Cornflower Books

A bookish chain

       

     Here are a few links for your delectation this Friday:

     - Random House's 'bookcase envy' board on Pinterest - some pictures are familiar, lots are new to me.

 

     - B R Wombat kindly alerted me to a radio dramatisation of Our Mutual Friend which is currently available on iPlayer. This sounds like just the thing to relax with, coffee to hand and perhaps some knitting on the go ...

    - Still on Dickens, in June, Royal Mail will be issuing a set of stamps featuring illustrations from his novels.

 

 

     - I've only just discovered the University of Oxford podcasts and when time permits I shall sample a few, but here's a recent one on a literary theme: What can I say? Secrets in Fiction and Biography, Alan Hollinghurst in conversation with Hermione Lee.

                                                ~~~~~

Stop press!

Edited to add: I've just seen that two of my favourite novels from last year have been shortlisted for the RNA Epic Romantic Novel Award, and they are Deborah Lawrenson's The Lantern (post here) and Rosie Thomas's The Kashmir Shawl (post here). Good luck, ladies!

Books and flowers

 

    Since we're talking about wild flowers over on Cornflower today, let's continue the theme here with this beautiful 'flowering book' card by Su Blackwell. You can see more of her work here - I love the 'Alice' card, too, and the book sculptures are marvellous, don't you think?

Friday reads

 

    The last few days have been so taken up with other things that I've hardly had any time to read or even think about the books which are due to be written up here. I don't like that scattered feeling, that lack of focus, but such is life at times.

    However, in the few moments before sleep overtakes me I've been enjoying The Fountain Overflows (there's still time to read it before the 21st. if you'd like to join in or follow our discussion on it then), and finding that it's one of those books whose world allows you to slip back in easily and comfortably - you pick it up with a pleasant sigh of relief at the end of a long day.

    What are you reading this Friday, have you read anything recently that you'd strongly recommend?*

                                        ~~~~~

*On the subject of recommendations, so many of us enjoyed Lady Audley's Secret, and comments on it are still coming in, particularly ones with regard to Lady A's ultimate fate and the rights and wrongs of her treatment. That seems to have been the book's major talking point.

Contraltos, mezzos, and the circus comes to town

   A little 'cold collation' for the end of the week, and I'll preface this with apologies to contraltos everywhere! -   

    Anyone who is reading Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (our book group book for February) may have noticed the passage quite early on where the family discuss the whimsical notion of 'homes for bad musicians':

" 'Homes for bad musicians, what a terrible idea,' said Mamma. 'The home for bad contraltos would be the worst. People would be afraid to go near it at night, the sounds coming from it would be so terrible, particularly when the moon was full.' "

    If I hadn't known the source I'd have sworn that that came from an Alexander McCall Smith novel - don't you think it's just his style and sense of humour?

                                            ~~~~~

    That gives me an excuse to veer away from books and on to music directly for a moment and mention a recent album, David Dubery: Songs & Chamber Music, which features a very old friend of mine, the mezzo soprano Adrienne Murray. I haven't heard it all yet but the excerpts I've listened to do show what a lovely voice Adrienne has, and the collection has literary links such as settings of poems by Robert Graves and a waltz entitled "Mrs. Harris in Paris" (see Paul Gallico's books, post on the first one here).

                                            ~~~~~

    Just announced, some exciting news from Bloomsbury - they have launched Bloomsbury Circus, a new imprint to publish "mostly fiction, unashamedly literary, always fresh and sometimes surprising". Featuring both established and debut authors, this year will see the launch of nine titles, with up to four new releases a month from next year.

    As to the look of the books, Alexandra Pringle, editor-in-chief, says, "Bloomsbury Circus books will be published as unusually-sized trade paperbacks with photographic covers, wide flaps and colour printing inside the cover. They will have all the beauty of a hardback with the ease-of-read – and price – of a trade paperback. And there is a lovely new logo – our goddess Diana dangling on a half-moon trapeze".

    Click on the link above to see this year's books - the one I'm particularly looking forward to is Rook by Jane Rusbridge (whose first novel, The Devil's Music, impressed me very much - post here). Set in Sussex, this is "a mesmerising story of family, legacy and turning back the tides".

    So, "much to entertain, amaze and enjoy" - roll up, roll up!

