Category: Books

The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier

Ali’s Daphne du Maurier reading week is well underway and I’m enjoying reading all the contributions.  I have chosen to read the first of Daphne’s novels, The Loving Spirit, one that I’ve been promising myself for a long time.  And alongside it I’ve read three other books:

Reading Daphne by Ella Westland

Jane Slade of Polruan by Helen Doe

Myself When Young by DDM Continue reading “The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier”

Dewithon Diary iii: rounding off

While any good writing will transcend national borders it is still in literature, and perhaps most of all in the novel, that national identity and character are often best reflected.

It’s about time I rounded off my Dewithon experience, late as usual.  Including the two books still unfinished, I notched up twelve books. Continue reading “Dewithon Diary iii: rounding off”

The Green Hollow by Owen Sheers: How to talk about it

As I researched the details of what happened at Aberfan, I realised this was a historical story with a deeply urgent contemporary resonance: a story of what can happen when a community is run by a corporation.
(Owen Sheers)

On Friday 21st October 1966 a slag heap shifted.  It slid inexorably towards a small mining village in South Wales, destroying several houses and at least one farm.  The worst hit building was Pantglas Junior School.  In total, 144 people were killed.  116 of them were children.  The name of the village was Aberfan.

I remember this disaster; I was a contemporary of the children in that school.  I remember the shock waves and the disbelief and later, the country’s sadness.  I would have been nine years old. Continue reading “The Green Hollow by Owen Sheers: How to talk about it”

Dewithon Diary ii: Welsh Tracery

My Welsh spider’s lattice trembles with the passion of those fighting to preserve a native tongue.

Margaret’s weekly prompt for ragtag Saturday is ‘tracery’.  In words and photographs, she offers us nature, pared back to the bones.  Like Margaret, I take much from the skeletal branches of winter trees.  When I think of tracery I think of intricate and often irregular pathways: interlocking, overlaying.  Tracery is embodied by the slumbering arterials of naked branches against a winter sky. Continue reading “Dewithon Diary ii: Welsh Tracery”

Dewithon Diary

“If you want to find God,” Jon says “you just have to come here and look, don’t you?”

It’s St David’s Day – or it was when I first sat down to write.  I have daffodils in the garden and on the window sill.  And we are at the start of Dewithon 19, hosted by Paula aka Book Jotter.  I’ve been swept up with the idea of a Welsh readathon; I have an impossibly long list of books in mind with others being added all the time.  And I feel that I should post something on this, the first weekend of the event.  But what, with several books started and none yet finished? Continue reading “Dewithon Diary”

Six Degrees of Separation: from Tales of the City to …

I so nearly didn’t post a chain for this month.  I made a start but the second half had several false starts and then when the final link came, I was aghast at how I could have missed the last few.  By then I’d taken a step back from the blogging world for a short while, and it’s been such a long time since I’ve posted about anything other than books; I thought, maybe I’ll just let this one pass …. But here I am: posting about books. Continue reading “Six Degrees of Separation: from Tales of the City to …”