My Weekend Reading List

I'm reading Michael Holroyd's excellent A Book of Secrets at the moment. It's rather making me want to read Violet Trefusis, who figures greatly in the book, but who is also (almost?) entirely out of print. (Paging Persephone. Paging NYRB. Paging Neversink.)

But I also had a bit of a geek out moment when he casually mentions his wife, Margaret Drabble. I just read some Margaret Drabble! And loved it! Is it weird to be happy that two authors you enjoy reading are married? Like when I learned Susie Orbach and Jeanette Winterson are a couple.

Gossipy and probably stupid, but still.
But another reason I like A Book of Secrets so much is that he tells the history of these figures through the "women of no importance": the mistresses, the discarded fiancees, the dead wives. Here he is talking in the Guardian a few years back about why he likes writing about women. "I like extraordinary characters, I like irregularity, extreme things happening.