And on the 2nd April, this blog marked its 9th anniversary. That’s scary, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel as if nine years have gone past, though a lot has happened, admittedly. Nine years ago, I had just come off work on sick leave from the university, my son’s voice hadn’t even broken, and Mr Litlove was working for a different company. We were all quite different people, I think; there’s been a lot of changing and growing and developing going on here in all that time.
But the main constant – and the loveliest gift of all from blogging – has been the company of many dear virtual friends. So many of you have been visiting here faithfully for years, and I can’t thank you enough for that. And it’s been an extra delight to have good friends from the Reading Room become good friends at Shiny, too.
So a special thank you to Annabel, Harriet, Simon and Bookgazing, who are all on the Shiny Adventure.
And I am so pleased to direct you towards some of the fabulous reviews and articles in our 5th edition by these wonderful people:
Danielle picks us Books for Spring
Jean encourages us toward Reading in Translation
Arti considers the role Stefan Zweig played in Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ingrid interviews American giant of letters, Phillip Lopate
Stefanie reviews Orlando and The Waves
Susan reviews the new Patrick Gale, A Place Called Winter
Denise reviews Don’t Let Him Know by Sandip Roy
Karen reviews The Man In A Hurry by Paul Morand
And now that Shiny no.5 is finally out, I catch up with my email correspondence! If I owe you an email, a thousand apologies – I’ll be writing very soon!