A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity: Kathleen Gilles Seidel St Martin’s Griffin, 2007

The title comes from ‘Emma’, and in some ways this is a comedy of manners, a different look at school life, friendship, working out what you want and need. The different perspective is because ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago after I heard a little of Charles Spencer’s book about the physical and sexual, not to mention emotional, abuse he suffered after having been sent to a boarding school at eight, as a result of which there has been a debate about the damage sending mainly upper class children away from home to such institutions can and does cause. ( My views )

All that was in the background as I read Mary Todd’s Last Term by Frances Greenwood, the first boarding school story I’ve read in a while. ( Read more... )

Eight Cousins: Louisa M. Alcott, Rupert Hart-Davies, 1965.

Alcott is most famous for ‘Little Women’ and the series that followed. I read those classics as a child, but not only did I first read this book as an adult, I have a feeling that I read it after its sequel. ‘Rose in Bloom’. I hope to reread that next - in fact, that’s my bribe to get myself to read a realist literary novel - after being charmed by my reunion with Rose, her seven boy cousins and, indeed, all her family.

( Read more... )

Mistletoe and Murder: Carola Dunn Constable and Robinson 2011

This is a Daisy Dalrymple mystery, and not to be confused with the Wells and Wong mystery with the same title which I posted about this time last year.

I kept this for reading over Christmas, as it would be seasonal, and it ended up being my Boxing Day read.

( Read more... )

Little Women (2017) BBC One
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6853528/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Episode 3 (28th of December 2017)

A bit more ( Read more... )

The Battle of Wednesday Week: Barbara Willard Puffin 1968

I might well have a different reaction to this book if I weren’t reading it for the first time as an adult in the second decade of the twenty-first century. ( Read more... )