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Book Blogger Appreciation Week!

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Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW) always seems to arrive before I expect it, and disappear before I’ve managed to hop on board – at least since I joined in back in 2009, or thereabouts.  Well, this year I’m not going to manage to join in every post, but it came at a time when I’ve been feeling especially appreciative about the book blogosphere, so I’m going to do my BBAW contribution all in one post.  There will be a lot of links to other bloggers… but I love them all.  And it’s only the tip of the iceberg, so please don’t think that not being mentioned means I don’t adore your blog.  Get ready for an appreciative ramble!

I was struck by what an amazing job bloggers do.  Nobody gets paid, most have families and/or jobs and dozens of other commitments – but they all manage to write intelligent, compelling, funny, charming, touching book reviews and literary posts.  It takes up a huge amount of time (I seem to spend less time than many, and it still takes up loads of mine!) and yet we all do it willingly, happily, joyously!  And you know why?  Because all the other book bloggers are so darn brilliant!  What started for each of us, I suppose, as a love of books and reading, has grown into more than that.  We still love books, and have picked up so many recommendations from each other (thank you blogosphere for introducing me to Shirley Jackson, Muriel Spark, Joyce Dennys… so many) but it’s become about so much more than that.

I was going to try to list every book blogger I’ve met, but I realised that it’s probably 40-50 people.  Which is amazing!  But it might be a little exhausting – for me and for you – if I type them all out, and I’d be bound to forget someone lovely.  So, instead, I shall write about bloggers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting who live in distant lands… two from Canada, three from the U.S., and one from Australia:

Claire/Captive Reader – from her very earliest days, Claire leapt to the top of my favourite blogs.  Her taste is impeccable, her style engaging, her reviews incredibly perceptive.  I had the fun of book shopping through London with Claire, and buying vastly more than she did…

Darlene/Roses Over A Cottage Door – oh, what a ray of sunshine Darlene is!  Both her blog and, even more so, in person – I wanted to drag her across the ocean and make her visit tea shops with me at least once a week.

Thomas/My Porch – such a funny, incisive blog, and such a charming, engaging man!  Our two hours over tea and scones this year, each talking nineteen to the dozen, ranks amongst my favourite blogging-related occasions.

Teresa/Shelf Love – gosh, this meeting was an age ago, when I’d only ‘known’ her for a bit.  Now I want to meet again, Teresa!  I’m so impressed by the discipline Teresa and Jenny show in maintaining the very high standard of their wide-ranging blog (not to mention the humility involved in co-authoring a blog) – they just don’t seem to have off-days.

Diana/Light, Bright, and Sparkling – another infectiously enthusiastic lady, who has forgotten more about Jane Austen than I will ever know.

Karyn/A Penguin A Week – many of us have a fairly good idea of our own blog’s identity, but nobody has as ingenious and precise a premise as Karyn – picking one Penguin Book a week from her enviable collection, and writing wonderfully engaging reviews on them.  A truly unique blog.  And we had a lovely afternoon, bookshopping through Oxford.

And who would I must like to meet, outside of the UK?  So many!  But I’m going to say Eva/A Striped Armchair.  One day, Eva!

I always remember the author I met who said “Oh, you’re a blogger – you must be lonely.”  I’m sure it was kindly meant (er, I’m far from sure) but it isn’t true.  Even without all the face-to-face meetings, blogging is all about community – we’re all typing away in our garrets, but the best bloggers and the best blogging experiences are those which value community.  Nothing puts me off a blogger more than if they don’t have a ‘blog roll’.  But that’s just the start – over the years I’ve loved participating in various readalongs and publisher- or author-specific weeks.  Just thinking about author-reads, there have been Stu/Winston’s Dad and Henry Green, Thomas/My Porch and Anita Brookner, Annabel/Gaskella and Beryl Bainbridge, Florence/Miss Darcy’s Library and Rosamond Lehmann, Simon/Savidge Reads and Daphne du Maurier.

