A. N. Wilson – The Healing Art

A N Wilson is a tricky writer; one who publicly changes his views and who some regard as deliberately provocative and contrarian. He can be ruthless in his critiques of the works of other authors. Of Richard Adam’s Watership Down  he said, ‘I thought it was possibly the worst thing I had ever read.’ and of Bevis Hillier’s biography of John Betjeman, ‘a hopeless mishmash of a book.‘

Do it yourself

Gert was inspired to read in The Guardian that someone arrested for performing cosmetic surgery without qualifications said, “You can learn anything on YouTube these days.”

John Gray: Feline Philosophy

Herodotus writes that when an Egyptian house was on fire, the inhabitants were more concerned about their cats than their property. When a member of a visiting Roman delegation accidentally killed a cat in 59BC, the man was lynched despite intervention from the king. And the Egyptian sage Ankhsheshonq warned, “Do not laugh at a cat”.

 

Lars Gustafsson – A Tiler’s Afternoon

Some years ago I stumbled on a curious blog called Caustic Cover Critic, sub titled One man’s endless ranting about book design which was most interesting in itself, but even more interesting were his occasional forays into the world of little known books. Like many former bloggers he now mainly confines his comments to Twitter, but a few times through the year he comes up with excellent lists of strange books.

Meeting the Devil- A Book of Memoir

The Gerts have long been devoted readers of The London Review of Books (known as the LRB to the cognoscenti). We have passed our copies on to friends and family and have surely accounted for the rise in subscriptions from our harsh brown land. The journal is issued fortnightly, is closely printed, and amounts to around forty-one pages. They no longer have the amusing lonely heart entries in the back pages that used to divert us in the past, but there is always something humourous, infuriating or enlightening to read.

Let America be America Again

Langston Hughes, the African American writer who was a leader in the Harlem Renaissance wrote Let America be America Again  in 1935. I quote a couple of the most telling sections below. Eighty-five years after they were written they are still relevant.

Good Women – Jane Stevenson

I encountered Jane Stevenson when I read in The Guardian her assessment of the work of Margery Allingham.

Words of wisdom from Anita Brookner

Some baby names celebrities missed…

If you have a bub on the way, here are some ideas for names Gert found in an interesting article in the LRB:

Hillbilly Elegy- J.D.Vance

 

J D Vance dedicates his memoir thus, For Mamaw and Papaw, my very own hillbilly terminators. He was only thirty-one when his memoir was published in 2016, but he had come a long way from Jackson, Kentucky, the place he thought of as home. Here is his description,

Jackson is a small town of about six thousand in the heart of southeastern Kentucky’s coal country….Most of the people live in the mountains surrounding Kentucky Highway 15, in trailer parks, in government-subsidized housing, in small farmhouses, and in mountain homesteads like the one that served as the backdrop for the fondest memories of my childhood.