Weekend Miscellany

Hope you’re having a nice weekend – in the UK we finally have SUN!  It’s amazing.

1.) The book – have you read any of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s short stories? NYRB Classics have brought out a few with lovely covers (as per) and I’m currently reading The Autobiography of a Corpse, and finding it… interesting. Jury’s out at the moment. Anybody know anything more about his writing?

2.) The review – one of my biggest surprises in recent years was when Claire/Captive Reader didn’t love the (oh-so-lovely) Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton. So she’s moved down to my second favourite book read in 2012 – although I suspect that is a coincidence – and did end up loving the equally-lovely Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff. Go and enjoy her review here. And then make sure you read the book.

3.) The link – this one has been doing the rounds in various places, so this is just the most recent place I’ve seen it. First brought to my attention by my friend Hannah, there is an app which will cleverly scroll through words, enabling you to read a book much more quickly than you would moving your eyes across a page.  Now, when it comes to reading novels I remain a technophobe, and I certainly shan’t be getting one, but I’m still impressed by the idea…

I’m off to Bristol for the weekend (as mentioned the other day) – but my quiz ability might be hampered by the fact that I’m not feeling very well.  Doh.  (That’s my excuse if I do badly, anyway.)

Here’s your usual (ahem) round-up of book, blog, and link!

1.) The book – I don’t know much about this one, but it arrived through my letterbox and looks interesting… Grace and Mary by Melvyn Bragg, from Sceptre. A quick google tells me that it was actually out in hardback and I missed it completely (or, more likely, read about it and forgot it).  Well, more info here!

2.) The blog – you probably all know and love Thomas of My Porch and The Readers.  Well, he can add a third string to his violin (which is, incidentally, the number of strings my violin has had for three years) with Lucy’s Forever Home.  It documents the transformation of his home (which was, frankly, already sublimely beautiful) – all the planning, reasons behind choices, diagrams, mood boards, and pictures of machinery that you could wish for.  I lived for property programmes during my teens, and still love them now when I’m in at the right time – and this is like watching one about people I know.

3.) The link – a neat segue. Terry’s Fabrics sent me a link to a fun infographic they’d made about homes in classic literature, from Jane Eyre to The Secret Garden.  Enjoy!

Short intro… enjoy!

1.) The blog post – don’t forget to be checking out Kim’s advent calendar of bloggers’ best books of 2013!  That link takes you to Kim’s blog Reading Matters so you can scroll through the choices; to see mine, which appeared on day one, click here.

2.) The book – another reprint publisher which got in touch recently was Turnpike Books, who sent A.E. Coppard’s short stories Weep Not My Wanton, which I’m excited to read as soon as I possibly can.

3.) The link – these are probably faked, at least some of them, but funny notes written by kids are always going to be funny, yes?

Gosh, it’s been a while since I did one of these, so I have quite a few things to catch you up on!  Here are just ten of them…

1.) Angela Young’s brilliant novel Speaking of Love is now available as an e-book for Kindle (etc.? I don’t know how these things work.)  You can see/buy it here, and it’s only £1.99, which is crazy cheap for such a good book.  Go give it a try!

2.) National flags created by the foods the countries are associated with!

3.) Daunt Books recently sent me a beautiful new edition of Virginia Woolf’s The London Scene.  I reviewed this collection of stories back in 2007, and highly recommend this really lovely edition – maybe as a Christmas present?

4.) Jura Whisky are running some flash fiction competitions #WinningWords – more info here.

5.)  If you haven’t see Blue Jasmine and get the chance, do.  It’s the best film I’ve seen this year, and Cate Blanchett is astonishingly good.

6.) Jennifer Walker has written a biography of bloggers’-favourite Elizabeth von Arnim (called Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Literary Journey) – I’ve not started it yet, but I’m excited about reading it.

