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Find a book club
Find a Book Club, a club that does what it says on the tin, asked me to recommend 10 books for book clubs (including two of my own).
Category Archives: Death and Dying
RMS Titanic: a perfect storm
At this time of year I often post about RMS Titanic. Last year’s post remembered the Welsh Able Seaman, Thomas Jones, who captained Lifeboat Number 8 – the lifeboat that carried my great-grandmother, Noël Rothes, and twenty-four others to safety … Continue reading →
Opening up set to blossom at home. But what about India (her vaccine generosity and her coronavirus surge)?
A beautiful blossom for our oh-so-close-to-lockdown-easing here in the UK. The Wayfaring Tree (Virburnum lantana): a sign you’re homeward bound. But spare a thought for India, home to the world’s largest coronavirus vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India (SII) … Continue reading →
Clean Air: Act. And a poem and a chat
If you’re not as ancient as me you won’t remember the pea-soupers in London: and I’d only been breathing for just under two years at the time so it’s not exactly a memory for me either, but by 1956 The Clean … Continue reading →
Posted in Climate Change, Coronavirus, Creativity, Death and Dying, Listening, One Green Thing, Poetry, Science, Shared Reading
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Diana Athill, and The Astrology Book Club
Diana Athill (1917-2019 – she died on 23 January) was an editor extraordinary, a novelist and a memoirist. She was also one very wise woman. In her book, Somewhere Towards the End, she wrote: What dies is not a life’s value, … Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Creativity, Death and Dying, Fiction, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writers, Writing
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Atul Gawande and Being Mortal; and a Remembrance Poppy Badge
Atul Gawande‘s Being Mortal – which I wrote about here in the context of his 2014 Reith Lectures – is extraordinary for its courageous and honest confrontation of our failure to confront how we want to die. Or, as Atul Gawande … Continue reading →
Words on Writing, and Pass on a Poem
There are hundreds of thousands of words written about writing fiction: how to write, why we write, what to do when we can’t write and on and on so that, sometimes, I feel as if I’m adrift on a sea … Continue reading →
Posted in Artists, Creativity, Death and Dying, Fiction, Literary Prizes, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Women, Writers, Writing
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Je Suis Charlie …
… one week on, what else is there to say but Je Suis Charlie and to stand with the murdered at Charlie Hebdo? Except Je Suis Ahmed.
Fog Island Mountains and Dr Atal Gawande, this year’s BBC Reith Lecturer
Michelle Bailat-Jones has written a beautiful novel called Fog Island Mountains. I’ve just posted a review of it here. The novel won the 2013 Christopher Doheny Award and I hope it goes on to sell, and so to affect, many many readers. It deserves to … Continue reading →
Dying Matters
It’s Dying Matters Awareness Week and, as Iris Murdoch said (she’s quoted on the Awareness Week page): Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved. I think – although everything changes in the writing of a novel – but at … Continue reading →
Posted in Death and Dying, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Third Novel
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