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Deborah Meyler

Goodreads Author

Born

in Manchester, The United Kingdom

Member Since

July 2011

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/deborahmeyler

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I was born in the grim but friendly north, in Manchester, within sight and hearing and inhalation distance of the M62, one of the busiest motorways in the country. You can also see the Pennine hills from my bedroom window, which is still my bedroom window because my mum still lives there.

Things ticked along merrily for 17 years and then I went to Trinity College, Oxford. I chose it because the photograph in the Oxford handbook looked nice. I didn't think I had a chance of getting in really, and nor, encouragingly, did my teachers. I like to think they thought that this was more about class and previous lack of good schooling than innate dimness.

More later...

Now, where was I. Oh yes, I went to Oxford, and it was immensely pleasurable. I fe I was born in the grim but friendly north, in Manchester, within sight and hearing and inhalation distance of the M62, one of the busiest motorways in the country. You can also see the Pennine hills from my bedroom window, which is still my bedroom window because my mum still lives there.

Things ticked along merrily for 17 years and then I went to Trinity College, Oxford. I chose it because the photograph in the Oxford handbook looked nice. I didn't think I had a chance of getting in really, and nor, encouragingly, did my teachers. I like to think they thought that this was more about class and previous lack of good schooling than innate dimness.

More later...

Now, where was I. Oh yes, I went to Oxford, and it was immensely pleasurable. I fell in love, and remain in love, with Oxford. So let me plunge headlong into the cliche of Brideshead, and quote Evelyn Waugh, where Charles is talking of the texts he has neglected; "I remember no syllable of them now, but the other, more ancient, lore which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another to my last hour."

After Oxford I did an M.Phil at St Andrews University, under the supervision of Phillip Mallett. It was on the commodification of women in late nineteenth century American fiction, supposedly, but actually became a thesis on Edith Wharton. St Andrews is another place that it is easy to fall headlong for.

Next I won a scholarship from The Guardian to go to City University, to do a post-graduate diploma in journalism. And after that I messed up a bit by coming to America, where my husband had been offered a job by Cambridge University Press. I wasn't allowed to work at first, which caused some loneliness, but then I got a job in a bookshop, and all was well.

After that I had three babies, and decided, in my great folly, that it was a good idea to stay off work entirely while they were little, and so resent them wildly for the atrophying of my mind. I'm kidding. I didn't resent them. I did resent the piety and wrongheadedness that made me think it was a good idea to opt out of working entirely - it works for lots of women but I found it very very hard.

I don't know if this autobiography is too long, but I am enjoying myself. My two older children got bigger and went to school. I put my littlest daughter into nursery for two hours or so a day, and decided I would write in good earnest. I wrote a book that is under my bed, because I was just warming up and it is all right but not quite good enough, and then I wrote The Bookstore. I enjoyed writing it hugely, despite the difficulty of overcoming idleness every day. Through the very kind offices of a friend named Siobhan Garrigan, I got an agent, who is a tremendously wise person despite her great youth, and she took it from there. Now I am organising my thoughts and ideas for a new book.

I work part time in a parish church in the middle of Cambridge.

...more

6 posts
Deborah Meyler's Blog

Review of "Magic in the Moonlight"

I know it isn't a book, but I am reviewing the film I saw last night. I should be writing, so this will be quick. I should also say that my friends LIKE this film, so it could be that I am just a curmudgeon.

Magic in the Moonlight.

Audiences, by and large, can tell when they’re being spoon-fed a film that someone somewhere thinks they will like, that will make a nice ker-ching noise at the box offi Read more of this blog post »

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Published on September 21, 2014 06:34

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Deborah Meyler’s books

Average rating: 3.07 · 6,755 ratings · 1,204 reviews · 3 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Bookstore 3.07 avg rating — 6,754 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Parish House did not like it 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2016 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Bookstore by Meyler, Deborah (August 20, 2013) Paperback by Deborah Meyler (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

Deborah is Currently Reading

Deborah Meyler is currently reading

The Angel Roofs of East Anglia: Unseen Masterpieces of the Middle Ages

by Michael Rimmer

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Aug 18, 2021 05:19AM

Deborah Meyler is currently reading

History of the Rain

by Niall Williams (Goodreads Author)

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Deborah Meyler said: " I've not finished this book yet, but I am tempted to a mid-read review, partly because I don't want it to end. It reminds me slightly of Ulysses except I am enjoying it; perhaps it reminds me of Dubliners. It also reminds me of John McGahern, but it ...more "

May 21, 2014 06:46AM · see review

Deborah Meyler is currently reading

The Poetics of Space

by Gaston Bachelard

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Apr 07, 2014 06:31AM

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Deborah’s Recent Updates

Deborah Meyler has read Night Journey by Richard Lambert	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Aug 11, 2024 01:53PM · like

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Quotes by Deborah Meyler (?)

“I think there is no difference between love and infatuation. If it works out, we call it love; if it doesn’t, we shrug our shoulders and say it was infatuation. It’s a hindsight word.”
― Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore

tags: hindsight, infatuation, love, real

26 likes

“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.”
― Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore

tags: used-books

13 likes

“We're high on the adrenaline of feeling, even though we know it's fleeting and evanescence. And we're getting worse -- checking texts and emails and Facebook every five minutes, always searching for that next hit of feeling, that next morsel of approval.”
― Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore

tags: adrenaline, approval-of-others, social-media

5 likes

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Polls

September Book of the Month

Goodnight June

by Sarah Jio

4 votes, 80.0%

The Bookstore

by Deborah Meyler

1 vote, 20.0%

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

by Robin Sloan

0 votes, 0.0%

5 total votes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
The Seasonal Read...: Summer Challenge 2013: Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE POSTS)	2503	772	Aug 31, 2013 09:04PM
Crazy Challenge C...: August 2013 Book Lottery Tag	21	65	Sep 01, 2013 11:27PM
Crazy Challenge C...: August 2013 Scavenger Challenge-Perfect Summer Day of Reading	152	111	Oct 27, 2013 02:52PM
Sisterhood of the...: October 2013: The Bookstore by Deborah Meyler	8	22	Nov 04, 2013 12:04PM
The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2013: Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE POSTS)	2481	642	Nov 30, 2013 09:01PM

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Deborah’s Quotes

“Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
As princes' palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees.”
― John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

tags: humility, jacobean-drama, revenge-drama, tragedy

11 likes

“If all my royal kindred
Lay in my way unto this marriage,
I'ld make them my low foot-steps”
― John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

2 likes

“These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...].
The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself.
The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits.
The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself.
And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

tags: arrogance, narcissism, paranoia, self-centeredness

249 likes

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
― William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

3502 likes

“Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.”
― Theodore Isaac Rubin

20 likes

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