“Heap on more wood! The wind is chill ; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.” (Sir Walter Scott – “Christmas in the Olden Time” from Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, 1808) With hardly one month left until Christmas, it’s high time for us to look for little treasures to put under the … Continue reading →
Dear readers, I’d better hurry if I want to give you one or two more ideas of books to offer at Christmas for we can already hear the merry sound of the jingle bells of Santa Claus’s sleigh. We are leaving tomorrow for our holiday in the family, a round trip of more than 2000 km and I’ve still … Continue reading →
.. Mairiuna, I just stumbled upon an article in the Scotsman online magazine that compiles a list of top Scottish authors’ favourite books for the year 2012. In all, 44 authors contributed to this project. Wow… Ain’t it exciting to find out what our best authors reads are? So happy to find on the list Christopher Brookmyre, Alistair Moffat, Alexander McCall Smith … Continue reading →
Hi everybody, We don’t live in Edinburgh and, as the number of our visits there happen to be rather limited, our vision of this fascinating city owes much to our readings, each of them adding its little touch to the sense of place we got there and making us still more eager to go back to the beautiful Scottish … Continue reading →
Hi Mairiuna! First, let me tell you that I absolutely fell in love with Arnold Lobel’s illustration “Books to the Ceiling” that we can see inside your post: “First Steps in Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street… Very original rendering of a house full of books! As we are both great book lovers, no wonder this charming illustration depicting a … Continue reading →
Books to the ceiling, books to the sky. My piles of books are a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! (Arnold Lobel – Whiskers & Rhyme) Hi everybody! The little corner of my library devoted to Alexander McCall Smith’s books is beginning to become crowded. As I’ve mentioned in my last post, … Continue reading →
Hi everybody! With autumn already touching our gardens and woods with its warm colours, it may seem a little late to write a page about “summer reading” but isn’t it a good idea to make summer last a little longer. Indeed, the Indian Summer is still to come, isn’t it Janice? But before embarking on our ”summer … Continue reading →
The first Scottish fictional female detective, Valeria, created by Wilkie Collins, back in 1875, in his book titled The Law and the Lady was all about attacking the “Not Proven” verdict that still exists today in Scotland laws. It is quite surprising Mairiuna, that Wilkie Collins had a great success with this book, because, in those times, women were not … Continue reading →
