Thoughts on the physiology of reading
As conveyors of ideas and knowledge, books have a wondrous physicality to them, more individual the longer they are in...
A real craving of nature
Branwell Bronte, the sister-eclipsed son in a family of six, caused them and his father great heartache through alcoholism and...
Riding the spine of a book
The book as a kind of flying broomstick or galloping horse taking the boy into story land.
Unexpected ignorance, unexpected knowledge
Maggie Tulliver is a girl whose brightness and spirit are constantly curtailed and nearly crushed. Throughout her childhood she is...
Beach books
We recently enjoyed a month's holiday - the longest we've ever had - to celebrate Luiz's retirement. One of the...
Of books and life
This describes the reading philosophy of a Jewish village school teacher in Russia during the war. One of Vasily Grossman's...
Podcast review – Elizabeth Goudge’s Little White Horse
Listening time: 13 minutes. One of my top two children's books of all time, I first read Elizabeth...
Doors opening wherever she turned
Alan Bennett was born in Leeds and I liked this quotation chalked on a board in a café there. It's...
Podcast review – Molly Peacock’s Paper Garden
Listening time: 12 minutes. This is a biography of an artist written by a poet. It's also a...
The measure of a philistine
Zafón's bibliophile characters are often as opinionated as they are erudite, and have no truck with people who barely read. ...
Librarian as satrap
Having known nothing but kindness among librarians, this striking description of a martinet guarding his books almost at the point...
Immortality by reading
This wonderful quotation was published in El Pais in the days following Umberto Eco’s passing. Wishing you 5,000 years of reading-endowed...
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