Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany

I’m off for the weekend, to give a talk on Barbara Comyns to the Bidford History Society (argh! nervous!) and visit my brother in Bristol (not nervous…) so I’m typing out a couple of posts to appear whilst I’m away. First off, the Weekend Miscellany – which has a little bit extra this week. Don’t worry, we’ll still be looking at a book, a blog post, and a link – but before that…

UK Book Bloggers Meet-Up
I wrote about this quite a while ago, when it was in its very early stages of organisation – it’s now a little nearer being organised which, let’s face it, is as near as I’m likely to get, not being one of nature’s organised people. Just ask my family, in whom hope springs eternal.

I don’t want to put all the details up here, Just In Case (we don’t want the wrong sort of internet-lurker turning up!) but I have booked a venue. We’ll be meeting in the function room of a lovely, traditional English pub in London (which comes recommended by Kim) on Saturday May 8th at 5.30pm. To get involved, give me an email at simondavidthomas [at] yahoo.co.uk . I think everyone who got in touch before has had an email from me – let me know if I’ve missed you! The room dooes have a restriction of 35 – I shouldn’t think we’ll have more than that, but just in case, it’s first-come first-served… so get emailing!

1.) The book – Thought I’d mention something which came through the postbox this week – Croc Attack! by Assaf Gavron. Sounds like an edgier David Attenborough, doesn’t it, but no – the novel is about Eitan Enoch, known as Croc, and his survival of various terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv. He inadvertently becomes a national celebrity, but thus also becomes a target… To be honest, it sounds more violent than my usual choice of book, but is also apparently ‘blackly funny’ and might appeal to the more politically minded amongst you? In fact, let me know if you fancy reviewing it for this blog and (if you live in the UK), I’ll pop it in the post to you…

2.) The blog post – it’s always great when bloggers come fresh to my favourite books, so I was delighted to see Thomas at My Porch review EM Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady; Lisa at BlueStalking Reader write about The Love Child by Edith Olivier, and that Miss Hargreaves has paid a visit to Nicola at Back-to-Books. All are books on my 50 Books list, and though not all the blog posts are from this week, I’ll confess, they’re recent… that’s good enough, isn’t it? OH, and see Jenny’s review of Lucia in London too. So many great posts!

3.) The link – If you’re like me, then the words ‘free’ and ‘book’ in the same sentence won’t go amiss. That’s just what train company First Capital Connect are intending to do, with their own book club – more info here, please excuse the ad agency’s rather bizarre logo.

(by the by, anyone who used to use the ‘Home…’ link in the left-hand column, I’ve now deleted it – but clicking on the picture in the top left-hand corner will take you back to the main page)