Tag: books & reading

Desert Island Ahoy!

Daphne Lee3 Comments

I saw this take on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Calmgrove‘s site and thought it’d be fun to do. Who doesn’t love the radio programme? With books, it’s just up my alley, but in my version I’m doing books and music. Is this cheating? Well, it’s all a fantasy anyway, so …

So, here’s what’s allowed if you’re stuck on a remote island with no hope of rescue: 

i. eight books: The ones you want are, by some miracle, growing on the mango trees in the well-stocked forest that spreads lush and green over a large part of the island.

ii. eight pieces of music: Snap your fingers and they are played on shuffle, pouring out of the morning glory blooms that grow on the island.

iii. a podcast, TV show or movie – for when you really wish to take a break from reading and listening to music.

iv. one luxury you can’t do without — let’s just say the island has plumbing OK? I don’t want to waste my luxury on a flushing toilet. Read More »

The Big Pym-Re-Read:A Glass of Blessings

Daphne Lee1 Comment

April was balmy and delicious, and cruel in the way the poet did mean, mingling memory and desire. The memory was of other springs, the desire unformulated, unrecognized almost, pushed away because there seemed to be no place for it in the life I had chosen for myself.

One day Rowena and I met to have a cosy women’s shopping lunch together. She had come up to town to buy new clothes for the children, but when I met her in our favourite restaurant she admitted that she had spent the whole morning buying things for herself and nothing for the children at all.

‘And this afternoon we’re having our hair done,’ I reminded her, for we were going together to my hairdresser who was to create elegant new hairstyles for us.

‘Oh this weather,’ Rowena sighed, pulling off her pale yellow gloves. ‘It makes one so unsettled. One ought to be in Venice with a lover!’

‘Of course,’ I agreed. ‘Whom would you choose?’

There was a pause, then we both burst out simultaneously, ‘Rocky Napier!’
and dissolved into helpless giggles.

Read More »

The Big Pym-Re-Read: Jane and Prudence

Daphne Lee1 Comment

jane and prudence(This is definitely going to be less rambling than the post I wrote for Excellent Women! I shall try to keep it short.)

Jane and Prudence are friends who met at university when Jane was Prudence’s tutor.

The book opens with Jane and Prudence at a college reunion. Jane is forty-one, Prudence twenty-nine. The former is married to her university sweetheart, Nicholas Cleveland, now a Church of England vicar. Prudence is personal assistant to an academic, Arthur Grampian, and is in love with him.Read More »

Review: The Power by Naomi Alderman

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The PowerFirst published in The Star on 9th February, 2017

THE POWER

By Naomi Alderman

(Viking, 339 pages)

ISBN: 978-0241015728

IF you identify as feminist, you are likely tired of explaining that the women’s movement is about gender equality and not the domination of men by women. If you are a feminist you are probably  sick of hearing it said that you and your ilk hate men, burn bras, and are all lesbians (closet or otherwise). If you actively oppose the oppression of women in whatever form, you will have rolled your eyes countless times in response to those who declare that feminism is a sexist movement and that they prefer being called humanists or equalists.

Feminism is not about women being better than men, but it is about and attempts to address personal, political, social and economic power disparities between the sexes. So, what if women had the power? Would it automatically result in gender equality?Read More »