I went to Oxford to participate in a degree ceremony (finally!), and the week was one long convivium; every day I rushed from lunch to tea to dinner, with hardly any time in between. It was like a banquet after a long fast. (That's an exaggeration; I see people in New York too; but not three times a day.)

In the brief intervals between meals I bought books:

Novels:

Hardy, Return of the Native
Owen Sheers, Dust Diaries

Children:
Norton, The Complete Borrowers
Pullman, The Scarecrow and his Servant

Poetry:
Browning, Poems and Plays

Essays:
George Eliot, Selected Critical Writings
Sebald, Campo Santo
Pater, The Renaissance

S gave me Faulkner's Wild Palms.

Thank you, S!


Recommendations:

Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian trilogy, starting with The Writing on the Wall (Marion)
Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française (Marion)

Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (Sue)
Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (Sue)

Jenny Uglow's biography of George Eliot (Deborah)