Alyson Books, 2009 It begins with "This book is not a canon!!! And that's fine with me. I suspect it's fine with most of you, too. There is nothing "representative" or "survey-like" about this volume. The only rule that Richard Canning had in approaching the project was that each author
It's Rebecca's fault that I read this. And does the fact that she enjoyed it so much suggest that she has never actually read any of those works she has discussed on Of Books and Bicycles? You'll have to ask her about that. Raincoast Books, 2007Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman
I first read Joan Bodger's How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books (1959) about twenty years ago, and I recall liking it well enough, but wishing that there was a little more about their bookishness and a little less about England. Now I think it's a perfect blend.
Isn't it funny what reading in a group does to your bookish brain? I'd been happily reading along in Sean Manning's Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book, dipping in and out, choosing random essays depending entirely on my mood. But then came Once Upon a Time
If it had only been made into a film, I'm convinced that Elizabeth Taylor's Palladian would enjoy the same public flourishes of devotion that Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm can claim. Both novels are so bookishly satirical that we bookish folks have to squint to see the satire. But where
