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The Best Books about Books–if such stuff interests you.

By Anita Mathias

John Sutherland’s top 10 books about books

From Aristotle to Roland Barthes, the author and commentator gives his analysis of the critics who find the hard answers to simple questions, and offers some improving ideas for new year’s reading
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  • John Sutherland
    • John Sutherland
    • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 December 2010 10.36 GMT
    • Article history
French Philosopher Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes in 1979. Photograph: Fabian Cevallos/Corbis
John Sutherland staggers under the title Lord Northcliffe professor emeritus of Modern English Literature at UCL. He has written numerous books on literature and a couple on himself (notably a drunkalog, Last Drink to LA). He has taught, principally, in the UK and America. His next book (out in a week or so) has the self-explanatory title: 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know. Roll over Dr Johnson.
  1. 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know
  2. by John Sutherland
  3. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

Buy 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know at the Guardian bookshop
“There are only a handful of grand-master literary critics in action at any one time in the English-speaking world. We lost one of our greatest literary critics, Frank Kermode, a few months ago. That leaves, by my count, Christopher Ricks, Terry Eagleton, and Elaine Showalter. Others will have a different pantheon – but if they’re honest it will be highly select.
“The hardest lit-crit is that which asks the simplest questions. What’s the difference between a ‘story’ by Ian McEwan and a ‘story’ on the front page of the Guardian? What precisely, is ‘lost’ in translation? Literature ‘means’ something. But is that meaning located in the author’s mind, on the page, or in the reader’s mind? Why does literature (unlike, say, the discourses of law or science) cultivate ‘ambiguity’ – saying many things at the same time?”

1. Aristotle, The Poetics (Ingram Bywater translation)

The still-most-relevant work of literary criticism, given (as a lecture, probably) around the fourth century BC. Aristotle takes on the biggest/simplest questions of all. How can we “enjoy” a performance of Oedipus Rex in which the hero blinds himself with his wife-mother’s brooch pins? Was Plato right to say the poet belongs outside, not inside, any ideal society? How can fiction be “true”? Even, as Aristotle argues, truer than history.

2. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1966)

Full blooded assault on “professionalised” academic criticism and its preoccupation with “meanings”. As Sontag saw it: “In place of hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” Politically Sontag was de-institutionalising literary criticism – tearing it away from the campus. Her thesis is, essentially, a version of Lawrence’s dictum that if you try and nail something down in the novel you either kill the novel or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail. Don’t interpret it, make love to it. Enjoy.

3. Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class? (1980)

Winner of the wittiest title ever coined for a book on lit-crit (the question was initially asked by an artless student in his seminar). Fish’s simple/hard questions: what’s the difference between a “text” and a “work of literature”? How, when the best seminars tend to finish with more disagreement than they started with, do we reach a consensus reading of any text? Is there any such thing?

4. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of their Own (1978)

Showalter was the critic who realised that after the breakthroughs of the women’s movement in the 1960s a new map of literature was required. More particularly some mapping out of the zone in which women talk to women. Why does Jane Eyre mean more to a woman reader than a man? Or does it? Essentially, Showalter takes Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own” thesis and applies it to fiction. In her career she went on to help frame a whole new syllabus area.

5. Roland Barthes, S/Z (1977: Richard Miller translation)

The sage of poststructuralism extracts meaning from a short story by Balzac with the care of someone removing kipper bones from their teeth. Is reading a story the second time round (when, for example, we know the butler did it) a richer, or poorer literary experience? Why do we read Jane Austen every year, then, when we know Elizabeth will marry Darcy? How do a few hundred thousand black marks on a white surface become Pride and Prejudice—a “world” with people, places, and events? What “structuration” is at work when that happens?

6. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (revised edition, 2000)

Why do we crave “closure” in our fictions – “the end”? Why do our brains insist on hearing tick-tock when, acoustically, the clock goes “tick-tick”. What’s the connection between the last chapter of Middlemarch and the Final Judgement in the Bible? Why does modernist literature (specifically) eschew traditional literature’s endings, or play with them mischievously (think, for example, of the three endings on offer in John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman)?

7. Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)

This small book – a perennial lit-crit bestseller for 35 years – made the discipline “big”. Literature is not a peripheral thing but infrastructural. Literature matters, Eagleton believes, as much as War, Darwinism, Religion, or Revolution matter. The current government has foolishly forgotten the fact. He has reminded them in the Guardian.

8. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980)

Pioneering monograph by the high priest of New Historicism. You have this time machine and you want to use it to find out what Hamlet really means. Do you put it into reverse and go back to the Globe, 1601: or do you put the machine into forward gear and zoom at warp-speed aeons in the future when the last critics have had their final say? Put another way, can we ever know as much about Elizabethan literature as the Elizabethans knew about their literature? What, then, was the peculiar quality of their knowledge?

9. Christopher Ricks, Milton’s Grand Style (1963)

Literature is all about how to read, and Ricks is the smartest reader we have. His Milton book, one of his earliest, ponders the problem: does the poet have to create his/her own language? Could Milton have done Paradise Lost in a more common tongue? Ricks picks up a bone much chewed over, by TS Eliot and FR Leavis who could never quite make their minds up about Milton and his wholly idiosyncratic diction. Did he build a “Chinese Wall” round literature, or raise the English language where it could most effectively handle literature?

10. Henry Louis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey (1988)

The doyen of African-American literary critics, Gates has undertaken the pioneer task of fusing ethnic elements (previously thought wholly sub-literary) with cutting-edge theory – “semiology”, for example, as the word “signifying” indicates. In so doing Gates has defined a discipline within the discipline. More importantly he has widened the definition of what we classify as “literary”. Are rap lyrics literature? Gates, like Showalter, has drawn new maps of literary criticism.

Wikio

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Books for Christmas?

By Anita Mathias


This reminds me of when Zoe was 3, and we too only gave her books. She opened them, and said sadly, “Why Santa only brought me book presents?”
Roy dashed out on Christmas Day to the first store he found open, and bought a Barbie doll, and bubble bath with a Micky Mouse Lid, which pleased her more than ALL her books!

Wikio

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Books Quiz of 2010

By Anita Mathias

Books quiz of 2010

How much attention were you paying to literary developments this year? Anwer these questions and find out if you’re a chump or a champion
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  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 December 2010 10.13 GMT

Lawrence Durrell, Stieg Larsson, Mervyn Peak and Douglas Adams

Reanimated? Lawrence Durrell, Stieg Larsson, Mervyn Peak and Douglas Adams (See question two). Photograph: Getty/PA/Hulton/David Sillitoe
  1. 1.Celebrated literary recluse JD Salinger passed away in January 2010, at what age?
  2. 2.To which famous sequence of novels was it announced in February that a further book would be added, compiled by the author’s widow from notes left by her husband?
  3. 3.To which classical figure did poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy compare footballer David Beckham, in a poem written in March following the heel injury that took him out of the running (literally) for the World Cup?
  4. 4.Which author won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction an unprecedented third time in April?
  5. 5.As announced in May, which thriller writer has been commissioned by the Fleming Estate to write the next new Bond novel, following Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care?
  6. 6.Previously unknown work by each of these authors – bar one – appeared this year. Which is the fake?
  7. 7.Which high-profile crime author was aboard the Gaza flotilla stormed by Israeli troops in May?
  8. 8.What is the theme of controversial Australian novel The Slap, one of this year’s popular hits, by writer Christos Tsiolkas?
  9. 9.Which author was accused this summer of “waging war on Christianity” by a Jesuit priest?
  10. 10.Which author attacked the New York Times in August for favouring “white male literary darlings” in its books coverage, particularly in relation to Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom?
  11. 11.What was the title originally planned for Tony Blair’s memoir, A Journey, published in September?
  12. 12.What new book did President Obama publish this year?
  13. 13.What personal accessory was purloined from literary star Jonathan Franzen at the London launch party for his novel Freedom in October?
  14. 14.In October, Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question won the Man Booker prize. How much money did he win?
  15. 15.Why did JK Rowling text Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe on the film release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this autumn?
  16. 16.After weeks of speculation about the contenders, who was it who eventually won this year’s Nobel prize for literature in October?
  17. 17.Which book, by academic Alexandra Harris, won the Guardian first book award in November?
  18. 18.Which book is 2010’s Christmas number one bestseller in the UK?

