Bookowski's Blog

                       ‘Whatever has happened to me, or has not, with lovers and husbands, continuity and security have been built on the excellence of friendships. Yet these connections between women are taken for granted, a backdrop to the real business of life…It takes only the slightest change of focus to see that these neglected intimacies, independent of more passionate demands, can offer the terms on which we best learn to be ourselves.”  From Poppy by Druisilla Modjeska (1990)    These two books about friendships between women couldn’t be more different - ...

If I were to make list of things I love in life, cats and tales of polar expeditions would definitely feature. So when Grand Days’ Tamara handed me Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition:  The Remarkable Journey of Shackleton’s Polar-bound Cat (Complete and Unabridged) by Caroline Alexander, I was excited.  I had never heard of it – a diary written by a cat who participated in one of the greatest polar expeditions of all times. A book written just for me!  On the front cover of the book there is a photo of a tiger-striped tabby cat with dramatic dark markings standing...

Working in Grand Days one day, putting some new old books on the shelves, I came across Iris Origo’s Images and Shadows and was delighted.  I’d read a review of it and four other books of hers in London Review of Books (The Italianness of it All by Tessa Hadley, 24 May 2018) and had put her into that long list of ‘must read’s in the back of my mind. I had assumed from her name that she must be Italian and that drew me in from the start.  I have long loved Italy and things Italian and have been...

It’s very hard to choose, but Henri Matisse’s painting, The Conversation, is my favourite of all his works.  It is a big painting of Mr and Mrs Matisse poised for speech but at that captured moment apparently silent, he standing, in a pair of blue and white striped pyjamas, hand in pocket; she sitting in her black dressing gown with green trim. They face each other and one feels the tension between them.  There is a balcony behind them and a garden beyond. For a long time I had assumed the conversation to be happening at night-time, but outside it...