Friday, April 4, 2008

Wilson, Emily Herring (ed.) Two gardeners: A friendship in letters. Beacon: 2003.

I am getting inspired as I start looking at librarian blogs all over the place. Let's try my hand at reviewing books! I've always done a little of that over at bluepixie.com but it's never been permanent. But I figure, since I read a fair number of garden-related and cookbooks, why don't I just pop the reviews I have in here. Good for record purposes, if nothing else, to remind myself of what I might consider giving to others.

I will be putting a link to the book I am currently reading in the sidebar, I think, although for now it's a link to the one I have just finished because I haven't picked up anything else yet. That said, the next one is on its way from Amazon, to arrive in my excited hands by next weekend...

The following book I was thinking I would give to my grandmother after I was done with it, but it's not really in any shape to be gifted anymore. Or really shared. But I'll suggest it to Grandma as a library read, I think.

Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters
(Emily Herring Wilson, ed.)

I picked this book up at Nicholas Hoare on Sussex St. and have finally finished reading it after several months. It's been in my bag for a while, and unfortunately looks a little worse for wear (there was an applesauce accident). This is a collection of letters from Katharine S. White (editor of the New Yorker and wife of E.B. White) and Elizabeth Lawrence (a garden writer from South Carolina). The letters themselves are wonderful, but I'm not sure about the editing. It's hard to know without seeing the letters myself, but one gets the impression that the editing was a bit heavy-handed in an effort to impose a narrative on the correspondence. I don't like feeling like I'm missing part of the story. Some of the best stuff is outside the narrative; Lawrence in particular had a wicked sense of humour, and I thoroughly enjoyed when she got off-topic. All-in-all, informative (I have picked up a couple of titles I think I should have a look at now) and a very pleasant read.

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