I was so thrilled by the enthusiasm for Muriel Spark Reading Week, which the encouraging, perceptive and incredibly well-read Harriet co-organised with me.  Not only did lots of my favourite bloggers join in, but I got to meet many more.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time – I didn’t mention it then, but during the week I underwent an examination for cancer, the culmination of the scariest and most horrible weeks of my life.  I was lucky – it ended up being a false alarm.  But you’ll never know how much it meant to me to have all the enthusiasm and support for Muriel Spark Reading Week distracting me.  Thank you, all of you.  (And thank you especially to Harriet, who did know what I was going through, and couldn’t have been kinder or more understanding.)

I especially love bloggers like lovely Kim who dedicate an ongoing series to interviewing bloggers and finding out their literary preferences.  Blogs should have porous boundaries, flowing into one another, as we would at a book group.  So it feels like a good time to announce that I’ll be hosting a third series of My Life in Books in October – it previously appeared in March 2011 and March 2012, but the feedback was so positive that I couldn’t wait til next March.  I shan’t reveal names yet, but I asked 14 people and everyone said yes!  They’ll join the thirty (thirty!) bloggers and blog-readers who’ve already shared their lives in books.

But something I realised, while writing out my list of bloggers to ask (which was at least thirty names long – plenty of people to ask next time!) is that I’m not doing very well at keeping up with the blogosphere.  Victoria (who has such intellectual sensitivity, but also – wonderfully – once shared my phase for Sweet Valley High) covered a similar topic here.  Book Blogger Appreciation Week is also demonstrating to me how widely spread the blogging world now is – when I started, I felt I had a fairly good grasp on who was blogging, and we all seemed to more or less know one another.  A huge number of those dearly familiar faces are still around – delightful, warmhearted Karen/Cornflower, infectiously enthusiastic Danielle/A Work in Progress, dear Elaine/Random Jottings, whom I’ve met so many times and has shaped my reading life so much over the years, and Margaret/Books Please who started at almost the same time as me, to name but four.  I love the way we’ve all grown together as bloggers, and the archives we’ve each built, stretching back for years and years… and, ladies, you’re not looking a day older.

But there must be so many young bloggers out there (young in blogging terms, I mean – lots of literate six-month-olds) to whom I must be introduced.  True, it would easily take up all my time just to keep track of the long-standing book bloggers – but imagine what would have happened if I’d stopped seeking out new blogs three or four years ago?  What I would have missed!  So I mustn’t rest on my laurels; I must keep my eyes open.  When I tried to think of book blogs I love which are less than a year old, the only two I could think of immediately were Helen/A Gallimaufry – an impressively thoughtful, thorough, inviting blog – and Karen/Kaggy’s Bookish Ramblings, with her great range of twentieth-century fiction reviews akin to my own bookish loves.  Which makes me wonder… how many other gems I am missing?  (Sorry if you’re less than a year old and I already know you, it’s probably just because I can’t imagine the blogosphere existed without you!)

There are perils involved with having been a book blogger pretty consistently for five and a half years.  There are so many joys too – I still get excited when I get a comment or a lovely email – but I mustn’t get complacent or too settled.  And so… I’d love you to comment with a recommendation of a new blog.  And by ‘new’, I mean less than a year old.  Spread the love!  And, whilst you’re at it, why not comment and tell me what you love about any blog or any blogger – just keep the appreciation overflowing this week!

Finally – I want to reiterate how much I appreciate everyone who comes to visit Stuck-in-a-Book, whether this is your first time, or you’ve been here every week since the beginning (hi Mum!)  I wouldn’t have the patience to continue if it weren’t for your interest, or if there weren’t so many fascinating blogs around to keep the community going strong.  I never could have imagined all the joys and adventures blogging and blog-reading would bring – please, bloggers and blog-readers, feel 100% appreciated!  The internet would be rubbish without you.

