Blackburn, Thornton, Hibbert, Wise

I am presently reading a memoir, The Three of Us, by Julia Blackburn, and it is a great read. It is written without sentimentality or self-pity, with an evocative sense of place and time. I really like it. I also read Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World. It covered a Christie's auction, a critique session at a big art school, the Venice Biennale, and so on. First of all, I thought it was non-fiction, but the author put phone conversations as if she were present at certain events. At least she tells us that she does so in the conclusion, but now I don't know if she was there or not. Not much content surprised me, it was about SOCIETY artists, in a way. I also thought the author's blurb, which I now know is written by the authors themselves, went overboard: "Britain's hippest academic?" This book wasn't written by an academic, there is not enough hard fact in it. Then I read Hibbert's Borgias and Their Enemies, which disappointed me as being a little lightweight. I have read other books by Hibbert, and I quite like him generally. Finally, I read Wise's Blackest Streets, about the Nicol slum in London in the nineteenth century. It was interesting for what it revealed. What stands out for me was not the desolate conditions, about which I had read in more detail elsewhere. It was that from time to time someone who was born to a better class was now reduced to living there. I always wondered what happened to people who lost their job, got sick, or drank all their money. I had read Wharton's House of Mirth, but this was about real people.

I also read an issue of The New Yorker.