Author: StuckinaBook

On trying to recreate magic

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We’re all familiar with the “If you like X then you’ll love Y!” line on the back of books. Indeed, the first time I appeared quoted on the back of a book was with the pithy line “If you like Maggie O’Farrell, you’ll love Angela Young!” – which is something I stand by, even if not quite what I originally said. Then there are books and press releases that describe books as a cross between two other books/authors – often so disparate that you can’t conceive of what a middle point could be. “Little Women meets American Psycho.” “The Da Vinci Code meets Roald Dahl.” “Agatha Christie meets Das Kapital.” I made those up, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see them.

Even those of us who spot a marketing ploy at a hundred paces can fall into these traps in our mind. (Incidentally, I work in marketing so I should say that these ploys serve noble purposes ;)) When I’m browsing my shelves for what to read next, I tend to have a certain mood in mind. That might mean picking a book by an author I already love, but sometimes it means turning to a period or a topic that suits my fancy – and hoping that a new author will meet the requirements I currently have, even if I’m not quite sure what they are.

Recently, I’ve been attempting to recreate the magic of The Element of Lavishness. If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about it – it’s the collected letters between Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, and it is completely wonderful. Profound, beautiful, warm, funny – if you can cope with the slightly odd formatting that came when I migrated blog posts, then my thoughts about it are in this post.

I’ve tried to recreate that joy with other collections of Warner’s letters (yes, I own five, what of it) but have never reached those peaks. And I’ve tried to do the same when it comes to the New Yorker – because an awful lot of this collection is about Maxwell’s professional role as a New Yorker editor. Even at their most familiar and friendly, he was also reading, editing, accepting or rejecting Warner’s short stories for the New Yorker – with the sort of detail and nuance that can only come from a true literary appreciator.

And so I turned to two different books about the New Yorker recently. One was Harold Ross’s letters – Harold Ross was a founder of the New Yorker in 1925 and its editor-in-chief until his death in 1951. All I can say about this book is that he wrote a lot of very dull letters to very interesting people. Rebecca West, Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, E.B. White… all sorts of great people, but his letters are chiefly prosaic. I suppose the difference is that he’s not writing about the minutaie of their writing – he’s more interested in the business side of things. This collection is going straight to a charity shop, but at least it ticked off 2000 in my Century of Books.

The second was Janet Groth’s The Receptionist (2012) – about being a receptionist at the New Yorker for more than twenty years, despite having initial aspirations to join the writing staff (and eventually becoming a university professor and an expert in Edmund Wilson). I did enjoy some sections of this book – her chapter about getting to know Muriel Spark is worth the cover price alone – but I wanted it to be a lot more about day-to-day life in her job. Instead, the structure is a bit all over the place, and there’s a lot more about her personal (and sexual) life than I particularly wanted to know. As a cluster of interesting (and less interesting) recollections, it is good – but it’s not what I was hoping for. But this one is staying on the shelves.

So… what’s the moral of the story? Predictably, there isn’t one really – except perhaps be careful what you wish for. Or lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or something along those lines. (Or, alternatively, does anybody know anything that lives up to the wonder of The Element of Lavishness?)

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

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I was finding 1993 quite difficult to fill in my century of books, and I asked people on Twitter which of my 1993 books they’d recommend that I pick up. It turned out that I didn’t have one of them on my shelves any longer, a biography of Elizabeth Gaskell, but I did have Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. For some reason I wasn’t especially keen to read it, but enough people on Twitter convinced me that I should give it a go that I took it away on holiday and, guess what – it’s amazing.

This isn’t the first Kingsolver novel I’ve read, in fact it’s the third. One of those is her most famous, The Poisonwood Bible, which I actually didn’t like as much as most people seem to have done. I suppose my problem was with her painting this ogreish portrait of the patriarchal missionary, and then implying (or at least I inferred) that he was intended to represent the whole world of missionaries. It felt a little lazy. But before that I read The Bean Trees, I think before I started blogging, and it turns out that Pigs in Heaven is a sequel to that. I should say from the outset that it’s fine to read this novel independently, and in fact I couldn’t remember very much about The Bean Trees that except for the fact that I liked it. Pigs in Heaven tells you everything you need to know about what came before.