The Novel Diner

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My friend Claire Coutinho (and her friend Mina) has recently started up a brilliantly novel idea – a literary-themed supper club!  The next one is at Shoreditch House on September 18th with American Psycho as the theme… nearly sold out, but keep an eye on future events.  More info here, but do read my interview with Claire below.  Since it’s a supper club, I thought I’d arrange it as a menu card, divided in Starter, Main, and Dessert…

The Great Gatsby



Starter

1.) So… what is the Novel Diner?

We are a pop-up supper club that brings to life the world of a different novel at each event. We create a bespoke menu using food references in the novel, and we also have live performances, costumes and decor.

2.) How did you come to be doing this?

We are passionate about food and books, which naturally led to a few conversations about ways to marry the two. We came up with The Novel Diner because it is the kind of event that both of us would love to attend, but it’s also incredibly fun for us to organise. Every month we sit down with our favourite novels and antique recipe books and work out how best to capture a particular story for our diners. We see it as a labour of love and hopefully, this translates onto the plates of our guests!

Main

3.) How do you decide upon the books you use?

We choose books where food plays a big part in the narrative or context of the novel. In the case of To The Lighthouse we recreated Mildred’s masterpiece – a melt-in-your-mouth boeuf en daube. For Proust we of course had madeleines in addition to other classic belle epoque fare like chicken liver parfait, fried sole and asparagus veloute. For The Great Gatsby, where we wanted to capture some of the Jazz Age’s decadence with luxe canapes, a beautiful summer buffet and (naturally) plenty of Gin Fizzes. Then, up next, American Psycho where we can play around with fusion food (e.g. Indian-Californian a memorable mention in the book) and the nouveau cuisine which will really set the yuppie party scene of the late 80s/early 90s.

To The Lighthouse

4.) The photos from the To The Lighthouse event are wonderful – could you describe the evening for us? Any backstage anecdotes to share??

There were some first event nerves! We were lucky enough to have the pianist from the Savoy playing a 1920s music which swept us up in the mood. The music and (ahem) a couple of gin cocktails saw us through. Mostly, it was the music of course…. 

5.) Have you come across any meals-in-novels which are too repellant to consider?

Leopold’s Blooms urine-tanged kidneys in Ulysses is probably up there…. We were also considering an Enid Blyton summer spectacular although sardines with condensed milk and ginger cake probably isn’t very nice (despite what those Malory Towers girls say).

The Great Gatsby – the pudding!

6.) What has the response been like?

Incredibly positive – we never thought it would be this popular. 

It’s wonderful to see how passionate people are about literature, and more specifically about some of the novels we’ve chosen which are some of our own all time favourites. People seem to like the way that the marriage of food with novels gives them a communal experience of their most-loved books. It’s also quite fun that we get suggestions for future events, we always welcome more!

To The Lighthouse

Dessert

7.) And the question I always ask everyone… what are you reading at the moment?

Claire just finished Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine and is now reading The Baroness by Hannah Rothschild. Mina is reading The Ask by Sam Lipsyte and recently finished Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It by Geoff Dyer.

The Great Gatsby



Do go and have a look at their website or their Facebook page, and maybe try to get along to one of their future events if you can!

Talking of Grief

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I hope I don’t sound odd when I say that I am rather fascinated by the idea of grief.  Not in a sadistic way, of course, but simply because it is a fundamental aspect of human life which I have yet to experience.  Recently I have read two very different non-fiction books on the topic, and it seemed to make sense (briefly) to consider them together – Calvin Trillin’s About Alice (2006) and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961).  Both are by husbands who are coming to terms with the premature loss of their wife to cancer, but from that point, they are incredibly different.

