Weekend Miscellany

Spring seems to have sprung. I went out without a coat! It’s all happening. And, since it’s International Women’s Day, I thought I’d mention the blog post I posted last year – ranking the British Library Women Writers titles. A few books have come out since then, and I’d put the forthcoming The Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning high up the list – probably #4. Available to preorder wherever you preorder!

1.) The book – Nicola Wilson sent me a proof of her book, which I’ve very excited about. It’s called Recommended! and is about the Book Society. I wrote about them during my doctorate – one of the book-of-the-month clubs that proliferated in the 1920s and ’30s, and I can’t wait to find out more about it. Readers of the Provincial Lady series will have come across several mentions of it already.

2.) The blog post – do go and wish Rebecca a happy 10th blog birthday! It feels like she’s been part of the blogosphere for even longer, and we’re lucky to have her wide-ranging, thoughtful posts.

3.) The link – well, it’s a video, but I wanted to highlight again the excellent Never Too Small series on YouTube. It looks at small homes (usually flats) around the world, and how clever architectural decisions have maximised their use. My only criticism is that usually they seem to be lived in by people who don’t own any possessions, but this recent home is clearly loved and lived in.

Happy March! Here in the UK we seem to be alternating bright sunshine and torrential rain. As I write this, it’s one of the sunny days – cold, sunny weather is my favourite, and hopefully it’ll continue as I jaunt round London this weekend. The world might continue to get worse and worse every day (don’t you miss the days when villains were at least a little nuanced? Not ‘I’m going to deprive the world’s most vulnerable and then lie about fraud’ levels evil?) but here’s a book, a link, and a blog post to make things feel momentarily less bleak.

1.) The book – I’m halfway through a proof copy of Mark Hussey’s Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel and absolutely loving it. Hussey goes from the genesis of the novel through its writing to its publication, reception and aftermath. Definitely one for people who already know and love Mrs Dalloway, but I am happily in that camp. Looks like it’s out in May, so get your pre-orders in now.

2.) The link – not a usual one for me, and not about books, but this long read in the Financial Times by Madison Marriage is absorbing, excellent, and devastating. It’s about the inquest into her brother’s death, and the 48 hours that led to it while he desperately tried to get an urgent repeat prescription – and the ways the NHS, pharmacies and others failed him.

3.) The blog post – March is Reading Wales month – get some suggestions over at Booker Talk.

Well, thank GOODNESS January is finally over. I can’t believe it was only a month. I feel like I’ve lived lifetimes in January, and none of them very good. Some of that I will share in due course, and other bits can be swept under the rug (and some is just things like spending a fortune on dentistry, which I suppose is all part of life when it’s impossible to find an NHS dentist). On the brighter side, I’ve read some wonderful books recently, none of which I have yet reviewed.

I hope your year has started better than mine! Though the world is feeling quite a dark, scary place at the moment. I’m largely deciding to go for denial and hiding this time around, as all the anger and sadness didn’t really help me or anybody else last time.

As ever, we can turn for some mild solace to a book, a blog post, and a link:

1.) The blog post – I loved Rohan’s take on one of the more recent British Library Women Writers titles, Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts. And not just because she says nice things about my afterword!

2.) The link – this is actually another blog post, but I’m including as the link because it feels so much MORE than a blog post. Victoria/LitLove at Tales From The Reading Room has posted the first of (hopefully) a series of personal essays, and it’s simply extraordinarily good. This one looks back at her teen years, and it makes me very much hope a book comes eventually.

3.) The book – the Imperial War Museum emailed me recently about an upcoming reprint that sounds really interesting – J.B. Priestley’s Three Men in New Suits, about men returning from war. It’ll be out in April. They also have a backlist that I know very little about and which looks very interesting. Any recommendations?

Hello hello – it’s been a while since I did a Weekend Miscellany, hasn’t it? And I am spending at least some of the weekend in a lovely airbnb in Malvern, as a little treat to myself. Sadly I also have a horrible cold, but… well, if you have to have a cold, I suppose it’s better to have it in a pretty airbnb? Maybe? It’s certainly warmer than my flat. Malvern also has some wonderful secondhand bookshops, so watch this space for a haul, if I come away successful.

Oh, btw, I’ve sort of left Twitter – my account is still there, but inactive. You can find me at BlueSky, which is currently rather nicer and bookish and not run by a cartoon supervillain.

