John Purcell Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

John Purcell

Went to a bookshop, a big one, and looked for First Love by Gwendoline Riley. Not there. No books by Gwendoline Riley. Asked at counter. Never heard of her. Looked her up on computer. Don't stock her. I thought she was considered one of the UK's best and brightest.

John Purcell

@SairyJames A woman who used to frequent my second hand bookshop came in with a beat up old hardcover of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Had no dust jacket. She said I should read it. When I asked her what it was about, she said it's better if you don't know. And she was right.

John Purcell

No wonder The Midnight Library by @matthaig1 has been in the bestseller charts throughout the pandemic, it's the perfect antidote. Clever, fun, wise, moving and life affirming, if you haven't read it, and you're feeling bleughh, or not, I recommend you get yourself a copy. https://t.co/NcGvInPFUV

John Purcell

@thebooksdesk I find I bounce off truly original minds. Takes a while to align my head to their vision. Once I do, I start the book again from the beginning. Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children. Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero.

John Purcell

Hit me with your favourite metaphors in literature. I love the Eliot quoted below and the bees from The Way of All Flesh - wow. I also remember Stendhal's a novel is a mirror from Red and the Black. I need cheering up. Give me greatness. https://t.co/JGPpkpfAC3 https://t.co/d4oBJAmjvH

John Purcell

A depressed Joseph Conrad had just finished the aptly named The End of the Tether when an oil lamp exploded next to the manuscript & typescript, burning all of one & the last half of the other. 'O but the heart break!' he wrote to Ford Madox Ford. Now our screens just go black.

John Purcell

Reading a book on the novel, they dump on Henry Fielding. I read another on the art of fiction, they say, don't do as Fielding did. Tom Jones is beyond brilliant. I loved all of Fielding's authorial interruptions, his essays & digressions. Surely he deserves more respect.

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John Purcell

@hickey_mt After reading Middlemarch you'd expect the credits to roll on forever, like at the end of a Marvel film. But no. One brain. George Eliot. An astonishing achievement.

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John Purcell

The biography of Georges Simenon I read last month, The Man Who Wasn't Maigret by Patrick Marnham, was a goodie. Lots of how he wrote, mixed with publishing goss, and the nuts and bolts of his immensely successful and unbelievably prolific career. That will do for now. 6/?

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John Purcell

@sallywhitwell @damonayoung E.M. Forster is one of mine, too. A Room with a View or Howards End seem to do the trick.