat, Friends, Family and Affections
- SPENCER Amy : The Crafter Culture Handbook
- SPIOTTA Dana : Eat The Document
- STIFTER Adalbert : Abdias
- STIFTER Adalbert : Brigitta
- SWIFT Patience : The Last Good Man
- TAYLOR Kressman : Address Unknown
- THOMAS Ruth : Things To Make And Mend
- TOMALIN Claire : Thomas Hardy The Time-Torn Man
- TRETHEWEY Rachel : Mistress of the Arts
- TREVOR-ROPER Patrick : The World Through Blunted Sight
- TYLER Anne : Digging to America
- TYLER L.C.: The Herring Seller's Apprentice
- VESAAS Tarjei : The Ice Palace
- WAGNER Erica : Seizure
- WHARTON Edith : The Touchstone
- WHITAKER Phil : The Face
- WIGFALL Clare : The Loudest Sound and Nothing
- WIGFALL Clare : The Loudest Sound and Nothing
- WILLIAMS Niall : As It Is In Heaven
- WILLIAMS Niall : As It Is in Heaven
- WILLIAMS Niall : Only Say The Word
- WILLIAMS Niall : Only Say the Word
- WINTERMANS Caspar : Lord Alfred Douglas
- WODEHOUSE P.G.
- WOOLF Virginia : Night And Day
- WOOLF Virginia : On Being Ill
- WOOLF Virginia : The Platform of Time
- ZIMLER Richard : The Seventh Gate
- ZWEIG Stefan : Twilight Moonbeam Alley
Book Thoughts 2006
- ADAMS Lorraine : Harbor
- ADICHIE Chimamanda Ngozi
- ALMOND David : Skellig
- ARNIM Elizabeth von : Vera
- ATWOOD Margaret
- BARRY Sebastian : A Long Long Way
- BAXTER Charles : Saul and Patsy
- BIRDSELL Sandra : The Russlander
- BOXALL Peter (Ed.) : 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
- BOYLE T C : Talk Talk
- BURNARD Bonnie : A Good House
- CALLIL Carmen : Bad Faith
- CANFIELD FISHER Dorothy : The Bedquilt
- CARR J L : A Month In The Country
- CHAON Dan : You Remind Me Of Me
- CLARKE Susanna : The Ladies of Grace Adieu
- CLAUDEL Philippe : Grey Souls
- COOLIDGE Susan : What Katy Did
- DE HORNE VAIZEY Mrs George : Pixie O' Shaughnessey
- DEVINE Harriet : Being George Devine's Daughter
- DIDION Joan : A Year Of Magical Thinking
- DRABBLE Margaret : The Sea Lady
- DUNCKER Patricia : Miss Webster and Cherif
- EDRIC Robert : Gathering The Water
- ENCHI Fumiko : The Waiting Years
- GERAS Adele : The Fabulous Fantoras
- GRENVILLE Kate : The Secret River
- GRUEN Sara : Water For Elephants
- HANNAH Sophie : Little Face
- HOBBS Peter : The Short Day Dying
- HORNBY Nick : The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
- HORWOOD William : Skallagrigg
- HYLAND M J : Carry Me Down
- INDRIDASON Arnaldur : Silence Of The Grave
- JACOBSON Howard : Kalooki Nights
- KEUN Irmgard : The Artificial Silk Girl
- LAIRD Elizabeth : Red Sky In The Morning
- LAKIN Warren (Ed.) : The Very Best Of Linda Smith
- LAURENCE Margaret
- LEVI Primo : Moments Of Reprieve
- LYNCH Jim : The Highest Tide
- MCGAHERN John : The Barracks
- MCKAY Ami : The Birth House
- MEDVEI Cornelius : Mr Thundermug
- MESSUD Claire : The Emperor's Children
- MICHAEL Charles D. : Heroines : True Tales of Brave Women, A Book for British Girls
- MOBERG Vilhelm : The Emigrants
- MUIR R : The Miniature Man
- MULLIN Patricia : Gene Genie
- MURR NAEEM : The Perfect Man
- NOTHOMB Amelie : Antichrista
- NOTHOMB Amelie : Fear and Trembling
- NOTHOMB Amelie : The Character Of Rain
- PORTMAN Frank : King Dork
- POTOK Chaim : My Name Is Asher Lev
- RAVEL Edeet : A Wall Of Light
- REYNOLDS Tom : Blood, Sweat and Tea
- RHODES Danny : Asboville
- ROTH Joseph : Hotel Savoy
- ROTH Joseph : The Radetzky March
- RUSTON Jessica : Heroines : The Bold The Bad and The Beautiful
- SALZMAN Mark : Lying Awake
- SEBALD W.G. : The Rings of Saturn
- SHRIVER Lionel : Double Fault
- SLAVIN Helen : The Extra Large Medium
- SMILEY Jane : 13 Ways Of Looking At The Novel
- SNOW C P : The Masters
- ST AUBYN Edward : Mother's Milk
- ST AUBYN Edward : Mother's Milk
- TARTT Donna : The Secret History
- TOEWS Miriam : A Boy Of Good Breeding
- WATERS Sarah : The Night Watch
- WILLIAMS Kate : England's Mistress
- ZOLA Emile : Au Bonheur Des Dames
- ZOLA Emile : Terese Raquin
- ZUSAK Markus : The Book Thief
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Tinker's Cott
"We are not surprised to have found so much to admire & inspire us here...we leave with an even longer list of books to find & read, material to cut up & sew ...we shall miss the quiet, such a luxury - as well as the sounds of streams & rivers, and can't wait to return..." K&L.Please contact us for details about booking Tinker's Cott via dovegreyretreats at gmail.com
A Day Out...
Living...
Reading...
Revisiting...
A Chapter a Day...
Looking...
Slow reading...
2020
Evelyn Waugh: Officers and Gentlemen (Sword of Honour Trilogy)
