Some days I just can't wait for bed time, especially with a pile of books like this waiting for me. I was recommended The Paris Wife by a friend, it is about Hemingway's wife. I have followed Rachel Allen's cooking career a bit since I have been helping out a friend opening a cook school here in Hawke's Bay, so it was a treat to find this book Home Cooking at the library. Fairytale Food by Lucie Cash, looks cute but not very practical. And, finally, ah sweetness, the latest Country Living magazine.
Every quite often it seems a New Zealand author writes a book that I love so much that I can't stop talking about it. In the last few years there was Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs, then Mr Pip , and this time it is..... The Conductor by Sarah Quigley. The Conductor by Sarah Quigley It's cold, it's spare and it's very stark, but Sarah Quigley has created something powerfully beautiful in this book that follows the story of the composition and first performance of Shostakovich's 7th symphony amidst the seige on Leningrad by the Nazi's in 1941. Based around the story of Shostakovich’s single-minded endeavour to write his 7 th Symphony, and see it performed, the book shows the lengths that an artist will go to to express himself. While most people are fleeing the city, and others starving and dying, Shostakovich determinedly writes his piece of music, and it falls upon conductor Karl Eliasberg to rise above his own starvation and grief to bring toget...
Looks like a great stack. I feel the same way, I love heading off to bed knowing I have a great book to read! It always has been, and I imagine always will be what puts me to sleep at night :)
ReplyDeletetruely nothing nicer than a pile of good books and a warm blanket. Except perhaps those cute spotty curtains!
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