I‘m currently reading my 7th Elizabeth Jane Howard with @shawnmooney and this one is a volume of her short stories. We‘ve been working through her books in publication order (and may even get to the start of The Cazalet Chronicles next year 😆).
pickI found this surprisingly riveting at times, though some parts are slow. It charts both the census itself and the things it recorded, touching on things like industrialisation, the Highland Clearances, the Potato Famine, emigration, immigration, WWI, WWII... all kinds of things which affected the population of the UK. Also there's a bit on the wider “British Empire“.
Today's reading is getting me off to a good start with #BookSpinBingo!
pickFound this in a 2nd hand bookshop & couldn‘t resist after Family Roundabout. Tilly enters service as a 15 year old in the late C19th and watches as the family she serves grows up and grows old. Unhappy marriages feature again & there is a degree of contempt for the social norms of the monied classes. Tilly has more sense & more empathy than all of her so called betters. I‘ll be looking out for more Richmal Crompton.
I'm having to do a first post on some of the books I've started reading concurrently in order for them to show up properly as I can mark them as current reads! The list is just growing and growing and growing... I'm very whim-driven at the moment, just reading a little of multiple books at the same time, and that's fine.
I'm finding this one more interesting than I thought, even while it's still just describing how the census was set up!
pickThis is about the recovery period of Yozu's life after a suicide attempt. He is kept in a sanitarium along the coast while he is healing. During this book, Dazai continously breaks up the story by including chunks of his own dialogue that don't necessarily add to the story, but they make for an interesting read. I haven't ever read anything like this but could definitely read more like this.
