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 teaorbooks@gmail.com 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