It is largely thanks to the works of Gerald Durrell that I can claim any knowledge of foreign fauna. "My Family and Other Animals" is also one of my favourite books. When I first read it as a child I desperately wanted to have an eccentric family like his. Mine seemed so ordinary. Didn't realise that brothers such as mine weren't run of the mill ( Read more... )

Whilst at the library with Genevieve yesterday I was seized with a great compulsion to read Alan Alda's autobiography. This was partly because it had the intruiging title "Never Stuff Your Dog" and partly because I used to have the biggest crush on Hawkeye Pierce ever! He spoke just like Groucho Marx but was much better looking, and also had the ( Read more... )

Dr Karen, did you get this entry, because I have made it a public one ( Read more... )

Anne Fine was made Children's Laureate in Britain and no wonder for her books are just gold throughout. I always try to buy them up secondhand whenever I can ( Read more... )

Just finished "The Picture of Dorian Gray". It is just amazing! It is so Victorian in its obsessive introspection and yet so unconventional in the same breadth! It is the perfect companion to "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The author revels in Gray's love of beauty, but at the same time the portrait is suppurating in the attic for ( Read more... )

It's been so long since I visited LJ that I had to think carefully about my password for a moment. Icy months of cold-shouldering the on-line world have given way to a thawing in relations. My own personal glasnost ( Read more... )