in praise of lectures

and the dignified practice of reading

I’m in love with a new book.

Susie Boyt’s Loved and Missed. It’s about Ruth, a single mother in North London who decides to kidnap her teenage heroin addict daughter’s baby. Really, though, like all great novels it's a story about everything. Families. Relationships. Pain. Joy. Life on earth basically.

One of the things that sets the novel apart for me …