Medlempoppi

Riktigt namn

Linda Proud

Om mitt bibliotek

It is vast. When people visit for the first time, they recoil as they enter the dining room, for it is book-lined from floor to ceiling (and that's only half of it - the rest of it's upstairs). Whether they recoil in horror or delighted surprise determines whether or not they get invited again. While fashion in interior decor dictates bookless homes, we swim against the tide. We're maximalist clutterbugs! There is no chance that all the books will ever be listed here. The best I could do was to select favourites and resolve to add all new acquisitions. But generically the library covers art, history, philosophy, religion, linguistics, economics, mythology, fiction, and a life-long collection of Renaissance books specific to Florence and Italy. I've just started to develop piles. Not the painful kind, but piles of books awaiting the magical appearance of extra bookshelves somewhere.

Om mig

How do you define 'me'? What I do for a living? What I do for love? What I do for duty? OK, let's have a try. My body is older than my spirit, and reflects my love of home-grown food and chocolate. Most of my working life I was freelance in publishing but as the years passed I began to earn money from my writing. Not directly, you understand. In this business you are either a pauper or a millionaire: there's not much in between. But having written and published several books, I began to be commissioned to write others, to write reviews, give talks, mentor aspiring writers and work freelance for literary consultancies. So I live a literary life and am grateful.

Apart from that, I look after the family: one husband, one very elderly mother, two young cats. We do grow our own food - vegetables at the moment, but moving on to chickens soon - and that is time consuming but doubles as a social life.

From home we run Godstow Press, publishing one or two books a year and lavishing them with time and attention. Life is very full and it is always difficult finding writing time, even more so when you've just finished a project that took thirty-three years and are a bit diffident about starting the next.

We live on the outskirts of Oxford, UK, in a wonderful village so lively and interesting that we only go once a month into the city (two miles away) and never go any further than London, which feels like a major expedition. The days of holidays and airports are behind us, cheerfully surrendered for the sake of the planet (although if anyone offered me a good reason for going to Italy I'd be off like a shot).

Vistelseort

Oxford, UK

Webbplats

http://www.lindaproud.com www.godstowpress.co.uk

Även på

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Läser just nu

The Philosophers' Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination av Patrick Harpur

Favoritförfattare

Peter Ackroyd, Lindsay Clarke, Marsilio Ficino, Tim Pears

Medlemmens krets

Vänner

margad, Megli, Samten, theoldman, writingstix