Winners

    Thanks to all those who entered the draw for copies of Cliff McNish's very scary story The Hunting Ground. I've pulled names out of the hat in the usual fashion, and the winners are:

    Litlove

    The Victorian Librarian

    Dark Puss

    The Bibliomouse  (Sarah C.)

    Simon S.

    I already have real names and addresses for The Victorian Librarian and Dark Puss, but if everyone else would email me (the link is under 'ABOUT' in the right hand sidebar) and give me their details, I'll pass them on to Orion who will be sending out the books. One last thing, The Hunting Ground is published by Orion's young adult imprint, Indigo, and as I said in my post on it, it's not one to give to younger children.

                                              ~~~~~

    On the subject of winners, and following on from last night's brief post on the Costa Book of the Year, on this morning's edition of Breakfast on Radio 3 Petroc Trelawny asked listeners whether they take particular notice of the winners of the major book prizes, whether they make a point of buying those books straightaway, and if so, how soon they then read them.

    It's a question which had occurred to me, too, and while I would certainly like to read Andrew Miller's winning novel Pure, I'd do so on the basis of the book per se, not because it has won the prize. While of course the publicity generated by the award may be the very thing which brings the book to a reader's attention, the accolade itself is not enough for me to pick up a book which on the face of it doesn't particularly appeal. That said, subsequent favourable reviews from trusted sources may persuade me to revise my initial opinion, so I suppose it's a cumulative process, one which demonstrates the power of blogs even where books have the massive spotlight of a major literary prize shining on them.

One of eleven

 

    I'm very pleased to see that Waterstones' 11, the book chain's selection of the best of recent debut fiction (which was announced last night), includes Eowyn Ivey's marvellous The Snow Child. Although I read it last month I've yet to post on it as I was waiting until closer to publication - it'll be out quite soon - but it's a special book which deserves the prominent place on the shelf that being one of the eleven will ensure it gets.

And the winners are ...

    Thankyou to everyone who entered the draw to win a presentation pack of Roald Dahl stamps. As usual, I numbered your comments as they came in, then used the random number generator to pick the winners, and they are:

    Margaret Powling

    Barbara

    Oxslip

    The Victorian Librarian

    Margaret 46

    If you'd all be so kind as to email me (see the link under ABOUT over there on the right) and give me 'proper' names and addresses, I'll pop the packs in the post to you.

    Tomorrow I'll have yet more things to give away, so please stay tuned.

Editorial

    A few months ago I was commissioned to edit a non-fiction manuscript for publication later this year. I can't tell you much about it just now, but the book is taking shape and I'm learning a great deal in the process - and enjoying it enormously, even the painstakingly slow parts. Today has been a very full day of editing, and the work has taken me, virtually speaking, hither and yon - for example, this book (which I now want to read) cropped up in a footnote to the text, and what relation that has to what is essentially a very Scottish piece I'll leave you to guess or discover in due course! Such tangential connections do go to show that something which on the face of it has quite a fine focus is in fact a conduit into many other worlds. But then again, what book is not exactly that?

Wonkalicious, whizzpopping, swizzfiggling, stampcollecting!

    Did you know that Roald Dahl invented 238 'gobblefunk' words for The BFG (though not all appeared in the finished book)? Vocabulary enrichment aside, I think that is my favourite Dahl story, though it's hard to choose, and the audio version with Geoffrey Palmer (this one?) is priceless.

    Anyway, Royal Mail have just issued a lovely set of stamps featuring Quentin Blake's illustrations for Roald Dahl's books, and they have kindly sent me five presentation packs to give away.

    To enter the draw to win one, please leave a comment with the name of your favourite Dahl character or book, or any other favourite work of children's literature if you'd rather. Distance is no object - I can send the packs anywhere in the world - so do have a go.

    You may also like to enter Royal Mail's competition to win a set of Roald Dahl books.

    Good luck!

The bookshop at night

    Do watch this lovely video if you have a moment - it's such fun! (I sound like Miranda's mother ...). Full details here.

A book, a winner and a question

    Just released as an e-book, A Lifetime Burning by Linda Gillard. I have yet to read this novel but I happen to know that it is Linda's own favourite and the one she rates as her best; it's also her only venture into literary fiction so far, and it has the distinction of having nothing but 5-star reviews on Amazon, 23* of them at that!

