Aug 2025 – Calmgrove Books
9 posts published by Calmgrove during August 2025| Calmgrove Books
The Last Children of Tokyo (The Emissary in North America): Kentōshi (2014) by Yōko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. Granta Books, 2018. The first reaction to Tawada’s novella might well be, as it was in my case, confusion. What is it really about? What is the author trying to say or achieve? And what exactly … Continue reading Isolation: #WITMonth| Calmgrove Books
Emma by Jane Austen.Edited by Brian Reeve. Alma Classics, 2015 (1816). Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. I’ve been trying very … Continue reading About Miss Woodhouse: #ReadingAusten2025| Calmgrove Books
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan. Translated by Irene Ash (1955). Penguin Books, 1998 (1954). “How infinitely desirable those two years suddenly appeared to me, those happy years I was so willing to renounce the other day . . . the liberty to think, even to choose wrongly or not at all, the freedom to choose … Continue reading The freedom to choose wrongly: #WITMonth| Calmgrove Books
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Granta Books / Penguin Books, 1991 (1990). ‘To give a thing a name, a label, a handle; to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it—well, that’s a way of bringing the said body into being.’ … Continue reading The liberty to utter| Calmgrove Books
Plan of a Novel according to Hints from Various Quarters [1816] by Jane Austen, in Catharine and Other Writings. The World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1993.¹ Silly Novels by Lady Novelists [1856] and other essaysby George Eliot. Renard Press, 2023.² “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality … Continue reading A genus with many species: #ReadingAusten2025| Calmgrove Books
The Ahlbergs, by Janet Ahlberg, from ‘Peepo!’ The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood by Allan Ahlberg. Illustrated by Janet Ahlberg, Fritz Wegner, Charlotte Voake, and Jessica…| Calmgrove Books
Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson. Pappan och Havet (‘The Father and the Sea’, 1965) translated by Kingsley Hart (1966). Muminsaga No 8. Puffin Books, 2019. It’s August in the corner of the world where the Moomin family lives, and Moominpappa is restless – it’s hot, he’s worried about forest fires, and anxious about any … Continue reading Untethered: #ToveTrove #Moomin80| Calmgrove Books
“Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. Is this you? “They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find … Continue reading A crick in the neck| Calmgrove Books
A Warning to the Curious (1925) by M R James, in Collected Ghost Stories, Wordsworth Classics, 1992. ‘The Festival‘ (1925) by H P Lovecraft in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Storiesedited by S T Joshi.Penguin Books, 1999. Linguist, palaeographer, medievalist, antiquarian and biblical scholar – Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was all these, but … Continue reading You have been warned| Calmgrove Books
I am David by Anne Holm. David (1963) translated from the Danish by L W Kingsland. Mammoth / Egmont Children’s Books, 2000 (1965). When, in 1963, Anne Holm’s children’s novel first came out in Denmark it was just after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world came to all-out nuclear war. But even … Continue reading An unexpected lifeline: #NordicFINDS| Calmgrove Books
© C A Lovegrove. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim. Introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Virago Press, 1985 (1898). May 16th.—’The garden is the place I go to for refug…| Calmgrove Books
Godmersham Park, Kent. In case you thought – after the second of two reviews and at least two discussion posts – that I had said all I needed to say about Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield P…| Calmgrove Books
Stowe House, Buckinghamshire. In preparation for revisiting Fanny Price, the Bertrams and the Crawfords over the next few weeks, I want to take a little walk in the grounds and enjoy the prospects …| Calmgrove Books
James Andrews’ insipid watercolour portrait of Jane Austen (1869) based on Cassandra’s. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Penguin Popular Classics, 1994 (1814). “‘I do no…| Calmgrove Books
Bookshelves by Giuseppe Maria Crespi. This month’s Bookwise chronicles my virtual visits to times and places, some of which have only passing resemblance to times and places that our collecti…| Calmgrove Books
‘The Linley sisters, Elizabeth and Mary’, painted 1772-1785 by Thomas Gainsborough (Dulwich Picture Gallery). Though I have previously written a review of Austen’s first novel in …| Calmgrove Books
Without the aid of [insert search engine of your choice here] can you identify, from the following list, which of the entries with a month embedded in their title aren’t genuine novels, novel…| Calmgrove Books
CalmgroveBooks.wordpress.com For fans of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, each of whom left us during the third month of the year, the return of March Magics – first inaugurated by Kristen Me…| Calmgrove Books
Cartoon (2017) by Dan Piraro ( The stack of books on my bedside table waiting to be read has at times become alarmingly high (as my partner often reminds me) but luckily has not yet proved fatal, s…| Calmgrove Books
Jane Austen: watercolour by her sister Cassandra. “I can’t bear Jane Austen’s tedious books,” thundered one recent pundit in a UK national daily newspaper (I won’t men…| Calmgrove Books
Raymond Briggs, ‘Notes from the Sofa’. Notes from the Sofa by Raymond Briggs. Unbound, 2017 (2015). My cup runneth over. It went all down my trousers. “Award-winning author of The…| Calmgrove Books
Cover illustration by Tove Jansson, showing Moomins spotting Sniff for the first time. The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson. Småtrollen och den stora övervämningen (1945) translated by D…| Calmgrove Books
