Reading matter. And more mayhem.

Somebody put together a list of six books written by women. If I remember rightly it was something to do with Amazon and the idea was to buy these books as a package to give to girls to read.

Here’s the list:

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Anne of Green Gables by L. Montgomery.
Little Women by Lousa May Alcott
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit

and finally

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

And it’s a good list but I don’t think of Pride and Prejudice as quite fitting in with the other five. I can think of eight-year-olds who would appreciate the first five but who would struggle with the content of Pride and Prejudice.

Or maybe that’s just my idea of the whole thing, After all I know a thirty-odd-year-old who gets excited about reading “Mallory Towers” and other stories about girls’ boarding schools. And really I should not be dismissive of it. After all I enjoy a good escapist science fiction story or detective story.

We don’t need to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky all the time.

As well as that, I really love children’s books. And one of the favourites in our house has long been “The Tiger who came for Tea” by Judith Kerr. So we were all rather sad to hear she had died. However she had reached the grand old age of 95 and seems to have continued working and talking about her work right to the end. May we all do as well!

Today we took ourselves off and voted in the European elections. Now we need to wait for the results.

And the mayhem goes on.

Andrea Leadsom has resigned her post. Michael Heseltine, now a grand old man of the Conservative Party, has had his hand slapped for criticising his party and saying he would vote against them in the European elections.

Conservatives are calling for Mrs May to resign.


And nobody knows who will be in Number 10 when Mr Trump comes to visit.

Such fun and games!