C.S.Lewis : The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia)
Hill, Susan: The Comforts of Home ( Simon Serrailler Book 9)
Inez Holden: Blitz Writing: Night Shift & It Was Different At The Time
Anthony Powell: A Buyer's Market (Dance to the Music of Time Book 2)
Anthony Powell: A Question of Upbringing (Dance to the Music of Time Book 1)
Gillian Tindall: The Pulse Glass: And the beat of other hearts
Pending...
Travelling 2020
A Dance to the Music of Time 2020
ANTICIPATING...
Tove Jansson
Owl Watching...
Walking...
Journeying...
Raviliousness...
2019
Philip Pullman: The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two.
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Lord of the Rings, Book 1 (Audio Book)
Ben Macintyre: A Spy Among Friends: Philby and the Great Betrayal
Anne de Courcy: The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters
Damian Le Bas: The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain
Laura Cumming: On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons
Loretta Bellman: Nursing Through the Years: Care and Compassion at the Royal London Hospital
Esther de Waal: Living on the Border: Reflections on the Experience of Threshold
Andy Miller: The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life
Alex Woodcock: King of Dust: Adventures in forgotten sculpture
- Elisabeth De Waal: Milton Place
Charlie Connelly: Last Train to Hilversum: A journey in search of the magic of radio
2018
Horatio Clare: Something of his Art: Walking to Lubeck with J. S. Bach
Keren Protheroe: Petal Power: Floral Fashion and Women Designers at the Silver Studio
Lynne Roper: Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country Waters
Rachel May: An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery
Horatio Clare: A Single Swallow: Following An Epic Journey From South Africa To South Wales
Charlotte Peacock: Into The Mountain: A Life of Nan Shepherd
Susan Hill: The Soul of Discretion (Simon Serrailler Book 8)
Georges Simenon: Madame Maigret's Friend: Inspector Maigret #34
Georges Simenon: Maigret Enjoys Himself: Inspector Maigret #50
Olivia Manning: The Balkan Trilogy: "Great Fortune", "Spoilt City" and "Friends and Heroes"
2017
Olivia Manning: Friends and Heroes (Vol 3 - The Balkan Trilogy)
Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One
Anita Leslie: Train to Nowhere: One Woman's War, Ambulance Driver, Reporter, Liberator
Susan Hill: Jacob's Room is Full of Books: A Year of Reading
Julie Rose: Olivia Spencer Bower: Making Her Own Discoveries
Nan Shepherd: The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
Olivia Manning: The Spoilt City (The Balkan Trilogy - Book Two)
Olivia Manning: The Great Fortune (The Balkan Trilogy - Book One)
Stephen Moss: Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain's Wildlife
Christopher Somerville: The January Man: A Year of Walking Britain
Lucy Jones: Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain
John Grindrod: Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt
Carol Donaldson: On the Marshes: A Journey into England's Waterlands
- Pauline Rushton: Mrs Tinne's Wardrobe: A Liverpool Lady's Clothes 1900-1940
Matthew Kelly: Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor - A British Landscape in Modern Times
Robin Hobb: Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1)
Fiona Farrell: The Villa At the Edge of the Empire : One Hundred Ways to Read a City
2016
Emma Smith: As Green as Grass: Growing Up Before, During & After the Second World War
Isabel Bannerman: Landscape of Dreams: The Gardens of Isabel and Julian Bannerman
Tirzah Garwood: Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood
Jane Bradbury: American Style and Spirit: Fashion and Lives of the Roddis Family 1850-1995
John Lewis-Stempel: The Running Hare: The secret life of farmland
Dan Boothby: Island of Dreams: A Personal History of a Remarkable Place
Michael McCarthy: The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (Wainwright 2016)
Katharine Norbury: The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream (Wainwright 2016)
Alexandra Harris: Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies (Wainwright 2016)
Melissa Harrison: Rain: Four Walks in English Weather (Wainwright 2016)
Anna Pavord: Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places (Wainwright 2016)
Oliver Balch: Under the Tump: Sketches of Real Life on the Welsh Borders
Joanna Cannon: The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (audio book)
