Libby

I am what I read. Hm, how pretentious can I get? But it’s partly true.

Some books enjoyed in March, April and May 2026
**
The Rainbow, D H Lawrence
I reread this after listening to https://thebigbookproject.substack.com/p/reading-dh-lawrences-the-rainbow
The American hosts think this novel is underappreciated. I’m not sure that’s true in the UK, though Lawrence is unfashionable. He overwrites and can be bossy and domineering. But he was also brilliantly perceptive and a very vivid writer. I love The Rainbow with its family and sexual relationships and the history of times which were changing so fast.
**
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
This felt, in an interesting way, like an updated version of The Rainbow. Same themes, intensity and documentation of a changing society though Rooney doesn’t let you forget that the 21st century is more troubled.
**
Forbidden Line, Paul Stanbridge
A 21st century, time travelling take on Don Quixote, using versions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Really it’s about English history. Funny, charming, mind expanding. Perhaps Marmite. It’s long and I took breaks for other books but felt richer for having read it.
**
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers
I’m not a fan of golden-age detective fiction but this mystery story includes a lot of 1930s’ social comment and Sayers’ views on life for intellectual women in an Oxford college. She does show off her academic learning heavily, and she’s not immune to snobbery, but overall I found Gaudy Night lively, interesting, romantic and amusing.
**
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
More Marmite? I like the style, the vividness, the story’s feeling of fatedness.
**
The Hyena’s Daughter by Jupiter Jones
A beautifully written novella about Fanny Imlay, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and half-sister of Mary Shelley. There’s a lot going on in a low wordcount but the writing is very deft – always feels fully under the author’s control.
**
Our London Lives, Christine Dwyer-Hickey
A love story covering recent decades, and a lament to how London is changing.
**
The Rising Down: Lives in a Landscape, Alexandra Harris
An engrossing tour of West Sussex across centuries, the result of what Harris found in archives and her own history of growing up in the area. Lots of interesting personalities, some of them famous such as William Blake and John Constable.