Anyway, hope you’re doing well. Here’s a book, a blog post, and a link!

1.) The link – I love Tracy Chevalier’s Books of My Life in the Guardian. Along with the sort of classics you might expect, she mentions the sort of authors we love in this part of the book internet – Elizabeth von Arnim, Dorothy Whipple, R.C. Sherriff.

2.) The book – Dear Oliver by Susan R. Barry is a book my brother got me for my birthday, and I’m excited to read it. You might know about my abiding love for neuroscientist and lovely human Oliver Sacks – this book is about the friendship that Barry (a fellow neuroscientist) had with Sacks over a decade of letters. (Cheating, with another book – Sacks’ selected letters are also recently out.)

3.) The blog post – Jacqui always has such good ideas for book lists – I enjoy the variety of her list of haunting, atmospheric novellas. I’ve only read three of them, and am especially glad now that I recently bought Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts.

Hello! I’ve been very quiet in June, perhaps as a reaction to all those book reviews (albeit mini reviews) during A Book A Day in May. It’s also been a really busy time – but good things. I saw Taylor Swift! I went to a lovely wedding! I’m off this weekend to see two of my new godchildren! It’s been full of fun, and also full of hayfever. (Summer has also only just come, it feels like, so I think I’ve read in my garden twice this year – normally it would be well into the dozens by now.)

I’ll give you an update next week on how A Century of Books is going at the halfway point (I have good and bad news), and Rachel and I will be recording the next Tea or Books? episode on 11 July – if you fancy joining in, we’re reading A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley and A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Incidentally, I was telling a friend about the latter today, and she thought I was saying A Room of One Zone. Quite tempted to write that book now?

I hope you have a lovely weekend up ahead, and here’s to the excitement of a General Election next week (and, I’m crossing fingers, a long-awaited change). I’ll leave you, as ever, with a book, a blog post, and a link.

1.) The blog post –  I think Radhika is one of the very best blog reviewers out there, and this week she’s turned her attention to my favourite R.C. Sherriff novel, Greengates.

2.) The book – Have I mentioned yet that Edward Carey has a new novel coming out? I’ve loved his books since I first picked one up in 2008, and he made a big splash with Little, about Madame Tussaud. The latest is called Edith Holler – about a young a woman in 1901 Norwich who is forbidden, by her father, from leaving the playhouse she lives in. What a marvellous, Careyesque premise. It’s not out in the UK until October, though apparently has been out in the US since late last year.

3.) The link – Voting this week and haven’t decided yet? This is a handy tool to find out which parties most align with your politics. (And this is a handy tool for helping with tactical voting, if that’s your jam.)

It’s been a while since I did a Weekend Miscellany – I had a few thoughts for them in May, but A Book A Day took over. I also realised I was going to reflect on A Book A Day In May and haven’t yet. Well, this year it was harder than before, I’ll admit. That was a mix of my eyes not being great (they never fully recovered after getting Covid for a second time last September, though are nowhere near as bad as they were in December 2022, praise the Lord), having a busier-than-usual calendar, and possibly having read an awful lot of the obvious novella choices already. The second half of the month was definitely easier, and I finished some fantastic books. Will I do it again next year? Well, probably.

My only project for June is Reading the Meow, Mallika’s week of cat-themed reading, which kicks off on Monday.

But let’s have a book, a blog post, and a link – happy weekend!

1.) The book – Somehow I’ve not mentioned the latest British Library Women Writers book?! It’s Forest Silver by E.M. Ward, set in wartime in the Lake District. It’s not one I chose for the series, but it’s an interesting look at what war was like outside of London – which so often dominates ‘home front’ novels.

2.) The link – John Self has written as fascinating post on Booker prizewinners that were initially rejected by publishers, over at the Booker Prize website. It’s very well researched, and particularly interesting is the way people differently remember (often to their own advantage) the rejection process…

3.) The blog post – Moira always writes such interesting posts at Clothes in Books, and this one from May on mourning clothes in books is particularly intriguing.

First things first – your reminder that the 1962 Club is coming up around the corner! Join in a week of reading books published in 1962 and share your thoughts wherever you share bookish thoughts online. Looking forward to it!

