Older Posts: 2012

21 Revolutions Podcast: Elizabeth Reeder: Everyday Wintergreen

In the fourth of our new Glasgow Women’s Library podcasts, Elizabeth Reeder reads her new story, Everyday Wintergreen, and talks about the inspiration behind the work.

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Red dust road

She tells tales of the everyday and gives voice to people you can actually imagine meeting in your daily life. But in bringing these people to life on the page and narrating everyday experiences, she suffuses the apparently ordinary with the truly magical.

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This is not about me

At the end of the book you feel although she is indelibly shaped by her childhood, she is not defined by it.

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The gathering night

Besides being a good read, this novel has made me re-assess present day family and community relationships and interdependence.

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A concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers by Xiaolu Guo

It’s an illuminating examination of the points at which an Eastern and a Western culture intersect, a remarkable exposure of the flaws in common stereotypes, and a convincing portrait of a young woman discovering herself against the backdrop of urban Britain.

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What-I’m-Not Song

It just filled me with joy when I came across it, it’s empowering in the way that only telling it like it really is can be.

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Small island

The female characters particularly stand out as they are both very individual and don’t give in to pressure to act a certain way during a time when I think that would be particularly difficult.

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Mavis’s shoes

This story tells how families were fragmented and how some lucky ones found each other. Although fiction, the horror of the greatest loss of civilian life, in a Scottish town, in World War II, is described, as is the warmth and resilience of the `Bankies`. The author has brought the Blitz alive through Lenny and her war experience.

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The shipping news

I loved this book when I read it because it’s dark, but it is positive in the end, the prose is great, the language is rich and the whole tapestry of these imperfect human beings and their lives in this small and slightly weird community is very rich and satisfying.

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Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

I also enjoyed it because it’s an escape, which is sometimes what reading should be – it’s funny and gentle but very true about people.

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