Years ago, working in a bookshop and reading reviews for the first time in my life, I learned of a new volume of non-fiction by V.S. Naipaul and decided that I would never read his books. I don’t remember why exactly, but he has been criticized over the years
Almost straight away after Simon and Kaggsy chose 1961 for the current club year, I started to come across references. As in Stacey D’Erasmo’s memoir, The Long Run (2024) which draws a clear connection between one writer’s life and work and the values of the era: “We believed in
Well, mostly I’m not: as it is for many of you, it’s fiction that tugs hardest at my heart. But Bron’s personal reading project for 2026 is headquartered here, and I liked the idea of seeing how comfortably just two volumes of non-fiction could nestle into my stack each
I was reading Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (1818) as the borrowing days approached—days at the end of March, thought to have been borrowed from April so that winter could last just a few more stormy days. We had a most magnificent storm, which
Fabulous and scandalous, Delariver Manley—alongside Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood—was one of the most popular and recognisable among English women writers in the early eighteenth century. She presents readers with a fictional biographer, responsible for telling us her own story, in The Adventures of Rivella (1714). She is Rivella;