Wikio

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Giveaway of 1 Million Free Books–World Book Night

By Anita Mathias

Here are the books.
Kate Atkinson – Case Histories 
Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin 
Alan Bennett – A Life Like Other People’s 
John le Carré – The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Lee Child – Killing Floor 
Carol Ann Duffy – The World’s Wife 
Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 
Seamus Heaney – Selected Poems 
Marian Keyes – Rachel’s Holiday 
Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist 
Ben Macintyre – Agent Zigzag 
Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera 
Yann Martel – Life of Pi 
Alexander Masters – Stuart: A Life Backwards 
Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance 
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas 
Toni Morrison – Beloved 
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun 
David Nicholls – One Day 
Philip Pullman – Northern Lights
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front
CJ Sansom – Dissolution 
Nigel Slater – Toast 
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 
Sarah Waters – Fingersmith
Gosh, I’ve just read the 5 in bold. Lots of reading to do, Anita. And here’s the skinny on it.

World Book Night to give away 1m free books

Readers in the UK and Ireland can choose books to give away to people they think will enjoy them
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  • Benedicte Page
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 December 2010 12.47 GMT
  • Article history
Margaret Atwood
‘Amazed’ … Margaret Atwood. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian
Night follows day with the launch of World Book Night, as publishers look to inspire adults to read by giving away 1m free books. Inspired by the success of World Book Day, which last year saw schoolchildren cash in tokens for more than 600,000 specially-published titles, this new initiative aims to put “an accessible work of enduring quality” in the hands of adult readers in the UK and Ireland on the evening of 5 March 2011.
Participating authors Margaret Atwood and John le Carré welcomed World Book Night with great enthusiasm, with Atwood saying she was “amazed by its magnitude” and Le Carré calling it “beyond his most ambitious dreams”.
Key to the event is the concept of enthusiastic readers giving away their favourite book to people they think might love it too. Anyone can apply to be one of the 20,000 givers, choosing the title they most want to give away from a list selected by a panel including booksellers, authors and librarians, including novels by Sarah Waters and David Mitchell, poetryfrom Carol Ann Duffy, and memoirs from Alan Bennett and Nigel Slater. The 20,000 chosen to give will be able to donate 48 copies of their much-loved book.
An eclectic roster of high-profile patrons have stepped forward to back the event, including writers JK Rowling, Dave Eggers and Seamus Heaney, musicians Damon Albarn and David Gilmour, actors Colin Firth and Tilda Swinton, cookery queen Nigella Lawson and sculptor Anthony Gormley. BBC creative director Alan Yentob is also a supporter, and the event will be covered on BBC2. Stephen Fry, Lemn Sissay, DBC Pierre, Kamila Shamsie and Bidisha are also on the editorial committee, chaired by broadcaster James Naughtie.
Atwood, whose novel The Blind Assassin is among those on offer for donation, said that when she first heard of the event she was “amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading – these are huge gifts. To be able to give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle.”
Le Carré, whose The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is another book that will be given away on World Book Night, said: “No writer can ask more than this: that his book should be handed in thousands to people who might otherwise never get to read it, and who will in turn hand it to thousands more. That his book should also pass from one generation to another as a story to challenge and excite each reader in his time -that is beyond his most ambitious dreams.”
Artist Antony Gormley, who is a patron of the event, also offered a cheer, saying: “Hooray for World Book Night, a truly wonderful celebration of reading, writing, and sharing! When the joy of giving and receiving is added to the fruit of the imagination, something big, lovely and generous can happen: for a book allows us to hold the experience of another in our hands and absorb it in our minds.”
Jamie Byng, chief of publisher Canongate and the chairman of World Book Night, predicted that the event would have “an enormously positive impact on books and reading” because of the sheer power of personal recommendation. “Having 1m books given to one million different people on one night in this way is both unprecedented and hugely exciting,” he said.
While the vast majority of the books will be given away by individual members of the public, 40,000 will be distributed by WBN itself to people who might not otherwise be able to participate.
Organisers hope to extend the promotion to meet the global reach of its title in future, but for the moment it is limited to the UK and Ireland

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Marginalia imbues a book with your own memories.

By Anita Mathias

Marginalia imbues a book with your own memories.

The Watchman

Marginalia imbues a book with your own memories. Nice piece by Toby Lichtig.

