Persephone Books

Hello!

Now you might have noticed that Persephone Books in Bath is one of my all time favourite book shops. I love the books that Persephone Books produce because they have introduced me to authors I have never come across before. After a few trips to Bath I have a growing collection of Persephone Books to read and this year I have decided to really make an effort to read the books I own and also increase my collection of Persephone Books.

So lets see how many of the Persephone Books I can read…

William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton
Mariana by Monica Dickens
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-42 by Etty Hillesum
~~The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski~~
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes
Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson
Good Things in England by Florence White
Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley
It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst
Consequences by E M Delafield
Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller
Tell It to a Stranger by Elizabeth Berridge
Saplings by Noel Streatfield
Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet
Every Eye by Isobel English
They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple
A Woman’s Place: 1910-75 by Ruth Adam
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
Consider the Years by Viginia Graham
Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy
Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton
The Montana Stories by Katherine Mansfield
Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell
The Children who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
The Making of Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll
A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair
The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme
The Far Cry by Emma Smith
Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes
Greenery Street by Denis Mackail
Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles
The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart
Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey
Manja by Anna Gmeyner
The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
Tea with Mr Rochester by Frances Towers
Good Food on the Aga by Ambrose Heath
Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
The New House by Lettice Cooper
The Casino by Margaret Bonham
Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton
The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein
Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper
The Village by Marghanita Laski
Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson
They can’t Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit
Flush by Virginia Woolf
They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
The Hopkins Manuscript by RC Sherriff
Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult
Doreen by Barbara Noble
A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes
How To Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw
Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan
The Woman Novelist and Other Stories by Diana Gardner
Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart
The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff
The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes
Journal by Katherine Mansfield
Plats du Jour by Patience Gray
The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
House-Bound by Winifred Peck
The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler
The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple
On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940–46 by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby
Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer
A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman
Round About a Pound a Week by Maud Pember Reeves
The Country Housewife’s Book by Lucy H Yates
Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson
~~Amours de Voyage by Arthur Hugh Clough~~
Making Conversation by Christine Longford
A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski
Dimanche and Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky
Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon
The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Mrs Oliphant
The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens
Miss Buncle Married by DE Stevenson
~~Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill~~
The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson
No Surrender by Constance Maud
Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple
Dinners for Beginners by Rachel and Margaret Ryan
Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins
A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf
Patience by John Coates
The Persephone Book of Short Stories by Persephone Books
Heat Lightning by Helen Hull
The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal
The Squire by Enid Bagnold
The Two Mrs Abbotts by DE Stevenson
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith
The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray
The Country Life Cookery Book by Ambrose Heath
Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple
London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes
Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey
Greengates by RC Sherriff
Gardeners’ Choice by Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney
Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar
A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves
The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde
Every Good Deed and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple
Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood
Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham
Emmeline by Judith Rossner
The Journey Home and Other Stories by Malachi Whitaker
Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini
Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple
Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski
The Call by Edith Ayrton Zangwill
National Provincial by Lettice Cooper
Milton Place by Elisabeth de Waal
The Second Persephone Book of Short Stories by Persephone Books
Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
One Woman’s Year by Stella Martin Currey
The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger
English Climate: Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner
~~The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins~~
Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple
The Rector’s Daughter by F M Mayor
The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
As It Was by Helen Thomas
A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers
The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple
The Waters under the Earth by John Moore

I know the list is huge and books are always getting added but I would love to read more off the list.

Have you read any of these books?

Happy Reading

Etsy

The Classics Club

Hello!

So for quite a while now I thought about joining The Classics Club and this year I have decided to join up. I have chosen 50 books all published before 1900 and plan to complete the list in five years, so my deadline is 11th January 2027. I used to read a lot of classics so it will be good to get reading them again and tick off quite a few books on my TBR pile.

The list has mostly new reads for me but there are a few favourites on the list and ones that I can’t quite remember all the storyline of and would like to read again.

