Another Time - W. H. Auden

Advantages: cheers you up
Disadvantages: you're left wanting more

...After watching the programmes on television, telling us of tales of love and more recently Christmas poems, I wasn't surprised to find a whole stack of books edited by Daisy Goodwin on the shops shelves. But this is a good thing. This is a woman who understands and has been to places that we have all visited and some that we would rather not remember, and in this book there is a poem for every occasion. Ones that let us grieve and mourn, such a s Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden and the infamous Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep to poems that make us realise that maybe life isn't as bad as it seems like Streemin by Roger McGough and Loss by Wendy Cope. This book has it covered with poems that make you laugh and cry, and even a section called "Don't let the B******s Grind You Down." It holds within its small binding a cornucopia of poems... Read review

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Advantages: Exceedingly droll.
Disadvantages: He stops in 1973 (presumably his experiences as an MP are being held back for volume two).

..., restauranteur, and probably some other French words beginning with R too. "I wonder," he says at the end of the prologue in which he describes what happened once when he was sent to the headmaster for a beating, "is this where one starts an autobiography - the circumstances of one's first grope...?" To say that there is a laugh-a-page would be an understatement; and there is no shortage of (slightly irreverant) name-dropping along the way either: " ...At the Spenders' I met W. H. Auden, whose poetry I hugely admired and could recite in great wodges, Auden urinated in the kitchen sink, in full view of us all, and had the most disgusting table manners I ever encountered..." "...invited to lunch with Somerset Maugham, who had the worst halitosis I have encountered. Picasso asked me to visit him at Vallauris..." He even went drinking with Dylan Thomas... Read review

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Advantages: quality of writing - great dialogue
Disadvantages: it can be complicated and don't expect every death to have meaning

...but often it was sordid. However this obsession with reality did not mean that he resorted to the terse prose of many pulp fiction writers. He loved similies and metaphors and had a huge knowledge of plant life that would manage to work its way into most descriptions. And he was a great writer, lauded by not only his contemporaries but also such luminaries as T S Eliot and W H Auden. In fact for most of his life, Chandler could not stop writing. Although his output in terms of books is fairly small he was an avid letter writer and there are collections of his letters available although they are a bit of an acquired taste. So this book is a great read, not just as a piece of crime fiction, but as a piece of fiction and deserves a place on anyone's bookshelf.... Read review

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