I grew up reading Enid Blyton, wondering what was ginger beer and desperately wanting some for my own “secret island” and other adventures. So it’s unsurprising that I understood the value Proust placed on the taste of a madeleine, decades before I tasted one myself, decades before I read
Seeing that some of my reading habits had shifted unexpectedly at the end of last year, I scribbled a note to peek mid-way this year, just to see how my ideas about my reading compared to my actual reading. The short version of my plans included reading from my
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
Continuing yesterday’s talk of remembrance reading, while I reflect on other reading from 2025 and possibilities for reading this year. The first of his books published in his mother tongue (Gikuyu), Weep Not, Child is the second novel by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (b. 1938), who