As the title suggests, Trillin’s book is about Alice, his wife.  It is essentially a memoir of their marriage, concentrating on those qualities he most loved in Alice – and how bravely and determinedly she was when she first had cancer, which went into remission, and then returned.  What made About Alice moving to me was, actually, the fact that I didn’t warm to Alice at all.  The characteristics Trillin adored – such as bluntness,  or a willingness to use her beauty to avoid speeding tickets – weren’t ones which I admire, which made Trillin’s portrait all the stronger and affecting.  Reminiscences – in fact or fiction – which detail how uniformly perfect the deceased was, and how terribly they are mourned by everyone, never quite ring true.  We all know that our very favourite people are not everyone’s favourite people, and a personal grief is much more powerful for being personal.

I’m struggling to know what to write about About Alice.  It’s a beautiful portrait of a relationship, as well as a woman.  It is not really a book about grief – that isn’t the sort of book Trillin chose to write.   I found it moving, but as the reflection of a life that has sadly ended, rather than reflections upon Trillin’s own ongoing life.

Lewis’s A Grief Observed is the flip-side of the coin.  There is little about Joy’s character and life, because Lewis’s focus is the process(es) of grief – particularly, grief as a Christian.  A Grief Observed isn’t a work of theology, though, because that would suggest settled conclusions, with arguments and illustrations to support and work towards them.  Lewis writes that sort of book very well (c.f. Mere Christianity), but in A Grief Observed he is openly flailing.  It really is the documentation of an ongoing process.  Lewis hasn’t edited the book to make it feel consistent or conclusive – indeed, he often backtracks or offers alternative interpretations of what he has already written.

I wrote that last night.  It was a yell rather than a thought.  Let me try it over again.
Somehow, Lewis manages to write down the varying states of his mind and spirit without sounding self-absorbed or introspective.  Grief genuinely seems to confound and puzzle him, as he tries to ascertain how he really feels, and how he will manage the future.  Part of this is concerned with his faith, and re-assessing his understanding of God.  In soaps or light fiction, grief would have ended his faith – Lewis’s relationship with God was too strong and real for that, but the pain of losing his wife does make him reconsider God’s character, and how he has previously misunderstood it.  Again, Lewis doesn’t have any predetermined conclusions here, and he doesn’t really come to any by the end of the book, but he is remarkably eloquent about his journey here.  (Sorry, I meant to avoid the word ‘journey’, but… well, it felt like one.)

A Grief Observed is starkly, vividly, astonishingly honest.   It is also eloquent and thoughtful, without losing spontaneity or genuine emotion.  Through the nature of Lewis’s approach, it is of wider applicability that Trillin’s book.  Although nobody else will have the exact experience Lewis did, plenty of people will probably agree with the general points he discovers along the way.

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow.  Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.  It needs not a map but a history, and if I don’t stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there’s no reason why I should ever stop.  There is something new to be chronicled every day.  Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.
I read A Grief Observed with the interest of the outsider, keen to understand a facet of emotion I cannot grasp.  One day, presumably, I will need to turn to it as a fellow-griever.  I found Lewis’s book so powerful and wise even without having experienced grief – and now, thankfully, I will know exactly where to turn when I first experience it.  And I imagine it will feel like a completely different book then.

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

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After a lovely time away – cue obligatory photo of Sherpa:

– where was I?  After a lovely time away, I am back in Oxford, and will be spending my weekend baking and reading.  Perfection!  But I shall leave you with some top-notch miscellaneous things today.

1.) The link – is a hilariously brilliant video from The Flight of the Conchords.  They’ve written a charity song, with the help of some children in choosing the lyrics… don’t forget to click through to Youtube and donate to the cause.  Or you can donate here. (The beginning might not make sense if you’ve not familiar with the excellent TV series, but give it a minute and you’ll be fine.)

2.) The blog post – was an easy choice this week.  Darlene and I had a ‘reading smack down’ (her words) – a race for Darlene to read something by my beloved Ivy Compton-Burnett, and me to read my second Elizabeth Bowen novel (having not loved my first) since Darlene adores Bowen.  Well, before I’d even pulled The House in Paris off the shelf, Darlene had read Manservant and Maidservant – and liked it!  Read her great review here, and congratulate her on her smack down victory.  It smarts.

