ON READING THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK

 In the summer or autumn of 1989, I began  to read Doris Lessing, intermittently.   As she is a prolific writer,  I got her books from the local library.  I read her novels in sequence, as they had been written.    I started with her first novel,  The Grass Is Singing, then proceeded to the big fat tome,  African Stories, then onto the Martha Questnovels, five in all.  Amid reading the novels,  I purchased a slender,  burgu...