Defacing books: the effluence of engagement

I’m not just talking about ‘marginalia’. My passion for defacing books includes doodles, addresses, recipes, and they all remind me of where I was – and who I was – when I read the work
Toby Lichtig

Mark Twain loved it, Virginia Woolf despised it and Barbara Kingsolver feels so strongly about the subject that she won’t do it to her own. Henry VIII deemed it a vital part of the experience (but, then, he could get away it), while Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were once arrested for it.
I am, of course, talking about defacing books – a much maligned practice of which I am a passionate disciple. My flirtation with textual mutilation started off at school with primly creased corners and pencilled underlinings, but I soon progressed to cocksure highlighting and full-blown ink-on-paper action – the effluence of engagement, the living, livid trace of dialogue. If, as the poststructuralists have suggested, the act of reading is an act of violence, then scrawling across the page in cheap biro must be its logical corollary.
I’m not just talking about highbrow jottings: notes and queries, references and witticisms, the literary art of “marginalia” (a term coined in 1832 by that keenest of annotators, Samuel Taylor Coleridge). No, in my library anything goes: doodles, numbers, addresses, lists, recipes and the ensuing food stains. Personalising my books is an intrinsic part of the interaction (which is why I tend to be neurotic about holding on to what I’ve read). Perhaps it’s the fault of my somewhat sluggish memory: the marks and scrawls help me to recall the text – and, crucially, the person I was when reading it: how I was feeling, where I was sitting, whom I was with. The smears on my copy of The Scarlet and the Black (coffee certainly; jam I think) take me back to the cafe in Rovereto in northern Italy, where I read it over the course of a week in 2002. When I look at my edition of Dracula, with half of its cover torn away, I’m reminded of that night at university when we ran out of Rizla packets and were too lazy to look for more orthodox material.
Then there are the intrigues. A passage of particularly illegible scribbling might indicate I was reading while standing up on the tube, but how to explain the frantic-looking “phone Luca!!” on page108 of Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy? I no longer even know who Luca is, let alone what possibilities his being contacted might have brought. Such randomness adds heft and colour to the afterlife of my relationship with a given tome. A drawing by an old friend lies in my copy of The Great Gatsby – and for that reason I will always associate it with him. The Age of Extremes is in my mind an even fatter book than Eric Hobsbawm intended, thanks to the time I dropped it in the bath.
“I’m afraid I could never trust someone who would make irremovable marks in a library book,” says Desmond Bates in David Lodge’s novel,Deaf Sentence. But while I wouldn’t advocate defacing books that aren’t your own (like all violation, textual disfigurement should be by invitation only), there’s a prudishness to our reverence that I cannot get along with. Marking books is not heresy because literature does not happen in a vacuum. So you can keep your priggish white spaces, your stiff spines and spotless jackets. I prefer my pages with a little knowledge and experience; books with a back story, some miles on the clock. 
 
And perhaps this is why I just can’t get excited about recent technological developments in the way we approach, and respond to, literature. While corporate giants clash over the pricing of ebooks, and readers of the world go delirious at the thought of accessing the sum total of history’s writing via their Kindle, nook or iPad, I intend to carry on reading as I always have: with an object I can physically alter; something I can damage with impunity. Ever-primed for action, my pen hovers restlessly just above the page.

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Dame Julianna Berners, spunky medieval nun, writer and fisherwoman!

By Anita Mathias

“Whoever will rise early shall holy, healthy, and happy.” Dame Julianna Berners

“Whoever will rise early shall holy, healthy, and happy.” Treatise on Fishing with an Angle, Dame Julianna Berners,  Benediction Classics, Oxford.

Born in 1388, Prioress of Sopwell nunnery, near St. Alban’s. Author of the first book on fishing by a woman

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Francois Mauriac and Elie Wiesel

By Anita Mathias

The Mentoring of Elie Wiesel by Francois Mauriac


Our small group is going through Philip Yancey’s DVD series What is so Amazing about Grace? He recounted a lovely story about a meeting between Mauriac and Elie Wiesel. Mauriac was at that time France’s most famous writer, and was and is the greatest Roman Catholic writer of his century.

Wiesel is networking. Using the old man for his connection, to inveigle an interview with the French Prime Minister. But Mauriac wants to talk about Jesus. A little secret, inward smile plays about his face as he talks about Jesus.

