We watched IDENTIKIT (1974, aka THE DRIVER’S SEAT) last night & this film is bonkers in the best kind of way! Now, I need to read Muriel Spark’s book.
Kim McNeill •📚🌿☕️
@joiedevivre9.bsky.social
avid reader w/focus on womxn writers • virgo sun sagittarius moon • my library is an archive of longings • feminist #NYRBWomen26 #SundaySarton #AContinuation Pacific Coast • joiedevivre9.com
Now that we've all seen the WICKER trailer, may I also interest you in a brilliant little novella about a bored wife having an affair with a fish/frog monster called Larry who loves avocados?
“The form in my life is to keep my center strong & not dispersed…I am at my desk from 3 to 4 hours every day…It has to be the morning, before one’s mind is all cluttered up, when the door to the subconscious is still open…” — May Sarton, A Self-Portrait #SundaySarton 👇
#NYRBWomen26 The Sweet Dove Died "Yet, when one came to think of it, the only flowers that were really perfect were those, like the peonies that went so well with one’s charming room, that possessed the added grace of having been presented to oneself." Finished. I'm sad now.
#NYRBWomen26 - Don’t miss this thoughtful thread 🧵 from @sediziosevoci.bsky.social about Barbara Pym & THE SWEET DOVE DIED.
Reticule of Velma@sediziosevoci.bsky.social · 3w agoThe protagonists of Barbara Pym novels tend to be downwardly mobile gentlewomen whose respectable middle-class backgrounds and expensive educations haven't saved them from having to scrounge for a living in marginal academic or editing jobs beneath their station-- #nyrbwomen26
Couldn't stop/had to finish The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym. This is only my 2nd Pym (I've read Excellent Women 2x) but I see potential hallmarks: a fascination with furniture, flowers, pretty conniving women as villains, and a dry biting wit about characters and social situations. #NYRBwomen26
#NYRBWomen26 ‘I shall always love you,’ James went on, hardly making things better, for ‘always’ had such a final sound about it; it might just as well have been ‘never’.
Here's another Barbara Pym novel I loved - THE SWEET DOVE DIED. A dark, beautifully written tale of ageing, loneliness, and possessive love, laced with flashes of Pym's trademark wit. Read this for #NYRBWomen26. readersretreat2017.wordpress.com/2026/07/27/t...
The Sweet Dove Died – Barbara Pym
The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym is a dark yet poignant tale of loneliness, aging, and possessive love laced with doses of Pym's trademark wit.
readersretreat2017.wordpress.com
“The only author Owens regularly cited as an influence was Flannery O’Connor, but it is Shirley Jackson, one of O’Connor‘s American contemporaries, that comes to mind most when reading FOR THE LOVE OF WILLIE.” — from the intro by Heather Parry #NowReading
We watched an early film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien last night, A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S (1984). It has such a beautiful rhythm to it. Intimately observed from the children’s perspective, it’s said to be an inspiration for MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. Highly recommend!
The original dust jacket for CHEERFUL WEATHER FOR THE WEDDING by Julia Strachey was designed by Duncan Grant. The book was published by Hogarth Press in September 1932. #NowReading
“To grow old is to wrap ourselves up well so we can wander warmly through our own private catacombs.” Translated by Derek Coltman, foreword by Deborah Levy, this little book is unique & poignant, poetic & heartbreaking. I definitely want to read more of Leduc’s writing.
The Summer Catalogue is out for one of my favorite London bookshops, John Sandoe Books!! 💫 (I’ve added several titles to my wishlist.) johnsandoe.com/product-cate...
Summer Books 2026 Archives
We put together these lists four times a year, combing publishers’ catalogues for the best new books, from the biggest imprints to tiny independent presses.
johnsandoe.com
I often feel that Pym is a little mean-spirited towards her aging single female protagonists. I read that she wasn’t too happy about her singlehood & loved being in love, I wonder if there are some complicated self-deprecating feelings behind all her spinsters. Need to read this biog! #nyrbwomen26
In the more flattering light of the converted oil lamps she seemed younger than in the daylight, or if not exactly young, then of no particular age. 17 C3 The Sweet Dove Died #BarbaraPym Been waiting to read this with #NYRBWomen26 ! (Bought this lovely former Wallington Library book awhile ago.)
“Leonora liked to think of her life as calm of mind, all passion spent, or, more rarely, as emotion recollected in tranquillity.” (p16) #NyRBWomen26
Mina Loy’s Lamp Shop: “Loy designed the lamps herself, using antique bottles from her bottle collection as the lamp base … inspired by the oceans, celestial maps, and the natural world … The lamps sold well: Loy advertised them as “L’Ombre féerique” (fairy shadows)“ mina-loy.com/chapters/sur...
Joining in with #nyrbwomen26 July read 📖 this will be my 2nd Pym (after Excellent Women), slightly apprehensive as I’ve not felt in the mood for my midcentury ladies lately. Hope this will get me back on track #booksky
Kim McNeill •📚🌿☕️@joiedevivre9.bsky.social · last mo.New month, next up for #NYRBWomen26 & #SundaySarton… Here are the page guides. More info at www.joiedevivre9.com
My thoughts on Barbara Pym's THE SWEET DOVE DIED, the current read for @joiedevivre9.bsky.social's #NYRBWomen26 Top-tier Pym. A charming, poignant, beautifully written novel about the narrowing opportunities for love as we age & lose our lustre. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/03/02/t...
The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym
I love Barbara Pym, an author whose gentle explorations of unrequited love amongst the genteel middle-classes are both charming and quietly poignant. She creates an idiosyncratic yet oddly recognis…
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
✨June Reading Wrap-Up ✨ It was another chaotic work month, but a blissful month of reading on my back porch & on a blanket near the lake. So many 4 & 5 star reads!
New month, next up for #NYRBWomen26 & #SundaySarton… Here are the page guides. More info at www.joiedevivre9.com
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS. A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading. —Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
“The experience of duration in reading became its own mystical pleasure. Did love ever arrive? Poetry arrived, and what is the difference.” — Lisa Robertson, Riverwork
