Weekend Miscellany

1.) The books – I’m cheating, as there are four this weekend… and they’re all short (539 pages between the four of them!), and they’re all in translation. That wasn’t deliberate, but somehow it happened – and so I thought I’d collect them altogether. Two from the library (The Blue Fox by Sjon, from the Icelandic; Identity by Milan Kundera, from the French) and two review copies (Hector and the Search for Happiness by Francois Lelord and Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi, both from the French). Look out for them on Stuck-in-a-Book over the following weeks, they look like they’ll cover quite a range of styles and moods, but all sounds interesting… Since there are four, I don’t think I have space to offer summaries or blurbs now, so we’ll wait til I’ve read them…

2.) The blog post – is the very innovative Cate at Bookshelf Project with her Book Oscars 2010. You only have three days left to vote, so click on that link and choose amongst the nominations in categories including Best Cover Design, Best Fiction Novel, Best Book-to-Film Adaptation… and maybe more. She also made this rather fab banner:

3.) The link – I’m cheating again, because it’s not really a link. I’m just copying and pasting from a recent email… it’s a hard life, being a blogger. Said email was from a man named Peter, who runs Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations. Apparently he’s looking to expand his offerings of book club books. Take a look at what he has and if you have some ideas as to a list you could contribute, get in touch with him at info@flashlightworthy.com.

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)

These weeks do come around quickly, don’t they? Hope you’re all ready for a fun Valentine’s Weekend – that’s right, I’m one of those few single people who finds Valentine’s Day rather sweet. Not the commercial bit of it, no, but the fact that it makes people take time out to celebrate their relationships. Awww…..

But I haven’t availed myself of the opportunity to make this a themed Weekend Miscellany, you’ll be pleased to hear. Instead, we have our usual mixture of interesting link, blog post, and book. Here goes…

1.) The blog post – I have my friend Barbara to thank for bringing this to my attention: anyone interested in old Penguin paperbacks should go and check out this lovely post on a blog called Spitalfields Life.

2.) The book – is, sadly, not one which has landed on my doormat. I spotted it mentioned on Claire’s (aka The Captive Reader) blog, and – unusually? – it’s a great book which is available in the US and not the UK. Well, available in Canada too, presumably, if Claire has a copy – my other deductions come courtesy of Amazon snooping! Enough preamble – the book is A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. I confess I was a little dubious – would this be a collection of modern ‘great writers’ of whom I’d never heard? Or, worse, Danielle Steele informing me that Elinor Dashwood is, essentially, the same as the heroine of her latest novel. But no – this appears to be a collection of essays spanning the years, and the writers in question include Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, W. Somerset Maugham, Fay Weldon, CS Lewis, David Lodge, Harold Bloom, the director of Clueless… and, yes, quite a few people I wouldn’t know from Adam – but enough there to make me hanker rather a lot for this collection.

3.) The link – if you ignore the unbookish caption to this video, and close your mind to the destruction of a book or two, then this link is rather fun, and very inventive…

Hope you’ve all had a good week – doesn’t it go quickly? – here we are again with a book, a blog post, and a link to amuse and bedazzle you this weekend. (NB: bedazzlement not guaranteed.)

1.) The book – I’ve been meaning to read Grace by Alex Pheby for ages, ever since Two Ravens Press sent it to me… and that was quite some while ago. I’m still keen to read it, but it looks like it might not be in the very near future, and I think some of your lovers of quirky literature might quite like this, judging on the blurb. Peterman escapes a secure hospital, and wanders, half-delirious, into a nearby forest. Here he stays with an old woman and a young girl, and an extraordinary relationship develops between them. And so on…. Unreliable narrators, madness, apparently ‘luminous, lyrical prose’ – could be a winner. Having done a scout around, I see that almost exactly a year ago Lizzy Siddal reviewed Grace and interviewed Alex Pheby… It’ll still probably be a while before I get to this book, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has read it, or plans to.

2.) The blog post – I don’t usually pick straightforward reviews for this, as usually something a bit different has caught my attention, but I was rather struck by Harriet’s review of My Lover’s Lover by Maggie O’Farrell – find it here – and thought I’d make a change. I’ve only read one O’Farrell novel (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox) but I will probably be spurred on to more now…

3.) The link – isn’t remotely literary this week, but if (like me) you can’t quite see the point of Twitter, and are quite fond of English eccentricity, then you could do worse than clicking on this link…

Hello there, hope you’re well, do take a seat and have a cup of tea. I can do normal, Earl Grey, and… er, water. More miscellany for you – and on the right day of the week as well (though I’m actually typing this on Friday – sshh, don’t tell anyone).