All books that I read and review will be linked back to this list.

In no particular order, here is the list…

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen – Goodreads Monday
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas – Goodreads Monday
~~Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens~~ – Goodreads Monday
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky – Goodreads Monday
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot – Goodreads Monday
Silas Marner by George Eliot – Goodreads Monday
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell – Goodreads Monday
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding – Goodreads Monday
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson – Goodreads Monday
Villette by Charlotte Brontë – Goodreads Monday
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas – Goodreads Monday
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë – Goodreads Monday
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy – Goodreads Monday
The Red Sphinx by Alexandre Dumas – Goodreads Monday
The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas
Louise de La Valliere by Alexandre Dumas
~~Lady Susan and other works by Jane Austen~~ – Goodreads Monday
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray – Goodreads Monday
Evelina by Frances Burney – Goodreads Monday
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins – Goodreads Monday
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott – Goodreads Monday
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – Goodreads Monday
Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood – Goodreads Monday
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – Goodreads Monday
Candide by Voltaire – Goodreads Monday
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
~~Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot~~ – Goodreads Monday
~~The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne~~ – Goodreads Monday
Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore – Goodreads Monday
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope – Goodreads Monday
~~The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins~~ – Goodreads Monday
The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart – Goodreads Monday
Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Middlemarch by George Eliot – Goodreads Monday
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – Goodreads Monday
Moby Dick by Herman Melville – Goodreads Monday
~~Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy~~
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens – Goodreads Monday
Cecilia by Frances Burney – Goodreads Monday
Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan – Goodreads Monday
~~Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe~~ – Goodreads Monday
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome – Goodreads Monday
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith – Goodreads Monday
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne – Goodreads Monday
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Persuasion by Jane Austen

Wish me luck!

Happy Reading

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September 2020 Wrap Up

Well September got off to a great reading start and then studying started and everything has sadly slowed down. I’m doing a lot of reading for my MA and doing extra reading for my dissertation but not so much of the fun books that I blog about. Although I’m hoping to do something fun for my dissertation.

So here is my September…

(Click the pictures to go to the reviews)

Sappho: Poems and Extracts by Sappho

Pages: 144

Format Read: Paperback

Dragon Rating: 5/5

Moonflower Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Pages: 608

Format Read: Hardback

Dragon Rating: 3/5

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Pages: 301

Format Read: Hardback

Dragon Rating: 4/5

The Existence of Amy by Lana Grace Riva

Pages: 247

Format Read: Paperback

Dragon Rating: 5/5

The Smell of Cedar by River Dixon

Pages: 96

Format Read: Kindle

Dragon Rating: 1/5

Total Books Read: 5

Total Pages Read: 1396

Drop me a comment if you have read any of these books and want to chat.

Christmas Reading list: Update

Hello!

So yesterday after spending a great deal of time reading and note taking for my Masters, I decided I would check out Amazon and see if they had any super cheap Christmas books. To be honest I do not usually buy books off Amazon unless it is for my Kindle but yesterday I felt like a treat.

So the list has grown again, I just hope the new books prove to be good. I have also read one of the books on the list and a review will be posted shortly.

The List

~~A Very Murderous Christmas by various authors~~

The Night I Met Father Christmas by Ben Miller

Miss Marley by Vanessa Lafaye

A Very Country Christmas by Zara Stonely

A Literary Christmas: An Anthology

Christmas on the Little Cornish Isles by Phillipa Ashley

Please drop me a comment if you have any Christmas book recommendations, as I would love to add to the list.

Happy Reading!

WWW Wednesday 13th November 2019

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The rules are answer the questions below and a share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?

What I am currently reading

One Day in Winter by Shari Low

This is a new author for me and I got the book for free on Apple books. I’m only two chapters in but so far it seems to be going ok.

A Very Murderous Christmas by various authors

I have read six stories so far and so far absolutely loving the book!

