Saturday 29 December 2007
Book for January 2008
The book for the next meeting at Jen's place on 24 January 2008 is The Broken Shore, by Peter Temple. The average rating of this book was 7.5
Saturday 8 December 2007
Book List and best books of 2007
The booklist for 2007 is:
Suite Francaise, Irène Némirovsky
Ursula , Under, Ingrid Hill
A Fringe of Leaves, Patrick White
Two Caravans, Marina Lewycka
Careless, Deborah Robertson
Notes on a Scandal Zoe Heller
My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
Black Girl White Girl, Joyce Carol Oates
Best books were judged by the group:
1.Black Girl White Girl, 2. Careless. 3. Two Caravans
Suite Francaise, Irène Némirovsky
Ursula , Under, Ingrid Hill
A Fringe of Leaves, Patrick White
Two Caravans, Marina Lewycka
Careless, Deborah Robertson
Notes on a Scandal Zoe Heller
My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
Black Girl White Girl, Joyce Carol Oates
Best books were judged by the group:
1.Black Girl White Girl, 2. Careless. 3. Two Caravans
Sunday 2 December 2007
Leonard Woolf: A Life, by Victoria Glendinning
Leonard Woolf: A Life Victoria Glendinning
You’d think maybe not much more could be written about Virginia Woolf and the group of early 20th century artists and intellectuals knows as Bloomsbury set? Wrong. Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf brings to life a forgotten link in all this. Leonard Woolf was remarkable man, an author, publisher (the Hogarth Press), active in political and foreign affairs.
The Woolf family were Jews who came to the UK in the early 19th Century at a time of growing tolerance, when punitive racial laws were being, unlike other parts of Europe.
Interesting to me was his early life at Cambridge, where he was a member of The Apostles and met the leading lights of the time: Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes. Later he some years spent in the civil service in Ceylon. He gave up this careers and returned to England and married Virginia. VW’s mental illness meant their life was difficult and if it had not been for LW’s devotion and care VW would probably not have lived long enough to write her masterpieces. This has been speculated upon by others and seems to be true. He comes across as a ‘man for all seasons’, an urbane, cultivated man, ahead of his time in political and social attitudes; all the time enduring the entrenched antisemitism of the upper classes at the time.
His own writing included columns for the New Statesman and The Nation. He wrote also on subjects as far ranging as life in early 20th century colonial Ceylon and various political works and a 5 volume autobiography. LW lived a full, long life for another 28 years after VW’s death.
Thanks to LW a vast amount of Virginia’s diaries and letters were preserved and spawned a veritable industry of Bloomsbury research. VW had wanted them all destroyed.
You’d think maybe not much more could be written about Virginia Woolf and the group of early 20th century artists and intellectuals knows as Bloomsbury set? Wrong. Victoria Glendinning’s biography of Leonard Woolf brings to life a forgotten link in all this. Leonard Woolf was remarkable man, an author, publisher (the Hogarth Press), active in political and foreign affairs.
The Woolf family were Jews who came to the UK in the early 19th Century at a time of growing tolerance, when punitive racial laws were being, unlike other parts of Europe.
Interesting to me was his early life at Cambridge, where he was a member of The Apostles and met the leading lights of the time: Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes. Later he some years spent in the civil service in Ceylon. He gave up this careers and returned to England and married Virginia. VW’s mental illness meant their life was difficult and if it had not been for LW’s devotion and care VW would probably not have lived long enough to write her masterpieces. This has been speculated upon by others and seems to be true. He comes across as a ‘man for all seasons’, an urbane, cultivated man, ahead of his time in political and social attitudes; all the time enduring the entrenched antisemitism of the upper classes at the time.
His own writing included columns for the New Statesman and The Nation. He wrote also on subjects as far ranging as life in early 20th century colonial Ceylon and various political works and a 5 volume autobiography. LW lived a full, long life for another 28 years after VW’s death.
Thanks to LW a vast amount of Virginia’s diaries and letters were preserved and spawned a veritable industry of Bloomsbury research. VW had wanted them all destroyed.
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