The day is Wednesday, March 3rd, 1943 and London is on edge. On Monday, England had bombed Germany in a deadly manner and there is a feeling in the air that German retalliation would be even deadlier with some new bombs, even more destructive than the ones used earlier. So when the siren goes off, … Continue reading #ReadIndies: The Report by Jessica Francis Kane (2010)
Tag: War
Friday’s Forgotten Book: Look Your Last by John Stephen Strange (1943)
Look your last on all things lovely Every hour. The year is 1941. USA has not yet entered the war. People are busy with their day-to-day activities but there is a feeling in the air that it'd be any day now. There are other things too that clamour for attention. For eg., Mr. Smith, who … Continue reading Friday’s Forgotten Book: Look Your Last by John Stephen Strange (1943)
#ClassicsClub Friday’s Forgotten Book: With Willing Hands by Diana Ridley (1945)
....and the firelight flickering in the hearth brought back dreams that could have hurt because they were all of a happiness that was finished irrevocably, once and for all. Susan Laird, who lost her husband, Phil, an RAF pilot, during an air-raid, now lives for her son Buster, born after his father's death, and her … Continue reading #ClassicsClub Friday’s Forgotten Book: With Willing Hands by Diana Ridley (1945)
#ClassicClub: Hotel Vesuvius by Johan Fabricius (1945)
Hotel Vesuvius is a small inn run by Bartolo and his wife, Luigi along with the waitress and general dogsbody, Nenella. While other guests come and go, there are three virually permanent guests staying there: Renato Colleoni, who has recently joined the fascist party, after all 'Uniforms ensnared female hearts and inspired men with respect … Continue reading #ClassicClub: Hotel Vesuvius by Johan Fabricius (1945)
War Anxieties: Spies by Michael Frayn (2002)
Michael Frayn's Booker-nominated Spies immediately went on my wishlist when I came to know that it was inspired by Hartley's The Go-Between. Later, when I won a Reading Challenge, I claimed the book as my prize. And now as a GR reading group, I am a member of chose it as one of its reads … Continue reading War Anxieties: Spies by Michael Frayn (2002)
War-Trauma: Mine Own Executioner by Nigel Balchin (1945)
British author, Nigel Balchin, had been on my wishlist since the time I came across his name at the back of a book. (I posted about that list of forgotten books and authors here). But it is only now, a decade later, that I have been able to read him. Felix Milne, a young idealistic … Continue reading War-Trauma: Mine Own Executioner by Nigel Balchin (1945)
Classics Club: The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute (1947)
In 2022, I joined the Classics Club. Though I have read a few books on my list, I have not been able to review them. Here finally is the review of one such that I read soon after joining the challenge. Vega burned near the deep blue zenith, with Altair on his right and Arcturus … Continue reading Classics Club: The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute (1947)
#1940 Club: He Looked for a City by A.S.M. Hutchinson
My last read for the #1940 club is of a once popular author, now fallen into obscurity. A.S.M. Hutchinson. Born in india in 1879, and later editor of the illustrated London newspaper, The Daily Graphic, Hutchinson was also a novelist of repute who wrote such best-sellers as If Winter Comes and This Freedom. The novel … Continue reading #1940 Club: He Looked for a City by A.S.M. Hutchinson
#GermanLitMonth: Pigeons on the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen (1951)
Pigeons on the grass, that is how certain modern minds regarded people, while they strove to expose that which was senseless and apparently coincidental in human existence, to portray man as free of God, then to leave him fluttering about free in the void, senseless, valueless, free, and menaced by snares, prey to the butcher, … Continue reading #GermanLitMonth: Pigeons on the Grass by Wolfgang Koeppen (1951)
#GermanLitMonth: Eagles of the Reich by Will Berthold (1957)
An officer who is prepared to die first can demand total loyalty, only he can take his men into the jaws of death. They are Goering's golden boys, the pride of the Luftwaffe, Germany's crack paratroopers known as the Green Devils. When the novel opens, we find a unit rearing to go to their next … Continue reading #GermanLitMonth: Eagles of the Reich by Will Berthold (1957)
a hot cup of pleasure