Lynn Knight: The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives
Lucinda Dickens Hawksley: Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel
New Zealand 2016
Stroking...
Making...
Flower Thoughts
2015
John Beatty: Wild Vision: In Celebration of the Natural World
Diana Athill: Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter
David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Unabridged Audiobook)
George R. R. Martin: A Game of Thrones: Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire (Audio book)
Quilters' Guild in Britain: Quilt Treasures The Quilters Guild Heritage Search
Mary McDonagh Murphy: Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird
Charles Rangeley-Wilson: Silt Road: The Story of a Lost River
Patricia Cleveland-Peck: Auriculas Through the Ages: Bear's Ears, Ricklers and Painted Ladies
Dominick Tyler: Uncommon Ground: A word-lover's guide to the British landscape
James Rebanks: The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District
Nan Shepherd: The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland (Canons)
Beating the Bounds...
Andrew Martin: Belles and Whistles: Five Journeys Through Time on Britain's Trains
- Angela K. Turner: The Swallow (Hamlyn Species Guides)
John Lewis-Stempel: Meadowland: the private life of an English field
Philip Marsden: Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place
Rachel Trethewey: Mistress of the Arts: The Passionate Life of Georgina, Duchess of Bedford
Ted Nield: Underlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Landscape
2014
Philip Marsden: Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place
Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste For Bones (The Cadfael Chronicles)
Richard Davenport-Hines: Ettie: The Intimate Life And Dauntless Spirit Of Lady Desborough
Lucinda Gosling : Knitting for Tommy: Keeping the Great War Soldier Warm
Richard Benson: The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Family
Louise Carpenter: An Unlikely Countess: Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway
May Wedderburn Cannan: The Tears of War: The Love Story of a Young Poet and a War Hero
Meg Lukens Noonan: The Coat Route: Craft, Luxury & Obsession on the Trail of a $50,000 Coat
Nicholas Mosley: Julian Grenfell: His Life and the Times of His Death, 1888-1915 (Persephone book)
Helen Rappaport: Four Sisters:The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses
Judith Tebbutt: A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival
- Eric Richards: From Hirta to Port Phillip: The St. Kilda Emigration to Australia in 1852
Crisis Of Brilliance Arts & Lit. Trail (COBALT)
May Wedderburn Cannan: The Tears of War: The Love Story of a Young Poet and a War Hero
Catherine Reilly: Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry and Verse of the First World War
Juliet Nicolson: The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911
Juliet Nicolson: The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War
Claudia Renton: Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power
Nicholas Mosley: Julian Grenfell: His Life and the Times of His Death, 1888-1915
Port Eliot reading 2014
Hannah Rothschild: The Baroness: The Search for Nica the Rebellious Rothschild
Helen Rappaport: Four Sisters:The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses
Helen Rappaport: Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs
Louise Carpenter: An Unlikely Countess: Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway
- Peter Beacham: Down the Deep Lanes
Peter Beacham: Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
Rachel Cooke: Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
Richard Benson: The Farm: The Story of One Family and the English Countryside
Richard Benson: The Valley: A Hundred Years in the Life of a Family
2013
Rachel Cooke: Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties
Richard Mabey: Weeds: The Story of Outlaw Plants: A Cultural History
John Hunt : Our Everest Adventure: The pictorial history from Kathmandu to the summit
Anthony Cartwright: How I Killed Margaret Thatcher (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
Lucy Caldwell: All the Beggars Riding (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
Niven Govinden: Black Bread White Beer (Fiction Uncovered 2013)
Susan Macqueen: The Children's Nurse: The True Story of a Great Ormond Street Nurse
Robert Macfarlane: Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination
Places...
