Saturday, February 16, 2013

Taking a break

I'm taking a little break from blogging for a week or two. Summer has been going on quite long enough for me but somehow it doesn't look like ending any time soon. Summer in Melbourne usually means three hot days & a cool change. So far, we've had a week of temperatures over 30C & there's almost another week to come. So I'm feeling a bit wrung out. I'm doing lots of rereading - A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym, Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, dipping into Kathleen Jamie's Sightlines & reading some of the piles of magazines & journals tottering on the coffee table. I've been listening to Jeeves & the Feudal Spirit by P G Wodehouse read by the inimitable Jonathan Cecil on the way to work which has made me laugh every morning & I've also discovered the delights of history documentaries on Youtube so I've been In Search of the Dark Ages with Michael Wood & having a wonderful time.
I'll still pop in with some Sunday Poetry, Wordsworth this week. And I'll leave you with some links & some bookish news.

The Virago reprints of Rumer Godden's novels are here. I preordered these three last year & they arrived this week. I love stories about nuns & In This House of Brede is one of my favourites. I've seen the movie of Black Narcissus but never read the book & I have a copy of A Fugue in Time that I picked up from a secondhand bookshop. I believe China Court is a sequel or reimagining of the earlier book. Leave & Pages has reviewed A Fugue in Time here.

For all the Ricardians & Janeites out there, here's a lovely blog post about the connections between Richard III & Jane Austen. I knew that Jane was a Yorkist but I'd never really considered before her dislike of the name Richard.

Greyladies are publishing a couple of very tempting books this month. Reading about the Gladys Mitchell book, On Your Marks, about a young PE teacher reminded me of Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes & this recent review has inspired me to reread it. The other new book from Greyladies is Return to the West by Mabel Esther Allan & has a Scottish setting so I have to have that too. I'm calling them belated birthday presents to myself as I've been on the book buying wagon since Christmas.

See you after the cool change!

5 comments:

  1. It's horrid here in Adelaide too. So exhausting. Enjoy your break - lots of nice comfort reads there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Enjoy your blogging break Lyn, we'll be here waiting for you to come back.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I had vague intentions of doing stuff this weekend, but you are right. The constant heat is a bit draining. I find myself reading and not much else!

    Enjoy your blogging break and keep cool!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a lovely list of books. I loved China Court but didn't realize A Fugue in Time was similar. I'll have to add it to my TBR list. I hope to read In This House of Brede this year.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hope things get cooler for you soon, enjoy your break and thanks for the link to the blog post about Richard III and Jane Austen:)

    ReplyDelete