All posts tagged: books

Top five on Friday: Authors

Sometimes on Friday* I review a book, but this week I thought I would just tell you about my five favourite (fiction) authors: the five whose books I read over, and over again, till I can quote whole passages, the five whose thoughts influence the way I think, and whose writing style is reflected in my own writing style. I can’t tell you which of the five is my favourite (far too hard to choose!).  I depends on my mood, what I had for breakfast, and the direction of the wind.  So here they are in alphabetical order by first name. Armine von Tempski – like me, Armine is a Caucasian child born in Hawaii, and she writes of her childhood in the islands, a century before mine.  Her writings vividly evoke the Hawaii of her time; the lush grandeur of nature, the delicate politics in the years after the annexation, the amazing mix of cultures that would give Hawaii its distinct multicultural feel, and finally, the larger than life characters she was priviledged to …

Friday Reads: Flora Klickmann and her flower patch

I have a confession.  Sometime I buy old books in op shops just because the books are pretty. I know. This is usually a really stupid habit, because our house is quite small, and I generally have to give the books back to op shops when I realise they are less fun to read than to look at. Sometimes though, my “Oooh…bookey pogey bait” habit pays off, because I end up buying books that I have never heard of which turn out to be fantastic. One of these fantastic and unexpected finds was two books by Flora Klickmann: The Flower-Patch Among the Hills and Between the Larch-woods and the Weir. I really almost didn’t buy the books.  They were $5 each, and I’d never heard of Klickmann.  And they weren’t actually that pretty. But I did, and they are fabulous. Klickmann was the editor of the Girls Own Paper in London, and the first book (The Flower-Patch) started out as articles for the magazine.  This means that both books are more a series of anecdotes …

Christmas and New Years prettiness

I was given some lovely costume related prettiness for Christmas, and I picked up a bit more on my road trip. First, my wonderful in-laws asked me for a wish list, and off of it, they got me…(drumroll here)… And…. I’ll be reviewing all three of these as I use them. Space was limited on the road trip, so all I picked up was these three bits of deliciousness: The mirror has the cutest little wreath motif on the back. It also has some damage, and the tortoiseshell has shrunk, so I’m going to be researching how to conserve it, and blogging about that. Finally, just before Christmas I found these gorgeous embroidered napkins: The handwork is exquisite, and the motifs are all different: I suspect that there was a 6th napkin at some point.  I’ll just have to have 5 person tea parties with this set!