The main thing you need to know from that novel is that Taylor adopted young Native American girl called Turtle, given to her by a stranger in a car park. The years have passed, and Taylor is a devoted mother, unable to imagine a life without her young daughter. She is also in a relationship with a musician-of-sorts, called Jax. I rather loved reading their conversations, which were believably affectionate while maintaining a constant undercurrent of uncertainty – just how much are they joking and how much are real tensions coming to the surface? It is something dramatic that starts to change the life Taylor has made for herself, even though that dramatic thing happens to somebody else. While on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, her daughter sees a man fall into a dangerously deep cave – being so young, Turtle doesn’t realise the gravity of this until afterwards, and assumes her mother knows what has happened and is unconcerned. It is only when bringing its to Taylor’s attention that a rescue mission is mounted – despite police initially being reluctant to believe that the 4 year old has not imagined the whole thing.

The man is rescued, and Turtle becomes something of a celebrity – at least temporarily – and is invited onto an episode of Oprah for children who have saved lives. This catches the attention of a lawyer, Annawake, who decides to intervene. She is from the Cherokee Nation herself, and knows that the adoption which Taylor describes is not legal. With her own history of a brother who was taken away from family and community, Annawake sees it as her responsibility to reunite Turtle with her heritage – even if that means taking her away from her mother. (The pigs in Heaven, incidentally, are stars – a constellation you may know as the Seven Sisters.)

There are plenty of novelists who use a moral quandary as the centre of a narrative, to greater or lesser levels of success. To be honest, I am likely to run from a novel that describes itself as issue-driven – and the great thing about Kingsolver is that it never feels as though the ‘issue’  is the driving force. Nor is there any sense that there is a correct answer – as a white person myself, I am very likely to be drawn towards the argument that a child should not be separated from her adoptive mother, but Kingsolver has characters like Annawake who can vocalise that this sense of priorities is not any more objective than those which might make somebody wants to reunite a child with her ancestral community. And so what drives this novel, perfectly, is character.

Unlike The Poisonwood Bible, there are no cartoonish villains. There are simply people who are trying to do the right thing – or, with some of the more incidental characters, have lost any sense of what the right thing might be.

Women on their own run in Alice’s family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark.

That is the opening paragraph of this multi-generational novel. Alice is Taylor’s mother, and has recently made her own possibly ill-advised marriage. The family do not have the ingrained traditions of the Cherokee Nation, but they have their own localised one of women being alone – though none of the women in this book are alone as it starts, it hangs over them like a threat, or occasionally like a happy promise. Taylor’s fear of losing Turtle means they go on the run together, and Kingsolver masterfully weaves a road trip novel into this multifaceted narrative – with the possibilities that brings for funny or strange or poignant temporary characters.

As I say, it is character that is foremost – with their reflections on anything from their choice of words to their ultimate fate. Kingsolver uses her premise to give us a rich, rich portrait of many different people – even when they’re not the most pleasant people, she makes us want to spend time with them. It is riveting, as well as beautifully written. It is also evocative, not just of place but of being. I suppose what I mean by that is that it is wholly immersive.

I read a lot of books, as do we all, and it’s not often that I miss the world that I have been in once it is finished. But I wish I were back in Kingsolver’s world – and I think I might be left in the curious position of wanting to reread the original to this sequel, just to stay in that world. Hopefully that won’t leave me in an indefinite loop, but if it does, there are worse places to be. (And, to escape that loop, which Kingsolver novels would you recommend?)

This Little Art by Kate Briggs

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I’m back from a week in Northern Ireland, and I have a pile of books I’ve been meaning to talk about. Some of those are books that I read whilst I was away, but the first one I want to talk about is one that I read shortly before. It’s This Little Art (2017) by Kate Briggs, which I bought in Libreria – an independent bookshop off Brick Lane. I’d seen a few book bloggers writing about it, and I couldn’t resist.

