Kaggsy's musings

As I mentioned in last week’s post about a pair of British Library Crime Classics, I have been very spoiled by publishers recently, and the second press to send some GA crime over has been Galileo Publishers. I’ve covered a number of their titles here on the Ramblings, and they do issue some really interesting books from authors I’d not come across before; Clifford Witting, for one, has proved to…

When it comes to mystery books, I tend as a rule to stick to Golden Age Crime which is a huge favourite of mine. However, I was recently offered the chance to review a new collection of modern shorts stories gathered in a Crime Writers’ Association anthology: Guilty Secrets. Edited by Martin Edwards, it sounded fascinating and I was happy to explore some more current crime writing. Each of the…

Back in 2017 I discovered the German-Czech author, Johannes Urzidil, when a collection of his short Bohemian fables was published by Pushkin Press. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories, so when the Prague-based indie publisher, Twisted Spoon, kindly offered a copy of a new release by Urzidil, I was delighted to be able to read it. The book is called “Prague Triptych”, translated by David Burnett,…

Back in 2013 I read my first Vasily Grossman book, “An Armenian Sketchbook”, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, and was bowled over by his writing. I commented at the time that I had one of his best-known works “Life and Fate” on Mount TBR and that I should get to it soon…. Ahem… We are now 13 years later and although I’d amassed more of Grossman’s works during that period, I still…

Lovely publishers have been kind enough to send me some GA crime reprints recently, which turned out to be the perfect reading at the end of the school term – I really needed some distraction!! As there a few, I thought I would round them up over a couple of posts, and my first one focuses on two from British Library Publishing in their Crime Classics imprint – and they turned out to be a pair of…

As I hinted in my end of June post and my review of “Women of Iron and Velvet”, I’ve been off down a number of rabbit holes recently, particularly with French authors. Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet were involved, and Margaret Crosland added complications as I did have to pick up a reasonably priced copy of her Cocteau biography! So when I was casting around for a book to read after my failure with…

July is a month with a lovely event, hosted by Emma at Words and Peace: “Paris in July“, where we read books about all things pertaining to  France and its capital. Now I have all manner of possibilities to choose from (so many French books!) and I thought I had two titles lined up and ready to go. However, for some reason they didn’t quite grab me recently, and I got distracted by mention…

Back in 2024, I stumbled across a random book find in my local Oxfam, which turned out to be a marvellous read – “Writing Landscape” by Linda Cracknell, published by the lovely indie, Saraband. I enjoyed the book so much that I’ve had her work on my list of those to be explored for some time, but I had somehow missed that she issued a new title, “Sea Marked”, in 2025. The Book Gods were looking…

Prague-based publisher Twisted Spoon Press release some wonderful and fascinating books, and I’ve been happy to cover a good number of their titles here on the Ramblings. So when I saw that they were publishing a new volume of stories by Ladislaw Klima entitled “Visions and Apparitions”, I was intrigued! I’ve rarely heard of the authors or titles they put out but I’ve not been disappointed with…

Amongst the various unfinished reading projects I have going on, one is an informal read-through of the novels of Anita Brookner in publication order. I’ve absolutely loved her first three books, but approaching the fourth one I became a little nervous. “Hotel du Lac” was the title which catapulted her to fame when she won the Booker Prize for it in 1984, and I’ve read it twice: at the time of…

It’s probably fair to say that bananas are something which most of us take for granted. A staple in the fruit and veg aisle, we’re used to them being readily available and most likely never think about the processes which have to be gone through to get the popular curved fruit to our tables. However, the humble banana we know and love, the Cavendish, is only one of the many (over 1000 I believe!)…

I guess we all have authors who are our own personal literary catnip, and a writer who’s become that for me is Richard Holmes. I’ve written about him a number of times here on the Ramblings, and his books about the art of the biographer and his life pursuing this are some of my favourites. For some reason, I was recently compelled to pick up what could be regarded as the third in a trilogy, after…

Well, June has been something of a month, hasn’t it? The phrase ‘Flaming June’ definitely applied here, and like many I have been suffering in the heat (I’m a spring and autumn gal myself…) There’s also been lots of stuff going on with an Ageing Relative and so frankly I have needed the solace and escape of books. It has been a mostly good month for reading, however, and here is a pile of the…

In my #DallowayDay post on Mark Hussey’s biography of the book, I mentioned that I’d been intrigued to learn that Virginia Woolf had written an introduction to the US Modern Library edition of “Mrs Dalloway”; and I was even more pleased to learn that I had this in “The Mrs Dalloway Reader”, a volume I’d picked up many years ago (2015!!) but somehow never read. Truth be told, I was a little wary…

Jozef Czapski is an author whose books have made a couple of appearances on the blog previously. Back in 2019, I wrote about “Lost Time“, a collection of lectures he gave on Proust whilst incarcerated in a Soviet concentration camp; and in 2022 I shared my thoughts on his “Memories of Starobielsk“, covering his time in that camp. Both titles were issued by NYRB Classics, and they’ve also…

It’s a while since I featured any of the regular Renard arrivals on the Ramblings, but they continue to pop through the letterbox (as part of my subscription with them) and each book is a little gem. So I thought I would share a few recent incomings, which were wonderful to dip into when I needed a little distraction. One thing I love about Renard is the variety of the titles they issue, and…

Over at the Literary Potpourri blog, lovely blogger Mallika is running her Reading the Meow event this week; I’ve been able to take part a couple of times before and I was determined to do so again this year. I wasn’t initially sure what I was going to choose, as I always try to pick something off the TBR for reading events, until I suddenly had a flash of inspiration. I have tentatively started…