1.) The blog post – is a myriad wonder… featuring several posts from a fairly recent blogger who seems to be reading all the books I want to read, or re-read. Here’s one on Mariana by Monica Dickens; one on Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey; one on The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne – go, enjoy, and welcome Claire aka Captive Reader to the blogosphere.

2.) The link – comes with a warning, this weekend. I found this hilarious… others were not, shall we say, ‘exceedingly diverted’. Click here to judge for yourself.

3.) The book – I don’t know if I’ve always made this obvious, but ‘the book’ section in this weekend miscellany is for books I’ve heard of, or which have come through the door, but which I haven’t read. Usually they’re ones I don’t think others will have heard about yet – but this week I’ve gone for one that I somehow missed, but hope you have heard of – White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. I was very impressed by The Icarus Girl back here, and have The Opposite House on my shelves, but somehow didn’t notice that White is for Witching was published back in May 2009 – and is coming out in paperback in April, I think. Reviews aren’t great at Amazon, tis true, but I’d rather hear your views… the publishers say “A remarkable, shape-shifting tale… The narrative oscillates between the mundane and the supernatural, and it is this skilful blend of the fantastic and the everyday that makes it resonate so chillingly… In the end, this isn’t a fantasy about ghosts and witches. It is really about memory and belonging, love and loss.” Over to you…

And a little extra – I’d love contributions to this in future, if you hear any – Best Bookish Quotation of the Week. I’m not talking quotations from books, I’m talking quotations about books which you’ve said yourself, or have heard friends say. I hope my friend won’t mind me using hers – I’ll keep her anonymous until/unless she hoves over and approves…[edit: she now has, and you can find out who it is in the comments!]
“I recite my Book Depository preorders to myself at night if I’m having trouble getting to sleep!” rivalled only, this week, by my own confession to my housemate: “I once bought a book solely because I liked the smell…” If you have any others – let me know!

Claire (aka Paperback Reader) reminded me that I haven’t done Stuck-in-a-Book’s Weekend Miscellany since… well, for a long time anyway. That wasn’t a deliberate decision, as I enjoyed doing a little round-up (and I hope that you enjoyed reading it) but somehow I only remembered about it in the middle of the week. But better late than never, and since we still have a little bit of the weekend left, here it is, in all its multi-coloured infinite variety! (Oh, and I’ve bought my first book of the year… but it was online, so I’ll give you an update when it arrives. If it ever does, given the current state of Oxford’s postal service – I’ve not received a parcel in ten days. Hmm…)

1.) The blog post – is without doubt the first round of Woolf in Winter, this fortnight reading Mrs. Dalloway and hosted by ‘What we have here is a failure to communicate‘ aka Sarah. Click on that link to take you to her thoughts, and a list of other people who’ve read the book. This scheme has been set up for both first-time Woolf readers and those (like me) who secretly think that Ginny is one of their best friends. I’d especially like to point you in the direction of Claire at Kiss a Cloud and her wonderful thoughts about reading Woolf for the first time. She’s bowled over by the novel in the same way that I was when I first read it, and it’s like reading my own thoughts from 2003 – only rather better worded. Though I haven’t re-read Mrs. Dalloway this time (I have read it four or five times) I might get on board for the next session, To The Lighthouse. Click on the picture for more details…

2.) The link – you might have already seen this on Elaine’s blog, Random Jottings, but I’m sure she won’t mind me copying it across here, in case you missed it. It’s about Waterstone’s, the UK bookshop chain, returning to its roots… click here for more. The cynical side of me realises any move they make is going to be motivated by commercialism rather than altruism, and it’s a terrible pity that so many genuinely local bookshops have gone to the wall, but still – the move can only be a good thing, right?

3.) The book – is a review copy from Oxford University Press that I’m definitely going to read before too long, but I might read it quite gradually, and I wanted to tell you about it sooner so you wouldn’t have to wait. It’s called Nine Wartime Lives: Mass-Observation and the Making of the Modern Self, by James Hinton, and uses the Mass-Observation diaries of nine ordinary people, during the Second World War, to look at the effects of the war to the individual as well as wider social issues. These people include Nella Last – I’m currently reading Nella Last’s War, about two years after everyone else did, and am stunned by how fascinating and how brilliantly written it is. That’s a strong early contender for 2010 favourites, and Nine Wartime Lives looks as though it might be equally interesting. (Warning: a bit pricey, might have to track it down in the library). More analytical than Nella Last’s War, but hopefully not textbook-style. From the outside, and from flicking through it and reading the odd excerpt, I’m hopeful.

