literary hoohah
This is the first of Mary Beard's books that I have read, but I have been meaning to read something of hers for a while - so I had quite high expectations for this. I expected Confronting the Classics to be a journey through the Classical world with Mary Beard, an education in how that… Continue reading Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard
Hi all, as I'm sure you know BookTube is a really big 'thing', and I follow a fair amount of booktubers, so I decided to give it a go! So here I go...
I came across Forgotten Fatherland in the Recommendations section of GoodReads (surprisingly good!), and it instantly appealed to me, partly because it just sounded so weird that I needed to find out more about it. Essentially it is the story of Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of the more famous Friedrich. I didn’t really know that much… Continue reading Nietzsche’s sister, the Nazis, and Nueva Germania
Well. This is a review I have been avoiding for a while. I finished reading The Mighty Dead about two weeks ago. I’d made some notes, but it is hard to put them together and get to the point of what I really think about this book. The fact is I feel quite strongly about… Continue reading The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson
I read a biography of Byron when I was about 17 or 18, having been introduced to him by a teacher. I fell in love with his life story, the drama and romance, the scandal, and of course the poetry. I automatically took his side in the break with his wife Annabella (which happened as… Continue reading The Elusive Ada Lovelace
Identity is a theme, or issue, that I think becomes part of all autobiography or memoir; to write about oneself it to write about who you are and why. This is certainly the case with the wonderful Tracks by Robyn Davidson. She not only writes about her own experience – it is a singular, personal… Continue reading Tracks by Robyn Davidson
I’d had this on my reading list for a while, and when I decided to sack off TBR 20 (we all knew it was coming - more in another blog post to come) I went to Waterstones in Oxford, and this was one the three books I bought (three! Such a delight. Lots of points… Continue reading Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts by Tracy Borman
I came across The Blue Tattoo by chance, when author Peggy Riley tweeted about it (so long ago that I'm afraid I can't find the original tweet). As soon as I heard about it I knew I wanted to read it. It was unlike anything I had ever read before, but it instantly appealed to… Continue reading The Blue Tattoo by Margot Mifflin (2009)
I think we can all agree that a mythology has grown around Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes. Both her writing and her short life were undoubtedly remarkable, but it is also the fact of Hughes' control over what was published or not published after her death that has gained notoriety and drawn endless… Continue reading Can We Agree On No More Sylvia Plath Biographies?
I mentioned The Undertaker's Daughter in my post about 'simplifying women' in book titles. Kate Mayfield is more than just the daughter of an undertaker, of course; but the title is warranted here as this book covers the first part of her life, when she mostly lived at home, and when her father was an… Continue reading The Undertaker’s Daughter by Kate Mayfield
These Little Words 