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Lucy Seton-Watson's avatar

Nearest to hand:

- Winters in the World, Eleanor Parker, fantastic walk through the Anglo-Saxon year. Meant to start over Christmas because medieval winters are so rich, but dived into Kristin below, so it’s next.

- Kristin Lavransdatter, by Norwegian author, Sigrid Undset. Was put onto this by extremely strong recommendation of the translator I follow (I’m an ed./translator). I wish I’d gone a bit more slowly: saw its great length as a challenge not as source of lovely long slow acquaintance. Really makes me think. A life, right thro every stage from headstrong late adolesc to marriage, right thru marriage over years (strongest portrait of a marriage I’ve ever come across), to her later life, right to the end. Most novels turn away, this just gets deeper. Extraordinary. She won the Nobel prize for it. Apparently it used to be very well known, esp in the US. The prof**nd word.

- Becky Chambers, Record of a Spaceborn Few

- Alan Garner, Treacle Walker, was waiting for the paperback.

- Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head. Child says have to read Iris Murdoch again

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Mark Alexander's avatar

Read, enjoyed, and physically proximate:

1. Emergency, Daisy Hildyard. Borderline fiction/essay, with an environmental slant.

2. King Solomon's Rings, Konrad Lorenz. Classic ethology.

3. The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk. Contains myriads.

4. blues in schwarz-weiß, May Ayim. Recent, accessible, politically engaged poems.

5. Dante's Divine Comedy tr. Alasdair Gray, without the boring bits.

6. Seven Empty Houses, Samantha Schweblin. Disconcerting absurdist stories..

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