Don’t they say travelling helps to get a fresh perspective on things? We came back yesterday from the most perfect bank holiday weekend trip to Norwich, the higher purpose of which was to look at my future alma mater, but the result of the experience was that real enjoyment awaited for us at every corner, […]
It’s not so easy writing about nothing.
So begins Patti Smith’s “M Train.”
These days I find it hardest to write about nothing, nothing with its absence of boundaries, direction, nothing that is everything that is the case.
Not usually a fan of New Year Resolutions, I nevertheless made some promises to myself, amongst them – blogging more. A few things have happened in my life since I last posted reviews and updates on my running (which is just not happening at the moment, but I’ve accepted that’s fine). One of them is […]
Yesterday I ran the first race of my life. It was Asics 10k with a dreamy route through central London – hi Big Ben, hello Admiral Nelson, no falling down on Westminster Bridge, my fair lady – and the reason I signed up was the 5k to 10k training I did with Asics Runkeeper. At […]
When I woke up to the news of war in Ukraine on the 24th of February, the sun was shining here in London, or it seems like it was. We were just past another storm, and it took time to understand. Has it been just four days? It feels like so much longer. Every piece […]
Based on the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut is an eye-opening revelation that the hardest job on the planet does not come naturally, and neither it should.
I guess I should consider myself lucky for catching Covid only now, December 2021. There are many factors that speak for luck: it’s not the first variant and we know much more about the virus now; I have received two shots of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, so this breakthrough Covid has good chances of being mild; I […]
Undoubtedly one of the best overlooked novels that should be read by everyone, ‘O Caledonia’ is republished today by W&N in their ESSENTIALS collection. It gave me such joy to read it, every page filled with emotion and colour, recognition and admiration, that I want to give a copy to every bookish person I know, and […]
Today the new novel ‘Whereabouts’ from the Pulitzer-winning and Booker-shortlisted Jhumpa Lahiri is out. Written in Italian, but translated into English by the author herself, it reads like a memoir. We follow a middle-aged, solemn woman through an unnamed, ‘run-down’ city. She takes us in short bursts of observative descriptions through the places that belong […]
Backlist publishing has grown more popular these days, and the trend is welcome – it helps to take a breather from constantly chasing new titles and rediscover what’s been good for a long time. Taeko Kono’s stories were first published in post-war Japan in the 1960s, translated into English in the 90s, and now W&N […]