Book challenge #33: A book you started but never finished

A Room Of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain.”

A few weeks ago, my friend discovered, to her horror, that I hadn’t read A Room Of One’s Own, and instructed me to read it immediately. The following day, I borrowed the library copy (which was published in 1967 and has the school’s name embossed in gold on the cover) and took it with me on the train to Manchester. Between gazing out of the window, and being maddened by the inconsiderate man sitting across from me, I devoured it. I read another good chunk on the way home, between naps and obsessively checking the National Rail app to work out whether I would be home in time for the new series of Downton Abbey (I was, by three minutes).

And then, for some reason which escapes me, I left it on my bedside table for almost a month, only picking it up again today because I was tidying, and remembered that I hadn’t finished it. I’d only got seven pages left. I probably could have read them on the tube.

A Room Of One’s Own is, at once, utterly of its time, and completely relatable. Everything has changed, and nothing. It is witty and it is snarky and it reminds me of painful things and I need to read it again so I guess I’ll be using one of my Books Are My Bag tokens to buy a copy with.

Other categories that A Room Of One’s Own fits into: a book by a female author, a nonfiction book, a book you can finish in a day

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