What I finished reading recently

Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare

I finished this on Monday and sadly I found it a really disappointing read and I feel like a bad person for saying it because it is by William Shakespeare!

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

I loved this book so much, it kept me hooked from beginning to end. I highly recommend it.

What I plan on reading next

The Night I Met Father Christmas by Ben Miller

This arrived at the weekend and I am so excited to read it after my best friend told be about it. I must be well behaved though and wait till I have finished at least one of the books I am currently reading.

Please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday or if you have read any of the books.

Christmas Reading List

Hello everyone!

I have started to think of my Christmas reading list. I usually begin my Christmas reading on the 1st December but this year I am very tempted to begin earlier because usually I am so busy during the month of December. Also I just want to get into the Christmas spirit!

The first on the list is a book recommended to me by my best friend, who sent me a very excited text yesterday telling me I just had to read it.

The Night I Met Father Christmas by Ben Miller

The second book will be a new copy of The Nutcracker which as you know I read every year and every year I get a new edition, the prettier the better.

So let the planning and Christmas book buying commence. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Happy reading.

Goodreads Summer Reading Challenge: Reflection

Summer is officially over so I thought it high time to reflect on my Goodreads Summer Reading Challenge. Sadly I did not complete it but I did learn a few things. Here is the result.

Good as gold:- The Casual Vacancy by J. K Rowling

~~The Book is Better:- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt~~

~~On the bandwagon:- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood~~

~~Short and sweet:- The Turn of the Screw by Henry James~~

~~Actually want to read:- Jaws by Peter Benchley~~

Not from around here:- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

In a friend zone:- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

~~Wheel of format:- Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare~~

~~Past love:- Matilda by Roald Dahl~~

Armchair Traveler:- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

First of all I spent way too much time on a book I really regret reading which was The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, I really wish I had just stopped reading it because I did not enjoy it and wasted a great deal of my free time reading a book I found tiresome. This is a lesson I keep telling myself to learn from but sadly I don’t, maybe this time I will.

The second thing I learned was I hated having a reading list! I want to read these books eventually and I had options but I found myself regretting the choices and wanting to read other books which I did and so did not complete the challenge in the allotted time. I think from now on I will avoid challenges and just choose whatever I want to read when I want because I really did not enjoy the challenge. I loved choosing the books but not feeling like I had to read them.

However, doing the challenge has taken a few books off my enormous TBR list, so it wasn’t all bad.

What does everyone think of reading challenges? Yes or No? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading.

New Books: 15/09/2019

Hello everyone!

I thought I would share with you all the books I have bought so far in September because I have not updated you all on my purchases recently and the number is growing at an alarming rate. Two of the books were the damaged ones and I have just recently received the replacement copies.

New Books

Classical Archaeology Edited by Susan E. Alcock and Robin Osborne

Latin for Dummies by Clifford A. Hull, Steven R. Perkins and Tracy Barr

Handbook for Classical Research by David M. Schaps

Too Much To Know by Ann M. Blair

Collins Latin Dictionary and Grammer

Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis by J. K. Rowling

The Poems of Catullus by Gaius Valerius Catullus

Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women by Euripides

On Chapel Sands: My Mother and other Missing Persons by Laura Cumming

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

As you can see a lot of books so far this month. Most of these are either for my new challenge or my new course starting next month, you can probably guess which ones I have bought for fun reading.

Please drop me a comment if you have read any of these.

Happy Reading

ABC Book Challenge, E

It’s that time again!

It is time for another instalment of the ABC Book Challenge, this weeks letter is E.

If you want to look at my previous posts please follow the links below:

A | B | C | D |

Books I have loved beginning with E.

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Eric by Terry Pratchett

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Books on my TBR list beginning with E.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Eternal Love by Timothy Zurcher

The Evacuee Christmas by Katie King

The Expansion by Christoph Martin

As you can see not many books beginning with E on either list, maybe not many books are titled with a letter E or maybe I subconsciously do not like the letter E? Who can be sure?

