Tea or Books? #90: Good or Bad Reading Year? and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn vs O, The Brave Music

Betty Smith, Dorothy Evelyn Smith, and a review of our reading years… In the first half, we look back over a very unusual year and ask – was it a good reading year or a bad reading year? We’ve not

Betty Smith, Dorothy Evelyn Smith, and a review of our reading years…

In the first half, we look back over a very unusual year and ask – was it a good reading year or a bad reading year? We’ve not talked much about the pandemic this year, because we want this to be one of the places people can escape from all that, but in this episode we’ve talked about how it affects our reading.

In the second half, in a slight change to the advertised pairing, we compare O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Both are coming-of-age novels set in the 1910s and published in the 1940s, though in very different environments.

We’ll see you in the new year – in the meantime, you can listen to this podcast on Spotify, via your podcast app, or at Apple podcasts. You can get in touch at [email protected] and/or support the podcast at Patreon.

Thanks to Arpita of Bag Full of Books for her wonderful contribution to our Dorothy Evelyn Smith conversation!

Have a lovely Christmas and a happy new year – here’s hoping 2021 is better than 2020.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Three Kings by Stephen Beresford

Present Laughter by Noel Coward

Have His Carcass by Dorothy L Sayers

The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Willa Cather

Emily Eden

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

Ali Smith

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Virginia Woolf

Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford

John Buchan

A House in the Country by Ruth Adam

A Woman’s Place by Ruth Adam

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey

Alva and Irva by Edward Carey

Little by Edward Carey

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami

Leila Slimani

Jeeves and Wooster series by P.G. Wodehouse

The Girl on the Boat by P.G. Wodehouse

Miss Plum and Miss Penny by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

Beyond the Gates by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

Proud Citadel by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

The Lovely Day by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton

Miss Read

Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith

Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim

Father by Elizabeth von Arnim