I love that, that 20 centuries later, people can be so in love with Jesus, that a secret, inward smile lights their faces when they talk about him.
Read more about the interview here. Mauriac challenged Weisel to write about his experiences, which eventually became the tight Holocaust memoir, Night.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ym8KcrzUZKYC&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq=meeting+of+Mauriac+and+Wiesel&source=bl&ots=nagKfDmiHy&sig=VVjhZuMNTtQve4ZHTwTPsl4DR4w&hl=en&ei=B6zWS9qDI4

I also LOVE this quote from Dorothy Day, about to write her autobiography. She writes, My Life, opens her book on a new page, “But then I found I could not do it. I just sat thinking of our Lord, and of his visit to us all those centuries ago, and I thought it was my great good fortune to have had him on my mind for so long a time in my life.”

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Anita Mathias: About Me

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My Books

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Francesco, Artist of Florence - Amazom.com
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Amazon.co.uk

The Story of Dirk Willems

The Story of Dirk Willems - Amazon.com
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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  • “Rosaries at the Grotto” A Chapter from my newly-published memoir, “Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India.”
  • An Infallible Secret of Joy
  • Thoughts on Writing my Just-published Memoir, & the Prologue to “Rosaries, Reading, Secrets”
  • Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India. My new memoir
  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
  • Trust: A Message of Christmas
  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner

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What I’m Reading

Country Girl
Edna O'Brien

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Confessions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Mere Christianity
C S Lewis

