The last of my reviews from the lovely Thames & Hudson’s Autumn catalogue came out on Shiny New Books this week.  Ian Jeffrey’s “How to Read a Photograph” takes the subjective matter of what is a good photograph and aims to answer it by showing us great photographs from a range of photographers from Fox Talbot to contemporary photography artists. For each we have a potted history and then a detailed examination of some seminal photos. There are old favourites and new artists to discover: this helped to cement my understanding of what I really like in a photograph. Reading it is a great learning experience and it’s an interesting read as well as a great reference book.

Read my full review here. Thank you to Thames & Hudson for sending me lovely books in return for an honest review.

When you find yourself downloading a photo and calling it October 2019 7 and it’s got more than one book in it, you know you’re in trouble.

I had to buy myself a new copy of Marianne Grabrucker’s “There’s a Good Girl”, about raising her daughter in the 1980s and noting all the examples of gendered behaviour and speech around her, after I read and reviewed “The Gender Agenda” (my review here), which riffs off this book, and then discovering I couldn’t find my own copy. I must have loaned it to a harrassed parent one day! I managed to score the exact Women’s Press copy I used to have (well the edition, not my actual copy; that would have been weird) from Abe Books and I am tempted to read it again now!

Taking a day out to Alderley Edge to meet one friend and accompany her to another friend’s house for lunch, a lovely forest walk and a long chatty lunch (thanks, Kerry!) didn’t stop Laura and me from darting into one charity shop on the rather well-groomed high street before I caught my train home. I grabbed Bill Jone’s “The Ghost Runner”, which is about the endurance runner, John Tarrant, who accidentally lost his amateur status but joined in races anyway. I’d heard about him from other books so had to get this for just £1 in the Age UK shop. I put Jo Brand’s proper autobiography (vol 2) back on the shelf and now I wish I’d picked it up, so I sense a return visit on the cards!

I have started reading “Girl, Woman, Other” and my goodness, I’m enjoying it, however it was too large a hardback to fit in my handbag for the journey, so I got on with Clair Wills’ “Lovers and Strangers” which is a history of post-war immigration into the UK, and very good it is, too, covering all kinds of people, from Irish people and Displaced Persons to the more familiar Windrush travellers.