7.) An interesting book bloggers’ survey (to which I contributed) has results here (four results posts linked from that link).  I was mostly surprised by what a high percentage of bloggers are paid to write reviews for publications or other sites.

8.) I loved Susan Sellers’ Vanessa and Virginia (review here) and thought that you might like to know that she has a new book out – Given The Choice – published by Cillian Press.

9.) I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t heard of Elie Wiesel, whom the good people of Souvenir Press assure me is one of the best-known European writers, but I shall find out more with The Testament (trans. Marion Wiesel) which they’ve sent me.

10.) Someone sent me Amazon.com’s 100 Best Books of 2013.  I have heard of 4 of them, and read none.  I do quite want to read three of those four – the Tartt, Rowling, and Humans of New York.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far – I’m going to be seeing Felicity Kendal in Alan Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking tonight, which is pretty exciting (although I did start reading a book by him yesterday that gave away the plot, ooops…)  Entirely unrelated to that, this week’s book, blog post, and link come with a Shirley Jackson theme!

1.) The book – it was via Claire/Paperback Reader’s Facebook page that I discovered the obscure Shirley Jackson novels I’d hankered after were – gasp – soon to be reprinted by Penguin!  So, Hangsaman, The Sundial, and The Road Through The Wall will all come out over the next few months.  I’m starting to wish I hadn’t spent a pretty penny on The Sundial, especially since I still haven’t read it…

2.) The link – the New Yorker had a great interview with Shirley Jackson’s son last month…

3.) The blog post – hunting around for a recent Shirley Jackson post, I stumbled on a great review (and discussion in the comments section) of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, over at Estella’s Revenge.

Have you read any/much/all of Shirley Jackson?  Let me know your favourites, or you want to read next….

Hope y’all are having a great weekend, folks!  (I’ve been thinking about my autumnal trip to America, if that’s any excuse for that sentence – although ‘autumnal’ has rather scuppered that line of thought.)

It’s getting rather too hot again, so I shall collapse in a heap – before I do so, here’s a book, a blog post, and a link, as per.

1.) The book – Janet Todd wrote a fantastic book called Death and the Maidens a few years ago, and the Shelleys and Wollstonecrafts (read my review here) – I’ve heard that she’s now got a novel out reimagining Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. It’s only available as an ebook, so I can’t read it (and I haven’t even read Lady Susan yet, as I want to save something by Austen) – but perhaps you can.  Find out more here.

2.) The blog post – Hurrah and hurray for Vintage Books reprinting Stella Gibbons!  When I think I know about her output, still more appear – I’m currently reading Here Be Dragons, but for today, go and read Jane/Fleur Fisher’s fantastic and enticing review of The Rich House.

3.) The link – Nanny Net sent me a link to their 10 Nanny Themed Summer Reading Books… as target audiences go, this is up there with the person who emailed me recently saying they’d like to feature me on their TV show as ‘a book lover and mother of two’, but perhaps some of you will be intrigued!

There are three people I routinely refer to as my best friend (playing fast and loose with my superlatives) – one is my lovely brother Colin, one is my dear friend Washington Wife, and the third is wonderful Mel.  (Since her blog isn’t updated, I can link instead to a review she wrote for me, that was for a long time the most read page on my blog.)  They’re all enormously brilliant people, and I am very blessed to know them – and only one of them is biologically predetermined to like me.

I bring this up only because today is Mel’s wedding day, and I’m off to usher (ush?), give a reading, and probably cry.  I’ll leave you with a whole range of links, rather than the usual book, blog post, and link (because there are so many this week), but first of all – I’ve done the prize draw for Stephen Leacock’s Literary Lapses and the winner is Pam from Travellin’ Penguin!  Email me your address, and I’ll get it in the post.  I so enjoyed reading everyone’s favourite things about Canada, and it’s made me even more determined to visit one day.  And how serendipitous that I chose Canada Day to hold the draw!  Right – some links:

1.) You’ll love this list of ‘book titles with one letter missing‘, and accompanying illustrations.

