In celebration of my thirtieth birthday, I've decided to move my blog to WordPress, as blogger is becoming increasingly annoying to use....

I've added the list of books read so far this year to the sidebar on the right. Annoyingly, blogger won't let me do a list of some h...

Reading: having finished L'argent, I've moved swiftly on to Au bonheur des dames. Listening: it's been a poor week for music. ...

Reading: still reading Zola's L'argent  and Kotz's Russia's path from Gorbachev to Putin.  And a collection of surprisingly...

I'm reading a copy of A.S. Byatt's Still life from the library which has been liberally annotated in blue biro with grammatical ...

Reading: I've started the second of A.S. Byatt's Frederica quartet, Still Life. I'm also really enjoying David Kotz's Russia...

This is James Meek's fourth novel, which I thought I'd read as I enjoyed his previous one so much, The people's act of love .  I...

Laura very kindly lent me a couple of Antonia Forest books I hadn't read: The thuggery affair (one of the stories about the Marlows) an...

Reading: I'm finally emerging from a bit of a reading block, which is good. I've been reading quite a bit of poetry recently and fin...

I'm very sad to hear about the death of Betsy Blair ( Guardian obituary here ), whose autobiography was one of the first books I wrote a...