3.) The book – I spotted that Erica Brown’s book on Elizabeth von Arnim and Elizabeth Taylor, Comedy and the Feminine Middlebrow Novel, is out in December.  At £60 it’s probably not on for many private libraries, but if you hold any sway at your local academic library, then get a word in now!  More here.

When William Came – Saki

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If I mention the author ‘Saki’, you probably think of darkly funny short stories, if you think of anything at all.  If you were around during the brief spate where lots of bloggers were reading The Unbearable Bassington (which is exceptionally good) then perhaps that comes to mind.  What I have yet to see mentioned is his 1913 novel When William Came, which I have just finished.  The ‘William’ in question is Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and the ‘coming’ is his invasion of Britain.  Although such an invasion never took place, of course, Saki is essentially predicting the First World War – a war in which, in 1916, he would be killed.

If you’ve seen Went The Day Well? – a film based on a Graham Greene story about a similar invasion in the Second World War – then you might expect When William Came to have similar resistance and trauma as its keynotes.  In fact, the invasion is over, and much is continuing as ever before.  A lot of British people have fled to the colonies, but those that remain continue their social whirl with much jollity, only some of which is forced.  Cicely Yeovil is the chief socialite here, determined that a small thing like a new monarch and official language won’t prevent her surrounding herself by beautiful young pianists and gossipy older women.

“My heart ought to be like a singing-bird to-day, I suppose,” said Cicely presently.

“Because your good man is coming home?” asked Ronnie.

Cicely nodded.

“He’s expected some time this afternoon, though I’m rather vague as to which train he arrives by.  Rather a stifling day for railway travelling.”

“And is your heart doing the singing-bird business?” asked Ronnie.

“That depends,” said Cicely, “if I may choose the bird.  A missal-thrush would do, perhaps; it sings loudest in stormy weather, I believe.
Cicely’s husband, Murray Yeovil, is returning from lands afar, having picked up only bits and pieces of the news.  He is rather horrified by the response of those known as the fait accompli – who may have considered resistance, fleetingly, but have instead settled down to dinner parties and modern dance.

I don’t know what it says about me, but I much preferred the goings-on of the fait accompli to the anxieties of the patriotic, militaristic types.  My heart leapt within me whenever Joan Mardle appeared – she is described in one of Saki’s characteristically wonderful, brief descriptive entrances:

She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good-will and good-nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily rearmed themselves.
Always knowing what will most wound her acquaintances, but delivering these blows with disingenuous innocence, Joan Mardle would be a terrible friend, but is a wonderful character.  I love any b*tchy exchanges in high social circles – here’s another one I loved:

“I should have put on rubies and orange opals for you.  People with our colour of hair always like barbaric display -”

“They don’t,” said Ronnie, “they have chaste cold tastes.  You are absolutely mistaken.”

“Well, I think I ought to know!” protested the dowager; “I’ve lived longer in the world than you have, anyway.”

“Yes,” said Ronnie with devastating truthfulness, “but my hair has been this colour longer than yours has.”
Ouch!  But this is tempered with much more straight-faced reactions to the invasion and the possibility of Britain regaining its independent feet.  Here, for example, is someone arguing the point with Yeovil:

“Remember all the advantages of isolated position that told in our favour while we had the sea dominion is in other hands.  The enemy would not need to mobilize a single army corps or to bring a single battleship into action; a fleet of nimble cruisers and destroyers circling round our coasts would be sufficient to shut out our food supplies.”
In The Unbearable Bassington, Saki ingeniously balanced the comic and tragic, letting tragedy flow as an undercurrent to comedy until the climax of the novel.  In When William Came, I found the combination of insouciance and politics rather disjointed.  Comedy and tragedy are closely aligned, of course.  Anger and resignation could have worked in the same two-sides-of-the-coin way in When William Came, but the social merry-go-round didn’t really work alongside the militaristic angst.  The competing elements (in a very short novel) felt simply too different, and I ended up being a little disappointed.

