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A Barbara Pym kind of morning
It’s all been very Pymmian, my experience of membership in the Barbara Pym Society. That I’d join a society whose membership includes attendance at events that I never, ever go to, for one. But the...
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Reading in the here and now.
I just finished rereading A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym, which I remember reading for the first time about 3.5 years ago in my room with the lighting so dim I could hardly see the words, and...
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Reading Barbara Pym on her Centenary
I have nearly all of Barbara Pym’s novels on my shelf, the bulk of which I obtained when a contents sale was held at a house around the corner and I pretty much cleaned out the library. And this is how...
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Victoria Sponge for Barbara Pym
I successfully baked a Victoria Sponge cake in honour of the Barbara Pym centenary (and because I feel like eating one). Recipe from Nigella’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess, with fresh Ontario...
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The Adventures of Miss Petitfour, by Anne Michaels, illustrated by Emma Block
While The Adventures of Miss Petitfour is indeed world-renowned writer Anne Michaels’ first book for children, it might be as accurate to state that it was written exactly for me. Bizarrely so. Right...
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On the Bearability of Lightness
A couple of weeks ago, after a string of one-after-the-other satisfying spring reads, I couldn’t get into a single book. A problem that stretched out for a week, until I had no choice but to turn to a...
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A far cry from Mr. Stillingfleet’s stuff
I’ve never been to the Victoria College Book Sale on opening day before, because it’s always on a Thursday and you have to pay $5 to get in, but I hadn’t planned my life well during the weekend the...
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Jane and Prudence
I didn’t plan on Spring 2021 being Barbara Pym Season, but the most interesting parts of my literary life have always happened by accident. It all began when the Barbara Pym Society Spring conference...
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The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, by Paula Byrne
I…don’t like big books. They’re heavy to hold, don’t fit in my purse, and I’ve just got no time for that, for the most part. It just doesn’t groove with the pace of my life, and so at 612 pages, I was...
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Pfingsten
I’ve been reading Barbara Pym all spring, as I’ve mentioned several hundred times, and the Anglican rituals, for me, have always been the most curious aspect of these books—the vicars, and the...
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