An Excellent Woman

Image of Barbara Pym and one of her beloved cats from  

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/14/barbara_pym_gets_rediscovered_%E2%80%94_again/

I am very excited to learn just now that there is to be a Barbara Pym Reading Week online from June 1st to 8th. It is timed to commemorate one hundred years since her birth. As you may already know, Barbara Pym is my favourite author, without doubt or peer. I absolutely love her keenly observed novels in which very little appears to happen...but that's precisely Miss Pym's genius, in my view. In fact, everything is happening. If, on some distant day in the future, my own efforts with fiction writing were to be compared with Barbara Pym's - well, suffice it to say (with Pymmesque understatement), I would be very, very happy.

Have you heard of Barbara Pym? If so, do you like her books (I know I am preaching to at least one convert...librarygirl)? My favourites would be Excellent Women, A Glass of Blessings and An Unsuitable Attachment. Her letters and diaries are wonderful too.

If you would like to read more about Barbara Pym Reading Week, take a look at http://myporchblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/barbara-pym-reading-week-is-almost-here.html

And to wrap up the week, I couldn't resist posting a clip from The Two Ronnies. They were a tv staple in our house in the 70s and 80s and as much as I complained about them then (like any teenager worth their salt), I now realise they were in fact very, very funny.

Have a lovely weekend!