Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History by Simon Goldhill
Voting ended onMay 16
Book summaries below:
Understory: a life with trees by Inga Simpson
This is a journey of staying in once place, told through trees.
For ten years, Inga Simpson lived inside a forest.
Each chapter of this nature writing-memoir explores a particular species of tree, layering description, anecdote, and natural history to tell the story of a scrap of forest in the Sunshine Coast hinterland - how the author came to be there and the ways it has shaped her life.
In many ways, it's the story of a treechange, of escaping suburban Brisbane for a cottage on ten acres in search of a quiet life. Of establishing a writers retreat shortly before the Global Financial Crisis, and losing just about everything.
It is also the story of what the author found: the literature of nature.
"I see the world through trees. Every window and doorway frames trunks, limbs, and leaves. My light is their light, filtered green. My air is their exhalation."
Nonfiction, memoir, nature
Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History by Simon Goldhill
Queer Cambridge recounts the untold story of a gay community living, for many decades, at the very heart of the British Establishment. Making effective use of chiefly forgotten archival sources – including personal diaries and letters – the author reveals a network that was in equal parts tolerant and acerbic, and within which the queer Fellows of Cambridge University explored bold new forms of camaraderie and relationship. Goldhill examines too the huge influence that these individuals had on British culture, in its arts, politics, music, theatre and self-understanding. During difficult decades when homosexuality was unlawful, gay academics – who included celebrated literary and scientific figures like E. M. Forster, M. R. James, Rupert Brooke and Alan Turing – lived, loved, and grew old together, bringing new generations into their midst. Their remarkable stories add up not just to an alternative history of male homosexuality in Britain, but to an alternative history of Cambridge itself.
Reviews of books in the ‘history, memoir and biography’ genre remained constant for July, with nineteen books reviewed over the month .There were insightful reviews on books that have been mentioned in round-ups earlier this year, including Anna Greenwood’s review (here) of Julia Baird’s Victoria: The Queen, Bernard Whimpress’ review (here) of Jill Roe’s Our Fathers Cleared the Bushand Louise’s…
Nest written and read by Inga Simpson — a review of a literary audiobook
A review by Nalini Haynes Jen, a middle-aged woman, treats her house like her nest while watching nests and drawing a bird’s nest. A child is abducted, echoing her past when Michael, a friend who was like a brother to her, was abducted when she was a child. Jen volunteers in land care management but, otherwise, tries to stay out of village politics and yet events have a momentum that impacts upon…