Having said that, When William Came is worth reading if only for those parts of it I did love.  Nobody writes a social scene quite as bitingly as Saki, and few authors have his economy of words.  Once you’ve exhausted the short stories and The Unbearable Bassington, this is certainly worth reading, if only because we (sadly) have so little of Saki’s work to read.

Five From the Archive (no.8)

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It’s getting to the point where I can’t remember which books have featured in Five From The Archive and which haven’t, so I’m doing my best to think up new aleatory connections between the books in my review archive… and the one I came up with for today is definitely unusual!

Five… Books About Hands

1.) Halfway to Venus (2008) by Sarah Anderson

In short: Anderson runs a travel bookshop, and had an arm amputated after a severe childhood illness.  Halfway to Venus is a fascinating personal, social, and cultural history of amputation and limbs.

From my review: “It is to Anderson’s credit that Halfway to Venus brings out so many questions and reflections and reactions. A very honest book of autobiography, it is also a fascinating compedium, and with an engaging writing style which is all too often omitted from well-researched non-fiction.”

2.) The World I Live In (1908) by Helen Keller

In short: the counterpart to Anderson’s book, Keller explores the significance of hands when they provide the main sense-based interaction with the world.

From my review: “When I say that Keller’s worth as an author is not merely as a novelty, I mean that she should not be patronised, nor her writing viewed as some sort of scientific experiment.  She is too good and perceptive a writer for that.”

3.) Maestro (1989) by Peter Goldsworthy

In short: Eduard Keller is a Viennese refugee in Australia, teaching 15 year-old Paul the piano in an unorthodox manner – which begins with studying the importance of each individual finger.

From my review: “Their relationship isn’t romantic or fatherly or even particularly close.  Keller resists any sort of emotional connection, and Paul is far too full of youthful insensitivity to do anything but blunder into conversations in which he is too immature to participate, even if Keller were willing.  But what Goldsworthy builds between Keller and the Crabbes is still somehow beautiful.  The connection between people who never open up to one another; the legacies left behind a relationship which could not even be called a friendship.  Goldsworthy has done this beautifully.”

4.) Observatory Mansions (2001) by Edward Carey

In short: Francis Orme works as a living statue, but concentrates most of his efforts on an underground exhibition of sentimental objects he has stolen from residents of Observatory Mansions.  This book comes under ‘hands’ because Orme is very protective of his, always wearing white gloves, which he removes and archives as soon as they get slightly dirty.

From my review: “I probably overuse the word ‘quirky’, but no other description will do for Carey’s work.”

5.) Immortality (1988) by Milan Kundera

In short: Kundera’s postmodern narrative starts with him seeing a woman’s distinctive gesture with her arm.  He names her Agnes and invents a story around her, around that gesture. And then weaves it into a literary, historical intertextuality that darts all over the place, including Rubens, Goethe, Hemingway, Beethoven…

From my review: “I don’t know why postmodern stuff is so often annoying, but with Kundera, it isn’t annoying at all. He completely disrupts the novel form, and throws the reading experience into a whole new category, but it isn’t self-indulgent. His writing is so good, he is so very, very perceptive, that it works.”

Over to you!  A rather tricky category, but let me know if you have any suggestions…

Gossip From Thrush Green – Miss Read

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The first four or five days I was at home, I had a headache.  It’s related to a tooth problem, which hopefully will get sorted out, and I’ve become a cheerleader for various painkillers and antibiotics this week – but, more to the point, I needed something to read.  I couldn’t cope with anything stylistically sophisticated or experimental, or even anything which could be considered demanding in any sense of the word.  What could I choose?  Well, I’d never read anything by Miss Read, and she seemed to fit the bill.  I have three on my shelf, picked up cheaply somewhere, and so I chose one from the middle of her writing – Gossip from Thrush Green (1981).

