11/11/2024:  I was recommended a book recently.  I'm reading lots of others, so I really shouldn't start anymore.  I thought, I'll just download a sample and read the first couple of pages.  It's called 'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diane Setterfield.  And then she wrote this.  Independent of your age, if you read, you'll get this.

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic. When I at last woke up to myself, I could only guess what had been going on in the darkness of my unconsciousness.

12/11/24:  I never thought I would like autofiction or autobiographies until I read this book by Helen Macdonald.  I mean, who's interested in the taming of hawks?  

The opening captured me immediately and took me on a journey of exploring a different genre.

Forty-five minutes north-east of Cambridge is a landscape I've come to love very much indeed. It's where wet fen gives way to parched sand. It's a land of twisted pine trees, burned-out cars, shotgun-peppered road signs and US Air Force bases. There are ghosts here: houses crumble inside numbered blocks of pine forestry. There are spaces built for air-delivered nukes inside grassy tumuli behind twelve-foot fences, tattoo parlours and US Air Force golf courses. In spring it's a riot of noise: constant plane traffic, gas-guns over pea fields, wood- larks and jet engines. It's called the Brecklands - the broken lands - and it's where I ended up that morning, seven years ago, in early spring, on a trip I hadn't planned at all.

18/11/24:  If you haven't read Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials', then I highly recommend them.  Begin with Northern Lights. The first paragraph asks so many questions, not the least of which, is, what is a dæmon?

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. The three great tables that ran the length of the Hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catching what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out ready for the guests. Portraits of former Masters hung high up in the gloom along the walls. Lyra reached the dais and looked back at the open kitchen door and, seeing no one, stepped up beside the high table. The places here were laid with gold, not silver, and the fourteen seats were not oak benches but mahogany chairs with velvet cushions.

Lyra stopped beside the Master's chair and flicked the biggest glass gently with a fingernail. The sound rang clearly through the Hall.

"You're not taking this seriously," whispered her dæmon. "Behave yourself."

Her dæmon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the darkness of the Hall.

"They're making too much noise to hear from the kitchen," Lyra whispered back.

26/11/24:  Well, I couldn't go much longer before I highlight this novel.  I pick it up at least once every two years and have read the first page an uncountable number of times as I love the opening.  I usually try to find an online copy that is in better condition, but it seemed appropriate to show the cover of the one I hold.  It was printed in 1997 and has a forward by Dr. Gail Cunningham.  She is a Professor, as far as I know, and I always thought to contact her.  So, today I did!  I wonder if she will reply.  I 

Chapter 1

IT IS A TRUTH universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

14/12/25:  I first read this book a few years ago.  I loved the fact that it was written for an adult audience and had that 'time' and 'history' element in it.  It weaves historical fact with fiction, whilst throwing magical elements. The first paragraph might not appeal to some, but I love the description of the Bodleian Library.  There is also a description of losing oneself in yoga.  I find I have to push myself to do any type of exercise, but the words used to describe yoga often come to me when I am stretching.  Here's the first paragraph, full of mystery - who is this person that is not an ordinary historian?

The leather-bound volume was nothing remarkable. To an ordinary historian, it would have looked no different from hundreds of other manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian Library, ancient and worn. But I knew there was something odd about it from the moment I collected it.