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Continue reading →: Welcoming the Spring SolsticeRarely have I welcomed a Spring Solstice as much as this one. It is coming to the end of my second year in the van, though last year I had my hip operation on that day, 20th March. A year on from the operation and I don’t think it could…
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Continue reading →: The Garden by Nick Newman
British Literature – Dystopian/Science Fiction – Published 2025 Two elderly and frail sisters living in isolation together immediately conjures up images of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and indeed, disturbing they are, though this is set at an unspecified time in the future in an unnamed place. Further to the comparison with…
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Continue reading →: Mystery in Room 913 by Cornell Woolrich
American Fiction Pulp/Noir – Published 1941 At seemingly random intervals in the St Anslem Hotel in New York single young men check in to the titular room but are found in the early hours of the morning on the pavement below, having supposedly leapt to their death from the French…
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Continue reading →: Sédières Castle
The Château de Sédières is a restored 15th century castle surrounded by the forest of Sédières and its many lakes. Known as a jewel of the “Italian Renaissance”, it was classified as a Historic Monument in 1958, and purchased of the Corrèze Departmental Council in 1965 for the sum of…
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Continue reading →: Ballerina by Patrick Modiano
translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti – Published by Yale University Press in 2025 As usual with Modiano the language is beautiful. Paris comes alive from his pen so vivid is the imagery.But it’s so short that I feel cheated. No sooner than we get to know the characters…
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Continue reading →: No Place To Bury The Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo
translated from the Spanish (Venezuela) by Elizabeth Bryer – Published by HarperVia in 2024 Angustias Romero describes her journey as she leaves the eastern mountains of an unnamed Latin American country with her husband and newborn twins to reach the town of Mezquite. In the first few pages we learn…
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Continue reading →: An Invitation to the Manor & the Red TownOver last few days spring has been on hold while winter temperatures returned. I’ve managed to avoid much of the wintery weather that has been around so far on this course, but eventually it caught up with me. Through the advice of a local, a woman I met at a…
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Continue reading →: The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler
translated from the German (Austria) by Katy Derbyshire – Published 2024 This was a really rewarding reading experience, a vibrant story of a working-class Viennese cafe and the eccentric characters that inhabit it. Robert Simon, an orphan with a tough childhood is in his early 30s in 1966, making a…
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Continue reading →: Beartooth by Callan Wink
American Fiction – Published 2025 The author himself is a fishing guide on the Yellowstone river which partly explains how his descriptions of the seasons and the Montana mountain wilderness are so evocative, they are pretty much characters themselves and certainly play a large part in the enjoyment of the…
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Continue reading →: The Boy From The Sea by Garrett Carr
Ireland – Published 2025 In Donegal, Ireland, 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. A fisherman, Ambrose Bonnar, burly and bighearted, offers to adopt the child into his own family, his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and elderly father. The community remains fascinated by…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 