Although I had never previously read a word by Miss Read, it was exactly what I expected.  Thoroughly enjoyable, and utterly forgettable.  It’s a little village where everyone knows each other, and cares for each other – the only differences being that some show this care, and some hide it.  Everyone gossips, especially the men, and a mischievous cat is about as traumatic as a burnt down vicarage (incidentally, not the most restful scenario to read whilst sitting in a vicarage!)

It’s been less than a week, and already all the characters and events are fading from my mind… I think the characters recur throughout the series of Thrush Green novels, so other readers might already be fond of blunt Ella, dotty Dotty, kind vicar’s wife Dimity etc.  I liked them all, but – differently though they were described – all of them spoke in the same warm, sensible way.  Miss Read (or Dora Saint, as she was called) writes in a very workmanlike way, getting the job done – which is perfectly good enough, because she clearly isn’t trying to be experimental.  With my headache, I was grateful.  Although set around 1981, when it was published, this was only clear because they talked about decimalisation.  Apart from that, it could easily have been 1950 or 1930 or even earlier.  It’s all bathed in nostalgia.  Villages still have these sorts of friendships and acquaintances – everyone is interested in each other – but they’re not quite so cut off from the rest of the world.

But how could I not warm to a novelist who takes it for granted that we know who the Provincial Lady is?

“‘When in doubt, don’t’, is my motto,” said Ella forthrightly.  “And as for love, well, you know what the Provincial Lady maintained.  She reckoned that a sound bank balance and good teeth far outweighed it in value.”
And how could I not nod my head to this?

“A quarter past three,” she exclaimed, catching sight of the bedside clock. “What a time to be drinking tea!””Anytime,” Harold told her, “is time to be drinking tea.”
All in all, this was the perfect book for me to read this week, but I think I’ll be keeping Miss Read to days when I can’t cope with anything else.  I know she has her besotted fans – Our Vicar’s Wife has read them all several times, I believe – but when I’m after comfort reading I’d rather run back to the 1920s.

Song for a Sunday

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Saturday night was a big barn dance for my parents’ wedding anniversary and my Mum’s birthday, with about 100 people coming.  Fun!  The celebrations continue today, and so I shall put up ‘their song’ – chosen some time into their marriage, but appropriate nonetheless.  Here’s Shania Twain and ‘You’re Still The One’.

Great British Baking!

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Some people were there when Dylan first went electric.  Some knew about Harry Potter before he hit the mainstream.  I, dear reader, was with The Great British Bake Off from series one, episode one.

Indeed, the whole first series watched without much comment – I loved it, and even toyed with entering the second series.  But then it suddenly became much better known, attracting higher ratings and being a heated topic of conversation in the Bodleian tea room.  I was even inspired to hold my own cake party.  I’m much enjoying series three (and watched the third episode with Mum this evening, on iPlayer) but the standard and difficulty have far exceeded anything I would be able to manage.  In case you haven’t watched it, the combination of Mel and Sue’s witty, irreverent-but-kind commentary, Mary Berry’s grandmotherly sweetness, Paul Hollywood’s gruff criticism, and a dozen nervous, jolly bakers is utterly irresistible.  I don’t know if the whole series’ episodes are available on iPlayer still, but if you can see the cakes in episode 1, they were amazing.  They had to bake cakes with patterns or pictures on the inside… exceptional.  Are you watching it?

And now for something completely different.  My very dear friend Lorna came to visit earlier in August and (despite she being a recently married uber-professional journalist, and me being… well, old) we made gingerbread and decorated it!  I only have two cutters, so they were gingerbread cats and gingerbread teapots.  And we didn’t stint on the squeezy icing…

The cutters are ready!

I’m clearly enjoying myself :)

mid-creation…

I couldn’t squeeze on ‘aged 26’.

I make a Colin cat (it’s a Wolverhampton Wanderers shirt…) 

Harry Potter cat!  (Please don’t sue.)

Lorna hard at work – such concentration!

Lorna’s spread – spot the Parisian teapot, landmarks and all

My finished creations.
Now you see why I didn’t enter GBBO…