    "A complex family drama spanning the twentieth century," "A Bouquet of Barbed Wire meets The Forsyte Saga"; here's the synopsis:

"Flora Dunbar is dead. But it isn’t over. The spectre at Flora’s funeral is Flora herself, unobserved by her grieving family and the four men who loved her.

Looking back over a turbulent lifetime, Flora recalls an eccentric childhood lived in the shadow of her musical twin, Rory; early marriage to Hugh, a handsome clergyman twice her age; motherhood, which brought her Theo, the son she couldn’t love; middle age, when she finally found brief happiness in a scandalous affair with her nephew, Colin..."

    If that has whetted your appetite, the Kindle version of the book is available for a mere £0.88.

                                                   ~~~~~

    Many thanks to everyone who entered the Cornflower Books birthday draw. Having numbered all the comments as they came in, I've used a random number generator to draw a winner, and that is Katie (fourth comment from the top), so a favourite book of mine will be on its way to her soon. Stay tuned, though, because I'll have more books to give away next week.

                                                   ~~~~~

    Click here and scroll down to 'A literary mystery of Jamesian subtlety', and you can read about Rupert Christiansen's star-studded reading group (devoted to the work of Henry James). As you'll see, the group has decided to dis-band, despite - or because of? - the fact that they meet only quarterly, and Christiansen surmises that that's because they've lost discipline: "people turned up without having read the texts, or cancelled at the last minute or arrived late and left early [...]".

    The only book group I've ever been part of is our own, but I wondered how typical the laxness RC describes is in physical groups generally - if you are or have been a member of a group, enlighten us please!

 

*Edited to add: now 26!

A new year and a birthday

 

     We are welcoming in a new year and celebrating Cornflower Books' third birthday today, so I'd like to send the best of wishes to everyone who visits here - the loyal readers, the frequent commenters, the book group participants - because you all help to make the site what it is, and I truly appreciate your taking the time to drop in, to recommend books and send me links and otherwise contribute in such a grand manner!

    My thanks also to the authors who make themselves available and to the publishers who provide such a lot of my reading matter; it's a privilege to be in touch with so many of you.

    We can't let this occasion pass without marking it by way of a draw, so if you'd like to be in with a chance of winning a book, please leave a comment here telling us what you're reading, or are about to start, as the new year begins. I'll pull a name out of the hat in a few days' time, and I'll be sending the winner something special, so please do enter, especially as there is no geographical restriction and I can send the book anywhere in the world.

    Happy new year!

Uncle Davey - literary friends and heroes

 

    I noticed that someone arrived on this site this morning having searched for "the model for Davey Warbeck". I don't know whether they found what they were looking for, but the answer is Eddy Sackville-West (a cousin of Vita's). Davey is, of course, a memorable character from Nancy Mitford's novels, first appearing in The Pursuit of Love where as husband of Fanny's Aunt Emily, he becomes a favourite with the family, even the irascible Uncle Matthew:

" 'Pig's thinkers, Davey?' Uncle Matthew lifted the lid of a hot dish.

'Oh, yes please, Matthew, if you mean brains. So digestible.' "

    I love Davey, who was brilliantly played by Michael Williams in the 1980 television version (Love in a Cold Climate - the price of that DVD is another reason to sign up to Lovefilm), and he and Lord Merlin, who was based on Lord Berners, are an excellent double act. Eddy Sackville-West cropped up in my reading earlier this year in Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles by Robert Sackville-West (post on it, including the sought reference to Davey W., here), but the man prone to bouts of ill health and hypochondria is very warmly portrayed by Nancy Mitford as a good egg, and someone to whom one can turn in a crisis, albeit with affectionate leg-pulls such as this one about Louisa's wedding:

"Everything had gone like clockwork, and there was only one small incident. Davey slipped out of the family pew almost unobserved, in the middle of 'As pants the hart' (Louisa's favourite hymn), and went straight to London, making one of the wedding cars take him to Merlinford station. That evening he telephoned to say that he had twisted his tonsil, singing, and had thought it better to go immediately to Sir Andrew Macpherson, the nose, throat and ear man, who was keeping him in bed for a week. The most extraordinary accidents always seemed to overtake poor Davey."

