10 Writers known by their double initial

1. A A Milne (Alan Alexander)
2. C S Lewis (Clive Staples)
3. G K Chesterton (Gilbert Keith)
4. H G Wells (Herbert George)
5. P G Wodehouse (Pelham Grenville)
6. T S Eliot (Thomas Stearns)
7. P L Travers (Pamela Lyndon)
8. P D James(Phyllis Doris)
9. V S Naipaul (Vidiadhar Surajprasad)
10. W H Auden (Wystan Hugh)

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Sleep no more

I couldn't resist this collection of short stories by P D James when I saw it the other day. I enjoyed last Christmas's Mistletoe murder collection and thought this would be nice too. I've read it already partly because it is not as Christmassy as the last one, only one story being really of that sort. It is an interesting phenomenon the detective story and the late P D James is clearly a master of it. Very enjoyable.

Christmas Books 2016

People often buy me books at Christmas. It's not easy to be sure what I haven't got or what I'd really like but my wife and sons did well this year (four sons and their spouses went for books, the youngest bought me a zebra tie).

So my wife bought me Sinclair Ferguson's beautifully presented Banner book Child in the manger; My oldest son and his wife perhaps scored best with Blitzed a newly translated pharmacological investigation of Hitler and the Third Reich; the next pair did well too with the massive Silk Roads a new history of the world; number three and his fiancee went for The A-Z of Pointless spot on again and a different sort of book; my fourth son went for the daunting 712 More things to draw - I say daunting as I haven't completed my copy of 642 Things to draw yet.

I must admit that I did supplement this with one or two Christmas books of my own, including P D James' The mistletoe murder and Llewelyn Powys's Christmas Lore and Legend a little book of seasonal essays.

I've read most of Blitzed and I've completed the four short stories in The Mistletoe murder and dipped into The A-Z of Pointless and drawn three or four things in the drawing book. Great fun.

Book Buys September on

We had a nice little series going, which is complete until August, simply recording monthly book buys. It all went a bit quiet on that front and so I haven't reported for a while and am not entirely sure where we are. I did mention getting a copy of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I had wanted it for a while but having started it I haven't really got into it. I also bought on impulse one day P D James interesting Talking about detective fiction which I have almost completed.

For another five weeks The Times were giving away Penguin paperbacks again on weekdays so I have another 20 or so of those. Some are titles I already had (eg Tlast of the Mohicans, The Moonstone, Frankenstein) but most I didn't. I read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep which I had never tackled some of the science volumes.

That's all very secular. I have also purchased Malcom McLean's book on The Lord's Supper for the John Owen Centre reading group.