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17 May 2008

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You are so good at those blasts from the past and triggering happy memories. I still have my copy of The Outsider (Penguin Modern Classic, priced 3s and 6d). I had to read the original for French A level but I must have gotten rid of that over the years. As you describe, it was SO important to be seen clutching the "right" books and LPs (covers facing outwards, of course). Other titles on my bookshelf from that period are Hesse's Steppenwolf and Timothy Leary's Politics of Ecstasy. I haven't read them since.

Liz - what were we like?! A-level French has got a lot to answer for.

Funnily enough, I've just recycled my Penguin edition of Steppenwolf - I know I'll never read it again. Sad but true. As for Timothy O'L, I borrowed the boyfriend's. However, I do still have the Camus but only the English version . . .

"A writer who can maintain our curiosity about and interest in a character who is not particularly likeable is definitely worth reading." This sentence was in my mind yesterday as I was writing about 'David Golder'. This rare ability separates the brilliant writers from the good.

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Thought for life

  • The House of Breath, William Goyen
    We are the carriers of lives and legends - who knows the unseen frescoes on the private walls of the skull?

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