Dear Great Book Guru, There are signs of Spring all over Sea Cliff and I feel the need to find a fresh new author to read during this season. Do you have any ideas? Smitten with Spring

Dear Smitten, I know that feeling so well and every year at this time I turn to a fresh new author and every year it is the same author- Barbara Pym. Pym wrote up until her death in 1980 and produced about a dozen novels , each of them a jewel to be read and reread many times. Her novels are about the exquisite loveliness of everyday life. Each word, each gesture, each character is treated with humor, attention, and respect. While nothing is overlooked by this author, the books are not lengthly tomes, but two to three hundred page chronicles of human interaction and reflection. The titles often come from English poetry: SOME TAME GAZELLE, THE SWEET DOVE DIED, A GLASS OF BLESSINGS…but none of what I have said, captures the gentle but frequently biting insights Pym has into the human condition. This weekend, I will be attending an annual conference at Harvard University analyzing and celebrating her works; the focus will be on one of her novels: a GLASS OF BLESSINGS. The title comes from the George Herbert poem "The Pulley." The main character Wilmet Forsyth is a young woman who finds herself misjudging many situations she finds herself in, while the other characters and the reader can see quite clearly the obvious folly of her ways. Her descriptions of food, clothing, and those daily rituals which consume our days envelop the reader in a world that is both familiar and unique. The novels are not plot- driven, which accounts for the pleasure one gets in rereading and finding level after level of new insight. Pym is a novelist who should be on every discerning reader's top ten list- she is not to be missed! Check out other recommendations at greatbookguru.blogspot.com and, of course, Pym's novels are available at the Sea Cliff Library.