Single, white New Yorker
I read Cat Marnell’s drug-addict-magazine-beauty-editor memoir How To Murder Your Life over the weekend, and its resemblance with Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation was so resounding…
Category: Book recommendations
Reading my grief
Soon after my father died, my very young son put away all the ‘sad books’. These were the picture books that choked me during the bedtime routine with their depictions of love, loss and yearning.
Punk, parenthood & brushes with death
My memoir companion pieces are Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Music, Boys, Laura Sage’s Bad Blood and Maggie O’Farrell’s I am, I am, I am.
Books to help you feel good about life
Kurt Vonnegut’s If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? is a slim collection of his speeches at school and university graduations. At the heart is the premise, adopted from his Uncle,…
London Life in WWII
I rediscovered Good Evening, Mrs Craven just before Christmas, and through happenstance was given Jan Struther’s Mrs Miniver not once, but twice for Christmas. The two are perfect bedfellows.
The Mitford Sisters
Does every reader go through a Mitford phase? There is a heady combination of ‘upper classishness’, political extremism, rebellion and style in their lives and writing. Unity is in…
Can you recommend something to read?
I am addicted to BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read. I listen to Harriett Gilbert and guests in back to back episodes, pausing on my commute or interrupting my…
The internet is a bad, bad thing
All brilliant, immensely readable books in their own right, Dave Eggers’ The Circle, Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and Jarett Kobek’s I Hate The Internet combine to make a powerful trio that unpick the negative impact of the internet on our lives.
