Litlove

LATEST ARTICLES ( 372 )

• Loving Willa Cather

  

  As I pick my way over the rubble of half-finished books and broken intentions at the end of this year, my thoughts are turning to plans for 2025. Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin

  

  Reading Scaffolding made me think of a Nouvel Observateur article in which French intellectuals, Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, discussed their open... Read more

  Posted on 03 December 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Ballet Class

  I like to think of my old ballet mistress as the character that Dickens forgot to write. Rejoicing in the name of Esyilt Gwerica Briscoe, she was 78 when I bega... Read more

  Posted on 26 November 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• A Novella for November

  

  ‘A room. He stands at the window. And a voice says: Everything passes. The good and the bad. The joy and the sorrow. Everything passes.’ And so begins, with... Read more

  Posted on 21 November 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• O My America! by Sara Wheeler

  

  Finally! A book that goes directly onto my best of the year list. I bought this when it was published back in 2013 because I’d become interested in a Victorian... Read more

  Posted on 13 November 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Almost But Not Quite Satisfying

  

  I feel like I’ve had a long period recently of reading books that were firmly located on the okay-to-meh end of the scale. Not bad books, just books that... Read more

  Posted on 05 November 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Child

  

  This is essentially a ghost story. A few weeks ago my Dad – who has been on a decluttering mission since my mother’s stroke left him with sole jurisdiction... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Crime by Jennifer Fleetwood

  

  It’s not often that I’ll spend more than 99p on a Kindle book, but when I read the description of criminologist Jennifer Fleetwood’s essay collection with... Read more

  Posted on 22 October 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The 1970 Club: Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave

  

  In her essay on rereading, Elisa Gabbert – or at least her husband, John – has ‘a theory that everyone is either a squid or an eel. Baby squids are born as... Read more

  Posted on 15 October 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Notes and Mini-reviews from September

  

  Mary Gaitskill’s essay collection, Oppositions, is brilliant. Gaitskill is an intriguing woman – someone who went off the rails in late adolescence, ran away... Read more

  Posted on 03 October 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Tell by Jonathan Buckley

  

  Jonathan Buckley’s twelfth novel was the joint winner of the 2022 Novel Prize (along with Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and then It’s Over, in case you wer... Read more

  Posted on 28 September 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Sylvia Plath at Shiny

  

  Alas, we are a plague ship here at Casa Litlove. Mr Litlove has been very poorly with a virus and still has a dreadful cough. We thought it was a return of the... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Mr Litlove and the Literary Essay

  

  ‘Vacuous!’ said Mr Litlove. He closed the book of essays and let his head fall back against the couch, wearied by his reading. ‘If you’d written that, I’d be... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Bookish Notes mid-August

  

  It’s been a discombobulating week, but the highlight was visiting the current Classic Crime Fiction exhibition at the University Library in Cambridge. Read more

  Posted on 23 August 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Cost of Living

  

  Yesterday we visited my parents to celebrate my mother’s 82nd birthday. She never expected to live beyond 80, given that both her mother and grandmother died... Read more

  Posted on 15 August 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• What Rules? Virginia Woolf’s The Years

  

  This is where it began: ‘I think this will be a terrific affair. I must be bold adventurous. I want to give the whole of the present society–nothing less:... Read more

  Posted on 13 August 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Reading Notes from July

  

  1. My cat, Dexter, is a keen reader and his favourite author is Georgette Heyer. I realised this some time ago, when I noticed that he came to join me and staye... Read more

  Posted on 07 August 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• Second Best by David Foenkinos, Trans. Megan Jones

  

  How much of your life would you ascribe to luck or fortune or destiny? Would you consider them even to be the same thing? For most of us, chance and... Read more

  Posted on 31 July 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• The Whistle-stop Tour Enters an Ironic Part 3

  

  Every so often, fate relents. Pretty much the moment we arrived in Triscombe and stepped into the warm glow of our little log cabin, we knew we were going to... Read more

  Posted on 10 July 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE

• A Whistle Stop Tour Part 2

  

  When our son is asked what his parents are like, he says that his mother is the most introverted person he knows and his father is the most extroverted. As a... Read more

  Posted on 02 July 2024 BOOKS, CULTURE