The book is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, a beautiful and very simple edition – very sleek and chic and all things like that. It’s all about translation. Briggs is herself a translator, having translated some of Roland Barthes’ seminar notes from French to English. Don’t stop reading this review quite yet. While that may seem like the most niche thing known to man, this book is extremely accessible, even to people like me whose French is extremely rusty. Well, ‘rusty’ makes it sound like I once knew French, which is not true – or ‘vrai’. Ithankyou.

The book takes the reader on a discursive, surprisingly pacy adventure through the different facets of translation and how understanding translation can help you understand your relationship with authors, writing, books, and even one’s own self respect. the title is a quotation from Helen Lowe Porter, who apparently translated Thomas Mann works for much of his career, which became her career. She was using those three words to deprecatingly refer to translation, and Briggs looks quite a lot at how Lowe-Porter’s life and reputation were shaped by the debates relating to translation. Some of the most interesting sections, for those interested in literary feuding and scandal, were when Briggs talks about a famous demolition of Lowe-Porter’s work that appeared in some literary journal or other. But Briggs puts this into a fine tapestry of other debates about translators, including discussions about her own suitability to take on the work that she has done.

‘Tapestry’ is perhaps a good word to describe this book. It has the unconventional format of many areas of white on the page. While some pages are full of paragraphs, others have only a few lines at the top; each thought is given only the space it needs, and there’s a generosity with margins and white space that is very unusual in modern publishing. This feels perhaps odd at first, but soon becomes the only way that one could write or read a book like this. It is almost dream-like, how one thought leads to another, whether about Briggs’ own life or about the philosophy of translation or about particular nuances of individual words in different languages. I can only imagine that Briggs did have to do the usual editing that any writer has to do, but it is hard to believe that this book ever existed in any other form than that which it currently does. Each word leads so perfectly to the next, each moment follows beautifully and logically from the one that came before, that it feels as though it has emerged whole and wonderful from her pen.

As such, it is also difficult to compartmentalise. To pull any individual thought out from this book feels like pulling a thread from that tapestry – it only works at its finest when seen in the whole. And please don’t think that this is an unduly academic or self-indulgent book. The back cover talks about it having the momentum of a novel, and I was very sceptical – but that is exactly what it has. There is wisdom without sacrificing humanity; philosophy without losing humour or groundedness. I have a feeling that Briggs could write something brilliant on any topic, but choosing one about which she is so evidently passionate means that we have a true gem unfurled before us. I’ll leave you with a quote – the entirety of p.146, in fact – but I do encourage anybody to get a copy. (And, in passing, I will apologise for any odd typos in this review – I have been largely dictating it, as my RSI is playing up, this time in both hands. Off to a physio to see if she can sort me out!)

We need translations. We do, of course we do. The world needs them. And translation is work undertaken in response – direct or indirect response – to that demand. But the nature of the work involved, the time that writing a translation takes, together with its lack of material support, its little pay and uneven appreciation, will inevitably narrow the pool of people actually capable of answering it. Translation is necessary, vital work. It is also deeply pleasurable and instructive and intensely time-consuming work. Approaching a kind of leisure activity, then, but one with its own precarious economy;its per-word fees (as if translating one word, one sequence of words, one book made of words, were ever equivalent to translating another); its occasional prizes. It is not my aim to celebrate these conditions, exactly; it’s rather to recognise them in order for there to be a chance of varying them. As well to point out – no doubt too fast – that even these conditions (these apparently ideal conditions? The lady translator translating what she loves, working from home, grateful for but not entirely reliant on what Helen Lowe-Porter calls the ‘dribble of money’, or otherwise secure enough to risk trying to make the various dribbles of money work) are complicated.