2.) I wrote again for OxfordWords – this time, 5 Words That Are Older Than You Think.  Go and be surprised!

3.) So did Hayley!  She’s written all about the language of whisky.

4.) AND Washington Wife, aforementioned!  A really fantastic article on ‘journalese‘.

5.) Margaret sent me this fascinating article about the letters received after Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ was first published in the New Yorker.  Warning: spoilers, so make sure you read the short story (which you can do here) first.

Have a great weekend, all!

It’s been a little while since I did one of these… and this one’s going to be brief, because the painkillers I’m on for endless headaches have made me very sleepy!  (They’re not especially heavy-duty painkillers, but… well, maybe I have a predisposition to sleepiness. It’s been noted before.)

1.) The book – is The Matriarch by G.B. Stern, which Daunt Books sent me a day or two ago – I’ve been wanting to read some of her fiction for ages, and this is a great opportunity in a lovely edition.

2.) The link – oh, just Buzzfeed. I spend my life there now.

3.) The blog post – Washington Wife has put up another two hilarious posts – read ’em here and here.

And the weekend comes at the end of the week which, in Britain, finally brought warm weather!  We seem to have skipped spring altogether, and moved straight to summer – which is a shame for me, because spring is easily my favourite season.  Ho-hum.

Today I’ll be going to a 1970s-themed murder mystery party… which I’m also writing.  And that tense is used intentionally, since I still haven’t finished writing it… eek!  Best get a move on; just time to tell you about a blog post, a book, and a link.

1.) The book – isn’t new, but is a mini-project between me and Karen / Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which we’re inviting everyone to join in with.  I love doing little readalongs with other bloggers, so if I see that they’ve recently bought a book I’ve been intending to read, I quite often pop a comment in, seeing if they’d like to read at the same time.  Karen and I talked about reading Nina Bawden together (an author I’ve yet to read, although I have a few of her books) and the only one we both owned was A Woman of My Age.  So we’ll be both be reading it, and probably posting about it sometime towards the end of the month.  Do join in!

2.) The link – I have got so obsessed BuzzFeed of late… yes, the cute animals, but also myriad other addictive lists.  I do love a list.  Most recently, I have been amazed by these optical illusions (particularly numbers 11 and 14).

3.) The blog post – read about the postal book group I’m in, and the fantastic book Danielle sent around this time, in her blog post here.

Happy weekend, everyone! I’m feeling in a good mood as I write this on Friday night, because I went back to the first chapter of my DPhil thesis for the first time in 3 years, and I still felt inspired to see how I could edit and re-frame it!  It’s been so long since I had time to work on my DPhil properly that I’d forgotten the thrill when planning goes right.  The only academic thing to compare is the thrill when archives turn up something wonderful.  There are plenty of downsides to spending four years earning very little money and working alongside very few people, but it has its upsides too.

So that’s put me in a cheery frame of mind for sharing a book, a link, and a blog post!

1.) The book – is one I was offered by the author.  I know I won’t have time to read it, so I haven’t accepted the review copy, but I still think it sounds very intriguing. It’s A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson, and the cover art is enough to catch my attention…

I like the quick synopsis Jasper put in an email to me: “Though it is (I hope) funny in parts, it’s really about an ageing man, unable to get over the loss of his wife, crashing around rural Venezuela and getting into serious trouble.”

2.) The blog post – was a very easy choice this week, as it’s about a book I adored, but never wrote about: Economy Must Be Our Watchword by Joyce Dennys.  I didn’t write about it, because it was impossible to find and I didn’t want to fill people with hopeless desire to read this gem!  But I mentioned it when I took part in Lost in the Stacks over at A Work in Progress, and Danielle, marvellously, managed to find a copy through her library – and wrote a brilliant review here.  Go and check it out; it also includes lots of Dennys’s brilliant illustrations.

3.) The link – this video had my office in fits of laughter this week: