Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

(These are roughly in the order in which I read them).

Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret
The Portrait of a Lady
A View from a Bridge
The Great Gatsby
The Handmaid’s Tale
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Mrs. Dalloway
Vanity Fair
Crime and Punishment
Wild Swans
Generation X
Fugitive Pieces
The War After
Lost in Translation
Elizabeth Costello

Saw Agnes Varda’s Plages d’Agnes – a very eccentric, poetic and funny documentary about her life (if a little too long).  The only film I’ve seen at the festival this year.

Then this evening went to hear Toni Morrison talk about her new book A Mercy and American politics – how could she not.  She was warm, generous and funny.

I’m feeling privileged to have access to the thoughts and views of two wonderful, inspiring women.

Spinoza and Secular Jewish Culture
The Lost: A Search for Six out of Six Million
The Clothes on Their Backs
Great Writers of the 20th Century: Isaiah Berlin
In Search of Happiness
In Praise of Diasporas
Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors

And I’m expecting friends to point out the ones I’ve missed.

That was a few weeks ago and since then I’ve ‘rediscovered’ books. I’ve read Marish Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics – fun, but not quite The Secret History promised on the back cover. Went back to Suite Francaise which was stunning and then reading all the info at the back sad and tragic. There seem to be lots of books I’ve started this year and not finished, so now I’ve started The Inheritance of Loss (I so love that title) again and whereas before I thought it was dense and hard to understand, now its beautiful and clever and witty and wise.

A really wonderful session with Julia Neuberger, Lynne Segal and Susannah Heschel discussing the women’s movement and Judaism and so much more. I’d love to be in a classroom with Susannah Heschel even though it would be a challenge and she could (and did) go off into a language that I didn’t understand, a language of tradition that I have never learnt, but it would be expanding.

I was back for the evening sessions. The first was Judith Butler and Udi Aloni – Judith Butler, who D has been raving about since she saw the session was on, lived up to my subsequent high expectations. She’s a theorist and philosopher with a cult following – Bianca Jagger, Helena Kennedy and Lynne Segal were there amongst others.  Her new book Precarious Life deals with US policy since 9/11:

…And though for some, mourning can only be resolved through violence, it seems clear that violence only brings on more loss, and the failure to heed the claim of precarious life only leads, again and again, to the dry grief of an endless political rage…

I missed the beginning of Howard Jacobson and to be honest I found it hard to concentrate with my head still in the previous session, but Peter Florence did a great job and at any other time it would have been fascinating to hear about Jacobson’s childhood and the themes in his new book. And he has that ability to make an audience of 600 feel as if they are part of a small intimate group, a warm and cosy way to end the festival.