Author Archives: Beth Wren
The London Diaries: Horniman Museum and Gardens
If you’re anything like me and the thought of visiting London’s V&A, or the Natural History Museum on a Saturday afternoon fills you with fear, you might like to try the quieter and smaller Horniman Museum and Gardens, tucked away in SE London. The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a 5 minute walk from Forest Hill […]
Review: Three Daughters of Eve, Elif Shafak
Is it cheating to listen to a book instead of reading it? I’ve always somehow counted it as morally wrong in typical snooty bookworm style. But I had a deadline to read this book, and with a free Audible credit and a lot of time commuting and pottering where I liked to listen to […]
Poetry Corner | Poem #31
And I was always told that there was a permanence in change.
The Diary of an Unpublished Author #8
Dear Diary, This one is all about rejections. Dum, dum, dum. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t received any rejections from literary agents in the quest for a book publishing deal… Don’t worry, people will tell you. [Insert famous author name here] received hundreds of rejections before they finally got published. That’s all well and good, and […]
Review: The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads: Opens at Nightfall Closes at Dawn As the sun disappears beyond the horizon, all over the tents small lights begin to flicker, as though […]
Poetry Corner | Poem #30: Stargazing
I looked up and saw the Milky Way painted across the sky like it wasn’t real and it made me feel like, really, neither was I.
The London Diaries: Snapshots II
Introducing my second instalment of ‘Beth takes photos of everything and decides that they must be shared’. London is lovely, but don’t let the photos fool you: it’s not always blue skies and sun. I just happen to only take pictures when it is. I’m still trying to explore different parts of this city, and […]
Poetry Corner | Poem #29
Perhaps I should have known.
Review: Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
It’s been a long time since a book has affected me so deeply, in both a literary and personal sense. It’s going to be hard to fathom my reaction to Vonnegut’s words (ironically most probably echoing Vonnegut’s failure to fathom the war which is transparent through his words) but I’ll do my best. I lived […]
Review: Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
I don’t know if you can review a book you’ve read twice and you really love, but I’d nonetheless like to share my delight in re-reading one of my favourite Austen novels. I picked up this beautiful edition at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath in something of a Regency-induced dream and promptly decided that […]
