by andrea | Jul 19, 2023 | Book Reviews, random reader
Once in a college lecture hall the guy sitting in the row in front of me began to snore loudly. The prof, miffed, stopped talking and looked pointedly up from his notes, the lecture hall silent, save for the student’s steady snore. Suddenly the sleeper awoke, jumped... 
by andrea | Apr 17, 2023 | American Cookery, Cosette, random reader
People who read porn are probably not ever going to do the things they read about. I read cookbooks in that same fashion. It’s certainly enjoyable to read a recipe for Riz à la L’Impératrice or Veau Prince Orloff, but I am never going to attempt either dish. Still,... 
by andrea | Nov 30, 2020 | random reader
One of my favorite opening lines in literature is Quentin Bell’s biography of his aunt that runs something like this: “Before there was a Virginia Woolf, there was a Miss Stephen.” Immediately such a line cracks the fortress of The Canon, and obliges the reader to... 
by andrea | Nov 11, 2020 | random reader
The Heart to Artemis is one of those rare memoirs that, at the end, leave the reader more curious about the writer than when she began the book. Bryher was born Winifred Ellerman in 1894. Note I do not say that Winifred Ellerman was her real name. It was not. Bryher... 
by andrea | Sep 9, 2020 | random reader
Research for my novel The Great Pretenders (2019) concentrated on 1950’s Hollywood, the Blacklist Era, its antecedents and repercussions. Free to random read again, I found on my bookshelves Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New... 
by andrea | Aug 12, 2020 | random reader
Vain, egotistical, preening, ribald, lascivious, libertine, high-spirited, chronically insecure, writer, adventurer, sycophant, proud Scotsman, unrepentant Londoner, these terms and many more describe James Boswell (1740–1795) literature’s first great biographer. I...
