Category: Uncategorized
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Books, cheese, soppy stuff
Books, cheese, soppy ramblings I’m in Edam, in Holland in the house where my husband grew up. It is a typically Dutch house, with lots of wood, very steep stairs and a canal flowing by outside. What is slightly more unusual is that it full of books, packed with books, everywhere you turn you see yet…
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His, His or Her, Their – Julian Barnes II
‘What should I read first of his other books?’ asked lots of lovely people today about Julian Barnes. I had a wonderful day today. I felt high and happy about the Booker, And lots of people were very nice about my Booker blog post. The answer, as with all book recommendation, lies in the reader. What is it that…
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War, Sex and The Blue Bicycle
The last three nights I’ve spent my dream time being parachuted into resistant France and evading capture by the Gestapo. This is all because when I was in Holland recently helping my husband sort through his Father’s enormous collection of books I came across a Dutch edition of The Blue Bicycle, published first as La…
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What should (but can’t) win the Booker
I have just read the book that I think should win the Booker Prize and it didn’t even get on the longlist. At Last by Edward St Aubyn is the fifth in a series of books that follows Patrick Melrose through his often very unhappy life. It is, as Alan Hollinghurst said to me in…
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Jamrach and Canaan. Nearly there….
It feels like a million years since I was reading on the beach in Cornwall. I got so involved with Jamrach’s Menagerie that I forgot about suncream and ended up with a sunburnt cleavage – not a good look. Hardly a hardship in comparison to the characters in the book, though, who sailed off to…
Cathy Rentzenbrink 