Ok, onto the usual miscellany…

1.) The blog post – I always love Jacqui’s thematic round-ups, and the most recent is on monstrous women. Go and enjoy her excellent suggestions, and throw in your own…

2.) The book – have I mentioned Stories for Winter, the next British Library Women Writers anthology? It comes out in a few weeks and I think it’s a really good selection of stories. Find out a little more on the only link I could find.

3.) The link – I really enjoyed the latest episode of Risking Enchantment – a podcast about art, culture and faith – which looks at two books I love and what they tell us about how to be on holiday: The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff and The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. Listen here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Happy weekend, everyone! I’ve spent much of this week championing Tove Jansson in an online poll of NYRB Classics authors, and I’m delighted to say that she won the overall competition – even if it did mean losing favourites like Barbara Comyns, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sylvia Townsend Warner along the way. She also got her fair share of people (mostly men) dismissing her as a children’s writer – it reminded me of a recent podcast episode where Rachel and I discussed how female writers are often expected to write for children too, and then critically diminished for doing so.

ANYWAY, on with the usual miscellany. I hope you’re having a fantastic weekend.

1.) The book – I hadn’t heard of Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn until Emily commented on a blog post. She wrote “Also has anyone read the book Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn? It is a memoir, the subtitle says a translation diary, about when the author translated the book Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit.” Emily also mentioned that she hadn’t read it yet, but that description was enough to send me straight to buy a copy (directly from the publisher) – and it is now waiting on my coffee table.

2.) The blog post – I enjoyed Sheree’s take on some of most reviewed books on GoodReads – or, as she puts it, Daddy GR :D

3.) The link – Charleston House (the country residence of major members of the Bloomsbury Group) is a marvellous, inspiring, enveloping place – and I enjoyed the Guardian’s take on its role in fashion history.

It’s the weekend, and I’ll be preparing for my first ever sermon/talk at my church – that I’m giving in a couple of weeks, on Jesus healing a blind man in John 9. I’ve done talks in other places, and contributed to talks at my church, but this is New Territory. Wish me luck, or something more spiritual!

I hope you have a good weekend lined up. As ever in the miscellany, I’ll send you on your way with a book, a link, and a blog post…

1.) The book – praise be for Michael Walmer, continuing to republish the wonderful Stella Benson. I’ve read the four they’ve already published, and now I’ve bought Pipers and a Dancer and am looking forward to getting started on that one. Order your own, or catch up on Benson’s quirky, funny, inimitable backlist, over at his website.

2.) The link – this New York Times article by Sophie Hughes on literary translation is fascinating, and brilliantly interactive in the way it’s laid out.

3.) The blog post – I enjoyed the overview of 2023 reading so far from You Might As Well Read – so many excellent choices, and some very tempting ones I haven’t read.

It’s fully summer now, and we have our annual village drinks this Saturday. Fingers crossed for sunshine? I hope you’re also enjoying suitably summery activities – unless, of course, you are in the southern hemisphere. In which case I hope you’re having a lovely winter.

Onto the usual miscellany!

1.) The blog post – a melancholy but lovely post from Scott about the books that Furrowed Middlebrow would have published, were it not for the tragically early death of Rupert.

2.) The link – it’s a Spotify link, but I’m sure you’ll find the Independent Teacher podcast on other platforms. I enjoyed listening to my ‘Tea or Books?’ co-host Rachel on an episode about ending sexism in schools – sharing her research on sexism in the choice of books taught in English lessons in the UK.

3.) The book – for pre-orderers – my friend Tom has a novel out in October called Blight, which I’m excited to read. Below the pic is what it’s about…

1897. James Harringley is summoned home from London to his rambling family mansion in the north of England. His father is sick, deranged, and James must return, confronting the horrors he tried to forget: the labyrinthine house, the madness and secrets which poison their bloodline and, most frightening of all, the spectre of the tall man – an eerie visage who promises to whisk children away and make them royalty in the land of Faery.

James returns to the house and finds his father and brother at war, and the nebulous substance of his childhood brought into unbearable relief. He remembers the whispers about the tall man. But can he trust his own memories? Then the groundskeeper Janey has had her baby kidnapped, one of many child disappearances connected with the house and the nearby village. There are those who blame the tall man, while others believe a more earthly culprit is responsible. James must sift through the ramblings of his father, the scepticism of his power-hungry brother and the uncertain fabric of his own memories to discover the truth.