Peas in a Podcast #1

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So, my brother Colin and I decided to start a podcast together. Mostly because the name ‘peas in a podcast’ was too funny to pass on, since we’re twins. It’s mostly just us chatting and being silly and squabbling, and it’s definitely not as targeted to Stuck in a Book readers as ‘Tea or Books?’ is. But the vagaries of podcast hosting mean I need to put it somewhere to get it accepted by iTunes… so, if you fancy something a bit different, then you might well enjoy this! We’re probably going to do an episode about once a month, but there are a handful ready to go…

Tea or Books? #65: cars vs bicycles, and Hons and Rebels vs Tory Heaven

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We are finally back! Apologies for the lengthy break – all is explained in this episode. We’re not back as soon as intended, because we recorded an episode a few days ago that… didn’t record. The podcasters’ nightmare! Nothing daunted, here we are.

In the first half, we look at cars in books and bicycles in books, as I have long threatened to do. Rachel gave in, and it turned into a fun discussion. In the second half, we look at two books that are very different but both a lot about politics – Jessica Mitford’s memoir/autobiography Hons and Rebels and Marghanita Laski’s novel Tory Heaven.

You can find us on iTunes, and now on Spotify too! (Have a search for us there.) You can also support the podcast on Patreon, and there are various rewards available there.

Oh, and the bookshop Rachel raves about has a website too.

Books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Little by Edward Carey
Alva and Irva by Edward Carey
Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey
Larchfield by Polly Clark
This Little Art by Kate Briggs
Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
To The North by Elizabeth Bowen
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins
Toad of Toad Hall by Kenneth Grahame
Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells
Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson
The Amorous Bicycle by Mary Essex
Tea Is So Intoxicating by Mary Essex
A.A. Milne
Elizabeth Taylor
Miss Read
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski
Love on the Supertax by Marghanita Laski
The Village by Marghanita Laski
London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters ed. by Charlotte Mosley
Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
A Fine Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford
The Devastating Boys by Elizabeth Taylor
The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen

By Auction by Denis Mackail

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Denis Mackail’s 1949 novel By Auction is one I’ve been reading on and off for months, but I finally finished it recently. It’s not his best… it was a little bit of a slog to get through at times, sadly. But I wanted to post a little about it, because there are moments I found brilliant.

The novel is about a young man seeing his ancestral home – or the objects therein – be auctioned off to pay debts and such. As he wakes up for his final morning there, and then sees the auction, it brings back a whirlwind of young memories (particularly of his brother, who died at war) and a series of young women who seem more or less interchangeable to me. The dashes between past and present were slightly confusing, and I couldn’t always work out which young women were where. But, anyway, if I didn’t relish these sections – I loved when Mackail was writing just about the auction. That was captivating, and almost always irrelevant to the plot. And I wanted to share this section on the auction, that I thought was brilliant:

“Going – ” said Mr Murcher, once more. Looked round, but only for an instant, for he knew his own congregation by now; and rapped – for at his desk he no longer just jerked – with the butt-end of his pencil-case. He had now achieved almost his maximum speed.

His skilled, photographic mind knew exactly which members were, except as part of the essential background to this production, no use at all. Which kept their heads. Which could be relied on to lose them. Which wanted larger bits of furniture. Which wanted oddments. Which – very important, this – had a weakness for what in a shop would have been quite unsaleable. Which were quick, which were slow; not always the same thing as which were rash and which were cautious. Which were rich, yet perhaps mean. Which were poorer, yet if led on, and personally addressed – for he would remember all names, too, or get them swiftly from his clerk – might be reckless.

He was a conductor. This was a symphony. Unrehearsed, and in a sense with a new score. But he was attuned to it. One symphony, after all, if you have experience, is much like another. The pencil-case was his baton. It started each theme. It singled out strings, brass, woodwind, or percussion; in other words the various characters gathered round him. Occasionally it combined them, in a great, orchestral swell. Then it paused. “Going – ” he said. The theme was over. He began again.

There was ballet, too; of a somewhat simple yet rhythmic nature. For perpetually, as he spoke, cajoled, jeered – Tod sometimes felt that he went a bit far with his jeering, but had to admit that it often gained its effect – or cracked jokes, the four strong men, singly, in pairs, or once or twice as a trio, came gliding up the gangway or in from the wings, with objects and articles of different sizes.

