Some writing stays with you – but sometimes for less typical reasons. Did you ever sit and write things out for the sake of writing things out? For whatever reason, the poem I copied out, over and over, was the first verse of The Lady of Shalott: ‘On either side the river lie Long fields …
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It’s January, and my own kitchen is getting a bit of a blitz. A couple of the cupboards have see-through doors, and at times I rearrange the contents, looking for a pleasing combination. It is the power of food containers as icons. In the Night Kitchen is one of my favourite books. By Maurice Sendak, …
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It could have been one of many things. I guess that you could call the Hundred Acre Wood a well-formed universe: after all, it has maps, hums to hum when walking through, and so on. But The Hobbit understandably stood out when I was little. Not one map but many. Not just hums, but developed …
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Back to thinking about food again. No surprise. Many a fine reviewer has commented on Nigel Slater’s autobiography, Toast – and rightly so. What I want to think about is how it added permission to evoking nostalgia about food – and in brilliant prose. Not an easy thing to write about, food. I thought I …
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Blog hopping? Come on in. Here’s one of my favourite children’s reads. When you’ve finished, nip over here for some more posts on books, children’s and others. ————- I’ve blogged about this book before, a long time back, but I’m coming back to it again. For all of the fun of exploring new books, finding …
Continue reading “A Formal Feeling: regular reinhabiting of books”