If anyone has read any of these books and would like to drop me a comment please do?

Also if anyone else is also doing the ABC Book Challenge please drop me a link to your blog.

Happy Reading.

Down the TBR Hole #11

Down the TBR Hole was the brain child of Lost In A Story. The idea is to reduce the length of your Goodreads TBR.

How it works:

Go to your Goodreads want to read shelf.
Order on ascending date added
Take the first 5 or 10 books.
Read the synopses of the books.
Decide: keep it or should it go

Hello everyone!

It is time for another clear out of the TBR list, I am slowly seeing an improvement with my TBR list, fingers crossed I can keep it up.

To read my previous posts please click on the links below:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

1. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed by old-fashioned habits and dominated by friendships between women. Her wry account of rural life is undercut, however, by tragedy in its depiction of such troubling events as Matty’s bankruptcy, the violent death of Captain Brown or the unwitting cruelty of Peter Jenkyns. Written with acute observation, Cranford is by turns affectionate, moving and darkly satirical.

Another Elizabeth Gaskell that I will keep on the list because I do own most of her books and it seems a waste not to read them.

KEEP

2. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

In Ruth Elizabeth Gaskell set out to portray, not ‘the Condition of England’ already famously addressed in Mary Barton, but the nature and sensibility of a fallen woman. Her orphaned heroine Ruth, apprenticed to a dressmaker, is seduced and then abandoned by wealthy young Henry Bellingham. Shamed in the eyes of society by her illegitimate son, and yet rejecting the opportunity to marry her seducer, Ruth finds a path that affirms we are not bound to repeat our mistakes. When Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell’s second novel, appeared in 1853 its first reviewers were less scandalized than moved and intrigued. In considering a ‘fallen woman’, Gaskell explores the worlds of nineteenth-century experience concerned with women and family, sexuality, love and religion. She declared of her critics: ‘It has made them talk and think a little on a subject which is so painful it requires all one’s bravery not to hide one’s head like an ostrich.’.

Another Gaskell I will keep on the list and hopefully read one day.

KEEP

3. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens’s story of a powerful man whose callous neglect of his family triggers his professional and personal downfall, showcases the author’s gift for vivid characterization and unfailingly realistic description. As Jonathan Lethem contends in his Introduction, Dickens’s “genius . . . is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he’s planned to give, and then more.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the 1867 “Charles Dickens” edition.

Another Dickens, need I say more?

KEEP

4. Romola by George Eliot

One of George Eliot’s most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family during which the zealous religious reformer Savonarola rose to control the city. At its heart is Romola, the devoted daughter of a blind scholar, married to the clever but ultimately treacherous Tito whose duplicity in both love and politics threatens to destroy everything she values, and she must break away to find her own path in life. Described by Eliot as ‘written with my best blood’, the story of Romola’s intellectual and spiritual awakening is a compelling portrayal of a Utopian heroine, played out against a turbulent historical backdrop.

The more I go through this list the more classics I realise I have not read and want to read.

5. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott

Ivanhoe (1819) was the first of Scott’s novels to adopt a purely English subject and was also his first attempt to combine history and romance, which later influenced Victorian medievalism. Set at the time of the Norman Conquest, Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades to claim his inheritance and the love of Rowena and becomes involved in the struggle between Richard Coeur de Lion and his Norman brother John. The gripping narrative is structured by a series of conflicts: Saxon versus Norman, Christian versus Jew, men versus women, played out against Scott’s unflinching moral realism.

I must admit I have never read a book by Scott so I think I will keep this on the list and try and read it ASAP.

KEEP

That is my maximum for today as it has taken a lot longer than imagined because I have noticed Goodreads has jumbled up my TBR list and so I’m getting doubles, this has meant I’ve had to make a list before I started todays post to make sure I did not repeat certain books. Has anybody else found this problem?

Anyway, no books discarded today so the list stays the same.

Happy Reading.