Hello there, hope all is well with you. Doesn’t the Weekend Miscellany tone get all jovial? How will you be spending your weekend? I’m off to Kent for a wedding on Saturday, and on Sunday will be trying to cook cottage pie for fifty (with two able assistants) despite never having made cottage pie before. I panic a little bit when having to cook meat, but mince being quite similar to veggie mince, I thought I could probably manage it…
There are all sorts of book reviews to come next week, should I get the wakefulness to write them (and not just watch all the episodes of Neighbours I missed last week) including the bulk of my holiday reading. Quite a few gems to chat about, so look forward to that… and do keep on entering the draw for Tove Jansson’s Travelling Light – I’ll pick a winner sometime next week. Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, we’ll have a book, a blog post, and a link.
1.) The blog post – isn’t it exciting and lovely when you come across a blogger whose voice and taste you really appreciate? Well, I followed a comment from Nick C to his blog a pile of leaves, and hit that sort of goldmine. I haven’t felt this pleased about a new-to-me blog since I discovered Claire at Captive Reader! *And* it’s a boy writing a blog who doesn’t share one of my names… Simon and Thomas being my two favourite male bloggers. All a big preamble to this blog post. In a sense, it could have been any – but this represents the nice rambly nature of the blog, and ties in with yesterday’s post on S-i-a-b.
2.) The link – just call me Cheaty Cheaterson (but wait – our family motto was ‘Thomases don’t cheat’. Did your family have a motto?) but my link is from Nick’s blog too. Get your coveting hat on, because you’re going to need it when you see this link and, behind the scenes, this one. They’re about something called The Ark which is essentially a five-storey bookcase you can live in. Dribble…
3.) The book – is winging its way to me from Rosy Thornton, but I thought I’d give it a mention this weekend. She wrote a female version of the campus novel, Hearts and Minds, which I blogged about back here, as did lots of other bloggers. The Tapestry of Love is her newest book, is about a 40-something English woman who sells up and moves to France to be a seamstress! And it has a rather lovely cover, which never goes amiss.
Try having to walk past that giant bookcase several times a day as you go to and from your office…constant longing! I must say I have spent plenty a lunchtime in there and I have to admit that several books have managed to jump off the shelf and into my bag, but they needed a loving home. ;)
I love it when I find new blogs! A man writing about literature who's not called Simon?! I'm off to check him out!
My family did not have a motto, I guess we never owned a castle, but one that people think I aspire to is the splendidly Calvinist Strength through misery.
Off to the city of Calvin in about three hours.
My family's motto, according to my father's uncle, when my dad asked him for a small loan to keep him going at university, was "Devines never borrow".
I walked past The Ark when I was using the V&A Art Library in June – good to see it finished (when I was there it was closed – behind barriers.)
All those books – a bit like our garage!
The Ark is amazing. But perhaps not as amazing as another male blogger.
I am in the middle of Hearts and Minds and enjoying it thoroughly. Thank you for the links to Nick's blog. Will go visit.
Thanks for the plug! Wish I hadn’t signed off on Thursday with that weird stuff about the ‘I write like…’ website, which has inevitably turned out to be a publishers’ advertising gimmick…
Wonderful links – have just found your blog! That bookcase is a wonderful thing. Perhaps there will after all be an Ikea knock-off soon?! I would like to ascend the stairs cocooned by books. Imagine.
Hope the cottage pie turned out okay, i always find it tricky not to be able to taste as you cook…
Rachel – the temptation! I wonder which books jumped into your bag… I so want to visit with a hold-all…
Peter – Strength through misery – gracious!
Harriet – borrowed from Polonius, presumably?! Gosh… Thomases borrow a lot, mostly books.
Mum – I think you could work our garage into something similar…
Thomas – haha, two modern miracles in the book world!
Mystica – I've now heard really good things of Rosy's latest book, so will dig it out at some point.
Nick – haha, a lovely image you left us with :-)
Jane – I would be first in line for an Ikea version! Thanks for stopping by my blog :)