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The Sunday Salon


Remember how I bragged about not buying books last weekend? Well, all of that got shot out of the water when, during my lunch break on Monday, I went to the Philly Book Trader and walked away with seven books: That Lady, by Kate O’Brien, The Rising tide, by Molly Keane, Mad Puppetstown by the same; and Devoted Ladies, also by the same (it was a good day for molly Keane finds), Harriet Hume, by Rebecca West, Love, by Elizabeth Von Arnim, and Troy Chimneys, by Margaret Kennedy. The first three I already own and I’m giving away to LTER members in the Virago Modern Classics group, so they don’t count! I also find myself increasingly tempted by the new Persephones that came out this week, so I may cave in and buy those too. I might as well be honest, here!

I’ve found lately that I’m in a reviewing slump. Normally I try to write reviews s soon as I can after reading books; but this week I read four books and I’m not in the mood to write any of the reviews. Part of the problem is that Vile Bodies has been a hard book to get motivated to read; I liked it a lot but I don’t know what to say about it. Beyond the Evelyn Waugh, I also read Making Converation, by Christine Longford, Mary Lavelle, by Kate O’Brien, and The Gentlewomen, by Laura Talbot. Mary Lavelle is proof of the reason why I continue to read an author even if I didn’t like the first book I read by them; I had trouble reading O’Brien’s The Ante-Room, but I really liked Mary Lavelle.

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