Always, or almost always, as one object or article was being exhibited and appraised, another was being removed, and yet a third was awaiting its turn. The strong men were quite expressionless. They neither led the laughter – not that Mr Murcher was so inexpert as to crack a joke every time – nor joined in it. Nor, again, did they seem aware of the baton.

Yet their steady, relentless coming and going, and the gradual but incessant redistribution of the goods in the tent, was more than rhythmic; it was slightly hypnotic. At one and the same moment you could see what you had lost or won, what you must instantly decide whether to go for or not, and what was on the point of taking its place.

Past, present, and future, as one might say, formed the basis of this choreography; which as calculated to disturb even the steadiest nerves, for who can bear all three together?

We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood by Emily Kimbrough

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This 1943 book is a play on words that I didn’t spot until I’d finished it, embarrassingly. For it is about following Our Hearts to Hollywood – more specifically, the 1942 book Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, in which Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner hilariously recounted their tour of Europe in the 1920s. It’s a brilliant book, and I think relatively well known in the US – if you find a copy this side of the Atlantic, snap it up and you won’t regret it.

Hollywood moved fast in the 1940s, and almost immediately a film version was in the works – and Kimbrough and Skinner were asked to go to Hollywood to help write the script. (The film was released in 1944 – things really did move fast! – and there was even a sequel in 1946, Our Hearts Were Growing Up, which Skinner and Kimbrough were unable to prevent despite legal action.)

We Followed is pretty slender in terms of plot. It essentially shows how the two women are a bit like fish out of water in the dizzying whirl of Hollywood. Imagine what it would feel like to them now! But it’s good fun to see them get overwhelmed by the grandeur of their hotel, starstruck by various stars they encounter (few of whom meant anything to me now, I’ll confess), and try to get their heads around writing the dialogue. Or, more precisely, holding off writing the dialogue as any number of other meetings take place to determine an outline – once anybody realises that the two have even arrived.

Throughout, Kimbrough documents the sort of affectionate ribaldry and rivalry that only good friends can have – with her own ironic dose of teasing Skinner about her theatrical background (clearly, simultaneously, admiring it). There is no real butt to any of the jokes – everything is very good-natured, and witty in a self-deprecating way rather than anything more malicious.

It’s always interesting to read a book written by two people, and wonder how they did. Having now read quite a lot of Cornelia Otis Skinner’s books and this by Emily Kimbrough, I can make an attempt at piecing together how their different styles cohered so gloriously in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. And I think it’s fair to say that Skinner provided all the sharpest wit and the funniest lines. Kimbrough is more delicately amusing, and brings the sense of wonderment and almost naivety. Don’t expect any exposés of famous people, or any people – there is no dark side to this Hollywood. There is perhaps an inefficient side, but that’s about as dark as it gets.

I’m having a really good year for books about the film industry, thinking about it. Christopher Isherwood’s Prater Violet, Darcy O’Brien’s A Way of Life Like Any Other, the extraordinary non-fiction The Devil’s Candy by Julia Salamon, and now this. Four very different perspectives on movie making, but somehow working very well together – and all very good.

If Kimbrough is at her best alongside Skinner, this is still a wonderfully enjoyable book to read. (I wonder why it wasn’t written by both of them?) If you’ve loved Our Hearts Were Young and Gay then I think you’ll relish following them to Hollywood with this one – to see a bit about the book’s afterlife, and to enjoy a snapshot of Hollywood in the 1940s.

Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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Happy weekend, and my, aren’t the nights drawing in? My little flat doesn’t have central heating, so expect to find me under a pile of duvets and blankets and an artfully placed cat. Still, it’s a good excuse to do very little but read and drink tea. Which is my usual practice, but now with added legitimacy.

Before I go onto the book, blog post, and link – Karen and I wanted to announce the year that we chose for the next club. We were delighted to get really thoughtful suggestions from people, and may well store these up for next October’s club – but for next April, we’re going with a year suggested by Paula: 1965! You’ve got months and months to prepare :)

1.) The link – this is an interesting discussion about working with the elusive Elena Ferrante, for the HBO version of her novel.

2.) The book – another book about reading that I am coveting! This one is by Anne Bogel, called I’d Rather Be Reading. Isn’t that cover lovely?

