It’s March already, and I haven’t posted since the end of last year. In the meantime, I’ve published a couple of reviews on Shiny New Books which I’ll link to here. The first was Cynthia Zarin’s little book of, well, essays I suppose one might call them, on aspects of Italy and Italian life. These pieces are quite personal, and the reader feels invited into her (rather privileged, it seems) life. The second was yet another book on Proust, who seems to be an inexhaustible subject. This is another book with a more personal approach than might be expected. Michael Wood (not the English telly historian, but the Anglo-American literary critic) has produced a quirky take on Proust that had the effect of sending me back to the original work. So, job done.
Since we are now well into 2024, I am planning some posts on undergraduate life in my second year at Leeds, 1974. But before then, I will return to the subject of Ken Severs, poetry tutor, about whom I now know much more.
