Being Non-Fiction November this month I’ve been reading a memoir set in Provence, France in the 1930’s. My month however started shakily when I read A Bite of the Apple: A Life of Books, Writers and Virago by Lennie Goodings. Although the 6 chapters I read were excellent, I found the the topics which are integral to a Feminist press were a bit to full on for me. Maybe at another time when I’m more in the mood for a more intense history. My current read as mentioned above is a memoir set in the South of France. It’s called Perfume From Provence by Lady Fortescue which is a humorous Englishwoman’s account of her and her husband’s life among the peasants, servants, bureaucrats – while tending to her house and garden and driving in the mountains of Provence.
I have several non-fiction books to read though I probably won’t finish them all this month. As follows:
- Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia by Patricia Clarke
- Pepita by Vita Sackville-West (About Sackville-West’s, an English writer in the 1920’s onwards, grandmother and mother)
- Beatrix Potter: A Life In Nature by Linda Lear (A biography of the author of Peter Rabbit etc.)
- The Provincial Lady Goes Further E. M. Delafield (Fiction, the sequel to The Diary of a Provincial Lady, in which a wife and mother pursues her writing career in London)
Whew! Will I get through them all? Beatrix Potter is around 500 pages. Wish me luck! Do comment on what you’re reading this month.
Readable 