3.) The blog post – Resh has written a characteristically interesting about Instagram trends in book photography and how people have reacted to it… featured lots of lovely book photography, of course.

My name is Simon, I buy books

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I was doing quite well at a month-by-month record of the different books I bought, but it rather fell by the wayside. So, instead, here is the record of a couple of different visits to London over the past few weeks, and the books I bought on my journeys. The photo is of books bought there, various other times, review books, gifts… so not all are mentioned in this post, but do give a yell if you’d like to hear more about any of them!

Firstly, I went up to London on a wet and windy day – to see the excellent productions of The Lover and The Collection as part of the season of Pinter plays at the Harold Pinter theatre. Astonishingly expensive, so I’m glad it was good. While there, I went to visit Rachel (my ‘Tea or Books?’ co-host) in her lovely new flat – and the entire time I was there, her piano was being slowly taken up the stairs. So we couldn’t have our planned lunch together – but it did given me time to dart along to ‘Word on the Water’ – a bookshop on a barge near King’s Cross.

It’s very small, and was lovely and warm when I went. It’s also very low, and I couldn’t stand up fully – but I was crouching to look at books anyway. The selection is necessarily limited, in such a small space, but seems to be well curated – and I came away with a copy of David Sedaris’s diaries.

 

After the theatre, I popped into Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road, which was having a sale in its basement. Dangerous. I bought a few books for other people (I’m so noble) – and, yes, a few for myself. More specifically, The Play Room by Olivia Manning, The Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford, and a book by Marghanita Laski about Mrs Ewing, Mrs Molesworth, and Mrs Hodgson Burnett – the first two names are ones I know vaguely, but nothing more. Frances H-B has survived rather better, of course.

On this trip, I was also reading Mrs Gaskell & Me by Nell Stevens – as reviewed the other day – and went off on a hunt to buy her Bleaker House. Easier said than done. Where to look for it?? I went to the enormous and wonderful Waterstones on Piccadilly, and looked through biography and generic literature… they didn’t have it, it turned out, and I went down to Hatchard’s to make the same exploration. (Incidentally – having the queues right in front of the door makes going into Hatchard’s rather an overwhelming process – but, once inside, it’s a lovely building.) No luck – but the man on the desk (once I’d assured him it was definitely Bleaker House that I was after) found it for me – in the creative writing section.

I was back in London this past weekend, meeting up with my dear friend Lucy. She had devised a tour of independent bookshops in East London, which is a part I don’t know very well. It’s also a part that seems to have few secondhand bookshops, so we were only looking at independents selling new books. Since I like to support bookshops by buying at least one, I had to ration myself between the shops…

First up, Libreria. No phones allowed, so I couldn’t check the title of the book I was after – but happily stumbled across it nonetheless: This Little Art by Kate Briggs, all about translation. I read quite a lot of it on the train home, and loved it, so watch this space – indeed, it’s not in the picture above because I’m currently reading it. Libreria is very, very hipster, but (/and) a great shop with a thoughtful selection. Better for browsing than going with a title in mind, I think.

Next, we came to Brick Lane Bookshop – not quite the same brilliance in their selection, but I did enjoy the essays shelves. I hadn’t heard of Difficult Women by David Plante, but it sounds wonderful – as well as looking wonderful, being an NYRB Classics edition. It features portraits of Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and Germaine Greer. Yes please!

When we got to our third planned bookshop, Broadway Books, we discovered that it was closing in three minutes… we had a quick rush around and were asked to leave, so they didn’t get the sale I was contemplating of a Stefan Zweig. But somewhere to try again one day!

While I’m writing about books that have come into the house recently – I have to mention the C.S. Lewis books that Karen/Kaggsy very kindly sent to me recently, while she was having a clear out! I’ve read a few of his non-fiction titles on Christianity and Christian life, and really like them, so am chuffed to get these. Even better, the rest went to my aunt and her church – as my aunt lives a few streets away from Karen!

I’m going to cut back on book buying again next year, one way or another, so I’m making the most of these little treats while I can!