The Goodby People
Gavin Lambert’s
Bubastis
Bubastis is a fawn-coloured tabby with a brown nose. She’s the second oldest cat, and is best described as a ‘sweetie’. Most of the time, you can find Bubastis sleeping on Hargrave’s lap. Or in her pumpkin. Or on the bed. But laps are her favourite napping place.
Bubastis was the last kitten left, and she was definitely a runt. She has short whiskers, a stubby tail, and never really quite figured out that she’s a cat. Her favourite treat in the whole world is a couple drops of milk or cream, but she’ll try just about anything if you let her. (This includes: yogurt, ice cream, cake, potatoes, potato chips, cheese, and fruit.) She was very fat when she was younger. Now that she’s lost some weight, she’s just cutely chunky.
She loves to play with her miniature ball, which she’ll chase around only if you throw it just right. She’s also the best sister — Bubastis gets along with everyone.
Flim-Flam!
Randi writes in a way that is accessible to the un-academic reader but is also like a cosy sweater for readers who have experience in academia and the sciences. Reading this book was a joy and a perfect meeting of my interest in the supernatural and my scholarly pursuits.
The Misanthrope, The Miser, and Other Plays
Molière was a seventeenth-century playwright and I have seen readers approach him with a comparable trepidation to which I’ve seen when high school students approach Shakespeare for the first time.
The Deputy
I think it’s probably immediately obvious why this play is controversial. It’s a bold statement about the actions (or, more accurately, lack of action) of an institution that would rather forget everything around the time period.
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey contains a critique not just of the British legal system, but also of society in the late 1970s, and the collision of the legal and political systems. Sometimes this commentary is insightful, yet sometimes it is cringe-worthy.
Confessions of a Mask
As the book continues, the narrator becomes less and less reliable and also less sure of himself and what he is capable of. Desires, thoughts, and feelings pull Kochan apart with a slow intensity.
A Childhood: The Biography of a Place
He details stories that float around the county, amongst the men working the fields, and also the stories that women trade while they sew around the dining room table and children play around their feet. Those stories mark time. They are shared county history.
Kokoro
he plot of Kokoro centers around two characters that are never named. The first two parts of the novel consist of a young student getting to know an older man whom he refers to only as ‘Sensei’.
Sweet Days of Discipline
aeggy’s starkness has an edge almost of brutality. She doesn’t mince words, she doesn’t dance around what she is trying to say. A confidence and absolute assurance resonates in her work that I rarely see in other authors.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
he doesn’t shy away from what happened to her, but neither does she use it to shock the reader. Instead, she writes of the horror with blunt honesty, and brutality tempered with careful sentence level consideration and a language that is powerful, yet never gratuitous.