num_pages: 168
description: Charles Ritchie’s first volume of diaries, The Siren Years , created a sensation when it was published in 1974. Besides winning the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, it was hailed by reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. An Appetite for Life , his second volume, first published in 1977, deals with his youth in Halifax and his career at Oxford—the years when Charles Ritchie turned from a callow, blundering youth into a callow, blundering young man.As these diaries show, Charles Ritchie had a sharp eye, a keen ear, a highly developed sense of the absurd, and—despite his unhappy knack of landing flat on his face —a thorough “appetite for life.”This is not only a hilariously funny book, but it presents a vivid picture of two worlds—Halifax and Oxford in the mid-twenties—that are now long gone. It also introduces us to an astonishing range of characters, but the most astonishing of all is the young Charles Ritchie himself.
language: English
title: An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927
titlecomplete: An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927
ratings_count: 18
series: Charles Ritchie Diaries Chronologic
publisher: McClelland & Stewart