It's Rebecca's fault that I read this. And does the fact that she enjoyed it so much suggest that she has never actually read any of those works she has discussed on Of Books and Bicycles? You'll have to ask her about that. Raincoast Books, 2007Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman
I first read Joan Bodger's How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books (1959) about twenty years ago, and I recall liking it well enough, but wishing that there was a little more about their bookishness and a little less about England. Now I think it's a perfect blend.
About half of May's reading came from my own shelves. And all (except one) were poster children for shelfsitters (great stuff)! Although it may be true that I have simply renewed a large number of library books. Shhh. Oh, go ahead, guess how many books I've borrowed. I'll get to
"The Beggar Maid" was originally published in "The New Yorker" in June 1977. It's hard to imagine that chunk of glossy pages, for it's one of the longer stories (with "Mischief") in the collection. It's also hard to imagine reading "The Beggar Maid" without knowing everything about Rose
Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother Translator Geoffrey Strachan (French) Graywolf Press, 2011 A Graywolf Press publication, a contender for The Tournament of Books, with a gorgeous and haunting cover image: all excellent reasons for picking up a copy of The Last Brother without reading a single word. And then you meet
