The third volume of Solvej Balle's On The Calculation of Volume is as extraordinary as the first two: www.stuckinabook.com/on-the-calcu...

‘The narrator’s existence has the fey quality of a fairy tale. But if there are elements of a childhood fantasy in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘭, it also has a dystopian undercurrent.’ Becca Rothfeld on the Austrian novelist Marlen Haushofer. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Just finished Elliott Chaze’s BLACK WINGS HAS MY ANGEL, written in 1953, which is absolutely extraordinary. It’s a visceral & existential noir which had my heart beating so fast at times I had to stop reading. There are car chases, lovers on the run, bank heists, prison time, torture, (1)

1st week with Crazy Genie by Inès Cagnati #nyrbwomen26 / on my mind, a previous nyrbwomen read, Lies & Sorcery, where love-starved daughters are clinging to their emotionally absent mothers for any scraps of attention 💔 those nonlinear vignettes and their beautiful seasonality… 1/2

New on the blog today, I've written about more of my favourite London novels. Including books by Barbara Comyns, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark and many more! #BookSky #London 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/l...

Exciting news: We’ll be starting the next phase of #AContinuation on February 1 & all are welcome to join! Page guide to come soon! @ofbooksandbikes.bsky.social

Favourite films watched in 2025 🎬 #filmsky

December on my screen 📺 #filmsky

The books I read in October, November and December (not pictured: 📱 @ivygrimes.bsky.social - The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion, 🎧 Neville Jason - The Life and Work of Marcel Proust, 🎧 Alain de Botton - How Proust Can Change Your Life) 📚 #booksky

A lovely book list full of ideas to start 2026 in the best way possible 💫. #booksky

Top 12 books I read in 2025 📚 🫠💕 (not pictured: Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness, tr. Michael Favala Goldman) #booksky

Read this book for this year's #SpinsterSeptember and loved it (thanks for the recommendation @pear-jelly.bsky.social )

#NYRBWomen25 I finished THE JUNIPER TREE this morning, Barbara Comyns’s final novel published when she was 77yo. It’s everything I love about her writing. Here are a few rabbit holes I went down while reading this enchanting retelling.

Chat I really think we had some interesting stuff to say here. How to talk about a book that isn’t especially interested in making sense?

The books I read in September 📚 (not pictured: 🎧 Rural Hours by Harriet Baker) #booksky #spinsterseptember #womenintranslation

Two Serious Ladies was my fave #spinsterseptember read. It was unusual as it shows little to no interiority from the characters. Felt like watching a Lynch movie: eerie, unpredictable, full of dread, at times disturbing but pregnant with meaning. A stumbling & hypnotising f*** you to conventions.

The three books I read for #spinsterseptember 🍏 #booksky

I only managed to read „Lolly Willowes“ for #spinsterseptember (AT LAST!), but the hashtag contains so many interesting titles, I‘m doing #spinsterautumn .

#spinsterseptember rec from @blithespirit4.bsky.social

I started this due to Jacqui's review and I'm loving it so much. It reminds me of LM Montgomery's and Dorothy Whipple's writing, two favorite authors of mine. Happily sliding this one in on the last few days of #SpinsterSeptember.

My second and final book for #SpinsterSeptember is Hush, Gabriel! by Veronica Parker Johns - a murder mystery which started brilliantly but sadly rather derailed...

Just discovered the hashtag #SpinsterSeptember for books, and I think "The scent of water" by Elizabeth Goudge would fit very well in the category. I guess I'd like to reread it soon, it breathes calm and taking possession of an old house and a different life.

September reading [✓] Favourite: Well, my least favourite, weirdly, was Austen, probably because she goes on to be so much better. I guess Warner gets the gong for a wonderful book that plays with the form of the novel. Thanks to @pear-jelly.bsky.social for #SpinsterSeptember.

Friday Reads: Some sucked, some weren’t for me, and some sucked me right in youtu.be/4BYjN-XR4gQ #SpinsterSeptember #Victober

Really enjoyed Fair Play, Tove Jansson. “She began to anticipate a solitude of her own. She felt something close to exhilaration, of a kind that people can permit themselves when they are blessed with love.“ #SapphicSeptember *technically* #SpinsterSeptember 📚💙

Read: Anita Brookner: Look At Me (1983). Such a sharp, acidic, adult, wonderful book about people and relationships. Minimal plot but full of thoughts and ideas. There will be more Brookner. #SpinsterSeptember

Nuanced spinsters and other fickle folk: A review of E.H. Young's 1922 novel, The Misses Mallett #SpinsterSeptember youtu.be/8oBWAfSCbHo

