Personal Pleasures

Rose Macaulay was one of the most popular satirical novelists of her day. In this lively, anecdotal collection, she turns her admittedly opinionated attention to life's random, and largely unrecorded, pleasures. From as-tronomy to new cars, church-going to the turtles in Hyde Park, she never fails to delight and amuse with her sure philosophical sense, sharp wit, and unerring eye for life's subtle ironies. "How true it is that every pleasure has also its reverse side, in brief, its pain. Therefore, I have added to most of my pleasures the little flavor of bitterness, the flaw in their perfec-tions . . . which tang their sweetness and remind us of their mortality and our own, and that nothing in this world is perfect."