about me

I love reading. When I am on vacation I try to read a book a day. I have a novel- I'll try to put it up here, but while I love writing, I hate editing. Thus there may be a slight delay in getting my novel here :-)

I was trained originally as a biologist, then I became a lawyer, and now I teach English. But please, don't expect my prose to be free of mistakes. What I try to teach is a love of reading- grammar and punctuation have always been a bit of a nightmare for me, because my mother was an English teacher (the kind you have nightmares about).

favourite books

All of Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, and Munro. I just read Wolf Hall, and thought it was great. I also like:
Big Trouble,
Spinners,
Jack Maggs,
Show of Hands,
The Southern Vampire series,
The Last Time I Wore a Dress,
the Glass Castle,
Dress Your Family in Corduroy,
Me Talk Pretty One Day,
Running With Scissors,
Easter Island,
The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
Life of Pi,
Lovely Bones,
Blindness,
A Cook's Tour,
Garlic and Sapphires,
All Alice Hoffman's books except Blue Diary which was a downer,
The Soloist - both the new book about the violinist and the older book about the young man visiting China,
Riding the Iron Rooster,
Sex Lives of Cannibals,
Getting Stoned with Savages,
The Island of Lost Maps,
Embracing Defeat,
The 50's,
All of Robertson Davies,
A Dance to the Music of Time,
Guns, Germs and Steel,
The Black Swan,
Freakonomics,
Blink,
From Beirut to Jersualem,
The Iron Cage,
The Eyre Affair (and all the other books),
Moo,
Agatha Christie, PD Jame, Ngaio Marsh,
Through a Dark Wood Wandering,
Kristin Lavransdattar,
Waiting- (Chinese Novel),
Snow,
Stranger in the Forest: on Foot Across Borneo,
Shooting the Boh,
In Defense of Food,
the Omnivore's Dilemma,
The Ghosts of Evolution,
Darwin Among the Machines,
The True Believer,
The Art of War,
How Proust Can Save Your Life,
anything by Bertrand Russell.

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