Gardening...
Christopher Lloyd: In My Garden: The Garden Diaries of Great Dixter
Niall Edworthy: The Curious Gardener's Almanac: Centuries Of Practical Garden Wisdom
The Geoff Hamilton BBC Collection (40th Anniversary Gardeners World DVD Box Set)
Keith Wiley: On the Wild Side: Experiments in New Naturalism
Josie Jeffery: Seedswap: The Gardener's Guide to Saving and Swapping Seeds
Sue Minter: The Apothecaries' Garden: A History of the Chelsea Physic Garden
My Nature Table - Spring 2013
2012
Philip Hensher: The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting, and Why it Still Matters
Miriam Darlington: Otter Country: In Search of the Wild Otter
Hannah Rothschild: The Baroness: The Search for Nica the Rebellious Rothschild
Kate Summerscale: Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady
Phil Dampier: What's in the Queen's Handbag: And Other Royal Secrets
- Virginia Spiers: Silver River: An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Merryn Williams: Effie: A Victorian Scandal - From Ruskin's Wife to Millais's Muse
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Dickens and I...
Writing...
- JS&MrN redux
- She is Too Fond of Books.
My contribution to The Health Issue of The Reader No.41
Persephone
- Flush, a biography ~ Virginia Woolf
- Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes
- The Children Who Lived in a Barn ~ Eleanor Graham (with Cornflower)
- High Wages ~ Dorothy Whipple (with Cornflower)
- Kitchen Essays ~ Agnes Jekyll (with Cornflower)
- Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary ~ Ruby Ferguson (with Cornflower)
- Minnie's Room ~ Mollie Panter-Downes
- On the Other Side ~ Mathilde Wolffe - Monckeberg
- Operation Heartbreak ~ Duff Cooper
- Princes in the Land ~ Joanna Cannan
- Reuben Sachs ~ Amy Levy (with Cornflower)
- The New House ~ Lettice Cooper (with Cornflower)
- The World That Was Ours ~ Hilda Bernstein
archiving...
Asking...
- A.S.Byatt
- Adele Geras
- Amanda Craig
- Charles Lambert
- David Vann
- Elizabeth Baines
- Erica Wagner
- Fay Weldon
- Helen Garner
- Janet Frame (1)
- Janet Frame (2)
- Janet Frame (3)
- Jude Morgan
- Julia Blackburn
- Justine Picardie
- Kamila Shamsie
- Lilian Pizzichini
- Linda Grant
- Niall Williams
- Ralph McTell
- Sarah Waters
- Stella Duffy
- Susan Hill
- Tom Reynolds
- William Fiennes
The Tinker's Book
Len Chester: Bugle Boy
Father of dgr and primary historical source now published and on the shelves at a bookshop near you.
Constants...
Team Tolstoy
- Team Tolstoy
A year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010. Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book. - Team Tolstoy Bookmark
Don't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs? An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.
Team Middlemarch
Team Middlemarch reading
Discovering...
Cherishing...
Categories
- 1953
- 19th century rehab
- 2010
- 2011
- 2012
- 2013
- 2014
- 2015
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
- 2019
- 2020
- A Crisis of Brilliance
- A Dance to the Music of Time
- A Suitable Book...
- A Suitable Boy
- A.S.Byatt
- Angela Carter
- Apps for iPad
- Arctic
- Arrivals...
- Arts & Crafts
- Auckland Litfest
- Auckland Writers and Readers Festival
- audiobooks
- Backlisted
- Baileys Prize
- Barbara Pym
- Barn Owls
- Beating the B
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