Yes, the Weekend Miscellany has been visiting a Great-Aunt for the past few weeks, and obviously it is now not the weekend – nor, in fact, is today’s post going to take the usual form of a book, a blog post, and a link. And that’s because I’ve read so many brilliant blog posts over the past week or so, that I just wanted to share them with you. Some you’ll probably have already seen, but some might be new – and there’s just too much wonderful stuff on the blogosphere for me to ignore it for a moment longer. Without further ado…

1.) Throughout January and February, Claire from Kiss A Cloud, and some of her friends, will be leading a Woolf in Winter readathon. This is for everyone, but primarily those who have been intimidated by old Virginia in the past, and need a helping hand to get started. Full details are here, but I’ll just mention that the books in question are Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, Orlando, and The Waves. The Big Four, and the right order to read them in. I still have soft spots for Jacob’s Room and Between the Acts, in fact Jacob’s Room might be my favourite Woolf novel (it is today, at any rate) but you’ll be set in good stead if you read those four.

2.) Lovely Elaine at Random Jottings has been a Richmal Crompton fan for nearly as long as I have – I found Persephone through Richmal Crompton, and Elaine and I have shared our RC collections with each other over the years. We both champion her whenever we can ( I wrote about her back here) and Elaine the other day wrote another post in praise of this neglected author. Here it is. Her work is sometimes a bit variable, but there are many gems amongst her wide output. I’m currently reading The Innermost Room, and plan to re-read Matty and the Dearingroydes soon.

3.) Harriet Devine has an ongoing series on her blog, paintings of women reading. The other day she posted my favourite in the series so far, by a painter I didn’t know – Tavik Frantisek Simon. (Great surname!) I hope she doesn’t mind me reproducing it here… but do go and have a scout through her blog for previous paintings. This one reminds me of the Vanessa Bell painting on the Virago Modern Classics edition of Rebecca West’s Harriet Hume. I can only find tiny pictures of it, and can’t remember the title, but you can see it at Verity’s Virago Venture.

4.) I love a bit of book serendipity, don’t you? Simon Savidge picked up Lady Into Fox by David Garnett because the cover and title intrigued him – he read it, loved it, and then found out that it was in my 50 Books You Must Read! His review is so much better (and longer) than the one I wrote, and his beautiful Hesperus edition is a little bit nicer than my old one, found in a secondhand bookshop. The lady who told me about it was the same lady who introduced me to Miss Hargreaves – I have much for which to be grateful.

5.) And finally… Litlove at Tales From The Reading Room has compiled a list Reasons For Buying Books, which I happen to find rather convincing…

That’s a small selection of my favourite recent blog reading – always such a lot to delight in around the blogs, and perhaps you’ll be inspired to link to your five favourite recent blog posts… let me know if you do.

It’s that time of the week again – it’s so nice to have a little place on my blog to mention things which wouldn’t fit in elsewhere, or books which are going to be read gradually, so that you don’t have to wait months to hear about them. I’m getting rather fond of my weekly miscellany, and I hope you are too.

You find me in a house of sickness. I’m not ill (yet) but my housemates are suffering from colds in various stages of heaviness… but today I made a coconut cake to cheer everyone up. I indulge in coconut cakes quite a lot now, since Our Vicar and Colin are both firmly anti-coconut, and thus it would be unfair to make them at home. Mmm… coconut cake… This isn’t it, but it is a nice picture I stole from Google Image Search…

Sorry, distracted there. I *should* be telling you about the link, book, and blog post which have hoved onto my horizon this month…

1) The book(s) – I’ve been meaning to read George Orwell’s essays for a while, or at least dip into them, and when I spotted that Harvill Secker had just published two collections in rather fetching paperbacks (cover illustration a very good job by John Spencer) I wrote an email wondering whether they’d like to send copies to Oxford… which they did, hurrah! They are companion volumes – Narrative Essays and Critical Essays. The former has things like ‘Bookshop Memories’, ‘Some Thoughts on the Common Toad’, and ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’ – though also ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ which, if his excellent Homage to Catalonia is anything to go on, probably isn’t very cosy. Critical Essays, as might be expected, investigates individual authors – T.S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling – and literary topics, like ‘Good Bad Books’, which sounds fascinating. I’m looking forward to dipping into these, and might well report back later – but I think they’re a safe bet for books worth having on the shelves, and there is no author who makes great writing seem more effortless than Orwell does.

2) The link – a while ago I reviewed Michael Greenberg’s Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life (which I thought captivating and very well-written, despite being out of my reading comfort zone). Do check out his website, michaelgreenberg.org, which is intended to be an interactive site meant to recreate the spirit and experience of the book visually. And do get hold of the book if you can, it‘s quite a find.