I was recommending it to someone & that reminded me that I think Rumer Godden's IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (I never thought I'd fall in love with a book about a woman joining a contemplative abbey, but it was such a page turner for me-so good) would probably be a good suggestion for #spinsterseptember

A powerful read: I've called "The Spring Begins" by Katherine Dunning "brutal" here, and Simon Thomas calls it "amoral" in his Afterword! It's also lyrical, descriptive and a real page-turner! librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/b... @britishlibrary.bsky.social #booksky #SpinsterSeptember 📚💙

A recommendation @pear-jelly.bsky.social. Perfectly controlled pacing: onward and inward journey, past infusing present, emergence of heroine's agency, quiet and subtle and powerful. #spinsterseptember

Read a couple of very good books for the 2 hashtags I'm following. For #SpinsterSeptember, 'Miss Buncle's Book' by D. E. Stevenson was an unalloyed delight. Funny, clever, and very sweet. Social comedy with a smidgen of romance. Stevenson is sharp-eyed but she is never cruel. I bought the sequel.

The two old women of the title are 75 and 80 respectively so you get both decades in one book. :) #booksky #SpinsterSeptember

For #spinsterseptember I return to the wonderful writing of #AnitaBrookner with her third novel, Look At Me - more here! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/i...

Friday Reads: 'The world is full of wonder – pay attention' youtu.be/hU9PLgad0ww #ShortySeptember #SpinsterSeptember

"...she had never married, and yet, judging from the mask-like indifference of her face, she had gone through twenty times more of passion and experience than those whose loves are trumpeted forth for all the world to hear." #SpinsterSeptember #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/t...

An odd, little romp which careened from one surreal plot twist and complicated relationship, to another. Protests, pain, philosophy & the plague - all in this unusual love story. Reminscient of Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch & Penelope Fitzgerald, but fell a little flat by comparison. #SpinsterSeptember

My next read for #SpinsterSeptember, this novel about Dorothy Wordsworth is told partly through the eyes of a servant at Rydal Mount, and partly through the imagined words of her destroyed red diary. Beautiful nature writing and some interesting speculation on her later illness. An enjoyable read.

Read: Barbara Pym: Excellent Women (1952). Another great book for #SpinsterSeptember, and my first Pym. Quietly funny with wonderful observations of British humans in the postwar years: I gobbled it up. PS: Having finally read books by Barbaras Pym and Comyns, I can now tell them apart!

“Her panic-stricken face would be reflected back at her as she struggled to deny her identity, slowly cosseting herself away from the truth. She was learning to triumph over reality, and the truth wad beginning to leave her in peace” — Angel by Elizabeth Taylor, a #spinsterseptember recommendation

Started book 2 for #spinsterseptember today - first line pulled me in straight away 🪦 #booksky

A slow start to #spinsterseptember but book 1 is done ✔️ not technically spinsterlit but a fun, quippy and empathetic look at the lives of single women working in a London department store in the 1930s. Loved it!

A lovely review. Thank you to the literary sisters! Still time to read for a queer take on #SpinsterSeptember

Finished my 2nd #SpinsterSeptember book. Miss Buncle's Book by D E Stevenson. A lovely feelgood book set in an English village. Some great caricatures, goodies & baddies. You can also hear it discussed at @backlisted.bsky.social

Friday Reads: A transformative read—oh, and a novel about sexy black Baptists youtu.be/a10C5Uijyng #ShortySeptember #SpinsterSeptember

My 2nd book for #SpinsterSeptember was not a success, though I wanted to like it. Elizabeth Mavor's 'A Green Equinox' just did not work for me at all and I'm astonished it was nominated for a Booker Prize alongside writers like Bainbridge and Murdoch. Too precious by half. But à chacun son goût.

Are you in the mood for an autumnal #readingchallenge? 🍂Then check out the hashtag #spinsterseptember by @pear-jelly.bsky.social under which many readers post their readings for September featuring unmarried / #spinster characters. I think it's still possible to could join in! 📚 #booksky

Words to live by here from Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women on spaghetti’s threat to romance. #SpinsterSeptember

On the Ramblings today! A book which qualifies for #spinsterseptember AND #shortstoryseptember - and, oh joy, it's Miss Marple!! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2025/09/12/t...

Read: Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey (1799/1817). Flirts with some of the tropes of the gothic novel, but is basically a classic Austen, albeit not quite as funny and intelligent as her more mature works. Still: *very* enjoyable. Not sure it qualifies for #SpinsterSeptember.