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anita.mathias

If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of th If you'll forgive me for adding to the noise of the world on Black Friday, my memoir ,Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India, is on sale on Kindle all over the world for a few days. 
Carolyn Weber (who has written "Surprised by Oxford," an amazing memoir about coming to faith in Oxford https://amzn.to/3XyIftO )  has written a lovely endorsement of my memoir:
"Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Anita Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard earned wisdom about navigating the life of thoughtful faith in a world of cultural complexities. Her story bears witness to how God wastes nothing and redeems all. Her words sing of a spirit strong in courage, compassion and a pervasive dedication to the adventure of life. As a reader, I have been challenged and changed by her beautifully told and powerful story - so will you."
The memoir is available on sale on Amazon.co.uk at https://amzn.to/3u0Ib8o and on Amazon.com at https://amzn.to/3u0IBvu and is reduced on the other Amazon sites too.
Thank you, and please let me know if you read and enjoy it!! #memoir #indianchildhood #india
Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping! So i Second birthday party. Determinedly escaping!
So it’s a beautiful November here in Oxford, and the trees are blazing. We will soon be celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary…and are hoping for at least 33 more!! 
And here’s a chapter from my memoir of growing up Catholic in India… rosaries at the grotto, potlucks, the Catholic Family Movement, American missionary Jesuits, Mangaloreans, Goans, and food, food food…
https://anitamathias.com/2022/11/07/rosaries-at-the-grotto-a-chapter-from-my-newly-published-memoir-rosaries-reading-steel-a-catholic-childhood-in-india/
Available on Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3Apjt5r and on Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3gcVboa and wherever Amazon sells books, as well as at most online retailers.
#birthdayparty #memoir #jamshedpur #India #rosariesreadingsecrets
Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but Friends, it’s been a while since I blogged, but it’s time to resume, and so I have. Here’s a blog on an absolutely infallible secret of joy, https://anitamathias.com/2022/10/28/an-infallible-secret-of-joy/
Jenny Lewis, whose Gilgamesh Retold https://amzn.to/3zsYfCX is an amazing new translation of the epic, has kindly endorsed my memoir. She writes, “With Rosaries, Reading and Secrets, Anita Mathias invites us into a totally absorbing world of past and present marvels. She is a natural and gifted storyteller who weaves history and biography together in a magical mix. Erudite and literary, generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail, Rosaries is alive with glowing, vivid details, bringing to life an era and culture that is unforgettable. A beautifully written, important and addictive book.”
I would, of course, be delighted if you read it. Amazon.co.uk https://amzn.to/3gThsr4 and Amazon.com https://amzn.to/3WdCBwk #joy #amwriting #amblogging #icecreamjoy
Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photograph Wandering around Oxford with my camera, photographing ancient colleges! Enjoy.
And just a note that Amazon is offering a temporary discount on my memoir, Rosaries, Reading, Steel https://amzn.to/3UQN28z . It’s £7.41.
Here’s an endorsement from my friend, Francesca Kay, author of the beautiful novel, “An Equal Stillness.” This is a beautifully written account of a childhood, so evocative, so vivid. The textures, colours and, above all, the tastes of a particular world are lyrically but also precisely evoked and there was much in it that brought back very clear memories of my own. Northern India in the 60s, as well as Bandra of course – dust and mercurochrome, Marie biscuits, the chatter of adult voices, the prayers, the fruit trees, dogs…. But, although you rightly celebrate the richness of that world, you weave through this magical remembrance of things past a skein of sadness that makes it haunting too. It’s lovely!” #oxford #beauty
So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promis So, I am not going to become a book-bore, I promise, but just to let you know that my memoir "Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India," is now available in India in paperback. https://www.amazon.in/s?k=rosaries+reading+secrets&crid=3TLDQASCY0WTH&sprefix=rosaries+r%2Caps%2C72&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10My endorsements say it is evocative, well-written, magical, haunting, and funny, so I'd be thrilled if you bought a copy on any of the Amazon sites. 
Endorsements 
A beautifully written account. Woven through this magical remembrance of things past is a skein of sadness that makes it haunting. Francesca Kay, An Equal Stillness. 
A dazzling vibrant tale of childhood in post-colonial India. Mathias conjures 1960s India and her family in uproarious and heart-breaking detail. Erin Hart, Haunted Ground 
Mathias invites us into a wonderfully absorbing and thrilling world of past and present marvels… generously laced with poetic and literary references and Dickensian levels of observation and detail. A beautifully written, important, and addictive book. Jenny Lewis, Gilgamesh Retold 
Tormented, passionate and often sad, Mathias’s beautiful childhood memoir is immensely readable. Trevor Mostyn, Coming of Age in The Middle East.
A beautifully told and powerful story. Joining intelligent winsomeness with an engaging style, Mathias writes with keen observation, lively insight and hard-earned wisdom. Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford 
A remarkable account. A treasure chest…full of food (always food), books (always books), a family with all its alliances and divisions. A feat of memory and remembrance. Philip Gooden, The Story of English
Anita’s pluck and charm shine through every page of this beautifully crafted, comprehensive and erudite memoir. 
Ray Foulk, Picasso’s Revenge
Mathias’s prose is lively and evocative. An enjoyable and accessible book. Sylvia Vetta, Sculpting the Elephant
Anita Mathias is an is an accomplished writer. Merryn Williams, Six Women Novelists
Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the pa Writing a memoir awakens fierce memories of the past. For the past is not dead; it’s not even past, as William Faulkner observed. So what does one do with this undead past? Forgive. Forgive, huh? Forgive. Let it go. Again and again.
Some thoughts on writing a memoir, and the prologue to my memoir
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/08/thoughts-on-writing-a-memoir-the-prologue-to-rosaries-reading-secrets/ 
#memoir #amwriting #forgiveness https://amzn.to/3B82CDo
Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing t Six months ago, Roy and I decided that finishing the memoir was to be like “the treasure in the field,” that Jesus talks about in the Gospels, which you sacrifice everything to buy. (Though of course, he talks about an intimate relationship with God, not finishing a book!!) Anyway, I’ve stayed off social media for months… but I’ve always greatly enjoyed social media (in great moderation) and it’s lovely to be back with the book now done  https://amzn.to/3eoRMRN  So, our family news: Our daughter Zoe is training for ministry as a priest in the Church of England, at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. She is “an ordinand.” In her second year. However, she has recently been one of the 30 ordinands accepted to work on an M.Phil programme (fully funded by the Church of England.) She will be comparing churches which are involved in community organizing with churches which are not, and will trace the impact of community organizing on the faith of congregants.  She’ll be ordained in ’24, God willing.
Irene is in her final year of Medicine at Oxford University; she will be going to Toronto for her elective clinical work experience, and will graduate as a doctor in June ‘23, God willing.
And we had a wonderful family holiday in Ireland in July, though that already feels like a long time ago!
https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-readi https://anitamathias.com/2022/09/01/rosaries-reading-secrets-a-catholic-childhood-in-india-my-new-memoir/
Friends, some stellar reviews from distinguished writers, and a detailed description here!!
https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3 Friends, I’ve written a https://amzn.to/3wMiSJ3  Friends, I’ve written a memoir of my turbulent Catholic childhood in India. I would be grateful for your support!
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