Another link? Oh, why not – Picador emailed to say that they’ll be giving away a box set of the excellent Paris Review Interviews vols.1-4 – follow them on Twitter to find out more. (Incidentally, do many of you use Twitter? It baffles me. I do have an account, but have yet to use it properly…)

3) The blog post – well, there’s been so much buzz about Susan Hill’s Howards End is on the Landing, why not pop along to Bloomsbury Bell’s blog and see what she has to say about the book which inspired the title, EM Forster’s Howards End? I haven’t read this novel yet, though I bought it a couple of months ago, and Bloomsbury Bell’s thoughtful review has intrigued me afresh. You can read it here.

That’s all for this weekend, I’ll see you on the other side…

1.) The link: Well, there it is above. This weekend I’m feeling quite silly, and those much-promised book reviews will have to take a back seat for… a video of a kitten discovering a mirror. When people feel low they might eat chocolate, watch a favourite film, have Prozac… I go to YouTube and search for ‘kitten’ and ‘mirror’. Not that I’m feeling down at the moment – I just thought it would be a good ‘link’ to choose for the link, book, and blog post… Ok, I wanted any excuse. This is something you don’t get in The Telegraph.

That’s the link, then… now for the others.

2.) The blog post: Hayley at Desperate Reader has written a rather lovely post today, which covers all the wonderful bases of blogging – good news to share, a good book, a good recipe. And she links back to my blog too, so what more could you *possibly* ask for? Go along and enjoy all three… and enjoy the beautiful pictures she has along the side column, too.

3.) The book: I try to write about something interesting which is in the backlog… so step forward Lord Lucan: My Story ‘edited’ by William Coles. You might remember Coles from the Othello-meets-Notes-on-a-Scandal and rather good novel The Well-Tempered Clavier, which I wrote about here. And, what do you know, he’s happened to stumble across the secret memoir of Lord Lucan, the peer who disappeared in 1974… (In case you don’t know who the real Lord Lucan is, have a shufty here. Don’t you love Wikipedia.) Coles is very amusing and this could prove a quirky, interesting, and unique read… I’ll let you know what I think one day, but for now there’s a heads-up in case you’re interested!

A bit later than usual this week, mea culpa, but I hope you’ve all settled into a nice weekend. I had fun this week, going up to London for a celebratory meet-up of an online reading group I’m in: five years together. Actually a bit longer than that, but five years since we changed our name. A lovely tea at the Orangery at Kensington, and some, ahem, moderate book-buying… I’ll treat you to a list later in the week. Whilst I London I also met up with Simon S (Savidge Reads) and Claire (Paperback Reader) for a quick coffee – which was good fun. We chatted and gossiped about blogs, I mentioned Miss Hargreaves two or six times, and a good time was had by all.

Without any further ado… the link, the book, and the blog post. A bit like the good, the bad, and the ugly – except instead it’s the good, the good, and the good.

1.) The link – You might remember that I’m a fan of the gals behind 3191. Two ladies have been inspired by 3191 to start their own daily comparative photograph site – but one showing the charity work of SOS Children. The charity works on a huge scale, securing homes for millions of children and helping thousands of families stay together – but when we hear ‘millions’ it all seems too vast to understand. Using photography, they can show the detail and the individuals affected.

Every day two new photographs will appear side by side, as well as a few paragraphs on what the photograph represents, and what the charity is doing. It’s a great idea, do have a look – the website is www.twotalk.org.

2.) The blog post – Kirsty at Other Stories writes about secondhand bookshops, following the Guardian’s list of the ten best in the UK. Might inspire me to write something similar soon… I was pleased and surprised to see my local bookshop in Somerset, Gresham Books of Crewkerne, make the list. And, with Kirsty, I mourn the absence of any great independent secondhand bookshop in Oxford, since Waterfield’s closed. We just have charity bookshops, and the hugely overpriced secondhand department of Blackwell’s.

3.) The book – I told, or warned, readers about a new Winnie the Pooh book, back in January. Well, it’s coming out on Monday. The Telegraph printed the first story, about Christopher Robin coming back from school, and you can read it by clicking here. I have surprised myself by liking both David Benedictus, the author, and his story. He’s obviously done a lot of research (he even tried to use the word convolvulus in another story, which might be a reference to the novel-within-a-novel ‘Bindweed’, in AA Milne’s Two People) and the story has a good tone. It makes more in-references than Milne ever did, and it’s obviously not from Milne’s pen, but I don’t think an imitation could be much better. Of course, it’s still up for debate whether a sequel is wanted, but given that one’s being written… I think it might be ok. Doubtless forgotten in a decade, but fun for the moment. Though I’m still worrying about the illustrations by Mark Burgess… the one accompanying the story is ok, but has nothing of EH Shepard’s wonderful spirit. Well, we’ll see.