Weekend Reading List

I can hear the Formula 1 race cars roar their rounds (how many?) from my living room, so, this being the hottest of weekends, I've decided to up the aircon and settle luxuriously down in the room, duvet to chin, Laduree candle burning. While Singapore is in an uproar with a sense of festivity (as well as traffic woes), yours truly has decided that it's all buzz (literally too: The 'roar' of the race sounds like nothing so much as a persistent fly buzzing - I simply can't understand the taitai set wanting to get all dressed up and going out in this heat. Do they have so little inner resource?). I've started to re-read Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, an old favourite; I've forgotten the plot entirely. I've also got a huge stack of newspapers my friend PH collected for me - the Finacial Times are the same lovely colour as my sheets, and the writing is superb. I've dug up an old scrap book to look at. I used to make bulging scrap books filled with notes, cards, clippings, drawings, pressed flowers, polaroids (yes, we used those then!) and looking through it feels like time travel to a more innocent, optimistic time.
In it, I found a note from TLS, my editor that year, it said: "Keep text short pse - we'd be loath to cut your witty prose!"
Those were the good old days indeed.
(Photo of Edith Wharton in 1905)