    Time for a re-read, I think, as this is one of my very favourite novels of all, and Davey a lovely character. Perhaps you have an 'Uncle Davey' of your own, a fictional person you're particularly fond of; in addition to Captain Warbeck, I'll nominate Atticus Finch, a man measured on an altogether different rule - but how about you?

A bit of silliness

    As if we didn't have enough to do just now, how about a meme? You know the form, just complete the sentences using the titles of books you've read this year:

My Day in Books

I began the day with Breakfast at the Hotel Déjà Vu.

On my way to work I saw Ophelia in Pieces

and walked by The Paper Garden

to avoid The Matchmaker of Kenmare

but I made sure to stop at 18 Bookshops.

In the office, my boss said, "Who is Mr. Satoshi?"

and sent me to research Unusual Uses for Olive Oil.

At lunch with Ella Minnow Pea

I noticed The Snow Child

under The Cold Eye of Heaven

then went back to my desk At the Chime of a City Clock.

Later, on the journey home, I bought A red herring without mustard

because I have A Morbid Taste for Bones,

then settling down for the evening, I picked up The Lantern

and studied The lost and forgotten languages of Shanghai

before saying goodnight to Half of the Human Race.

    Please do have a go if you feel inclined, and let us know by way of a comment so that we can all come and see the titles you've used.

Three things - to interest or amuse

 1. A bookish Christmas tree!

 2. A 3-day writing workshop in February in a lovely-looking location, designed to let you 'explore your life on the page', led by my friend the novelist, poet, short story writer and creative writing tutor Sarah Salway.

 3. Books - The Last Chapter? - a BBC programme with Alan Yentob and various literary luminaries discussing the impact of electronic publishing on the traditional book, to be broadcast tonight (Tues.) at 10.35 and viewable on iPlayer.

The best of previous years

 

    While we're on the subject of 'books of the year', in case there's any appetite to see what has made the lists in the past, I've now labelled all the posts properly and archived them here - you'll see the most recent ones are at the top but just scroll down to find the best reads of 2009 and 2010.

Winter warmers

    This weekend we've had our first snow of the season and our first fire, too, and how lovely it was to sit quietly enjoying the warmth and the play of the flames, toasting muffins, reading and (in my case) knitting. When I put down the needles it was to pick up Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, which I am loving and savouring, and that seems an entirely appropriate book for fireside reading on a cold evening - there's a bit about it here.

    Here and here you'll find more books which are just the thing for snuggling in with as a bitter wind howls outside, and if you have any other 'winter warmers' to suggest, please just leave a comment. Meanwhile, let's not forget our own book group choice for January, Lady Audley's Secret (full details on this post), and a most generous gesture from Ruthiella who has just finished it and has offered to send her copy to anyone who has trouble getting hold of it.

Highlights

   I'm busy looking at my 'books of the year' list and wondering which will make the final cut - and whether anything I read between now and when I post the lists will impress me enough to earn a place. The non-fiction list is ready to go, but while I ponder the contenders in the fiction category, perhaps you would like to name a few of your reading highlights from the last few months - books which have really stood out for you and which you would warmly recommend (if your suggestions help any of us with our Christmas shopping, that will be a bonus!).

(The picture is of a suitably bookish Christmas card available to purchase from The Bodleian Library online shop).

A few things

    - Understatement of the day: an email to me beginning, "Dear customer, as you've shown an interest in books ..."

    - Most delayed book of the day: The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman ("a weird and wonderful modern fable" about which I've read many good things) was sent to me by the publisher back in July and has just arrived having been languishing in a neighbour's house for four months!

    - Request of the day: a student reading for an MSc in Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University has asked whether anyone who is a member of a book group (it doesn't have to be our one) would care to answer a few questions on the kind of books they like reading, what attracts them to a book, etc., for a project she is doing. If you'd like to take part in that short survey, please email me in the first instance (click on the link under 'About' in the right-hand sidebar and mark your message 'Publishing Survey') and I'll put you in touch.

    - Note of the day: re. the book group, and thanks to MelD for highlighting this point in her comment, I do make an effort to ensure that books chosen for the group are available free, i.e. in libraries. Every month I check the catalogues of several library areas in Britain to make certain that my chosen title is there and thus in circulation generally, I always dismiss books which are obscure or fairly recently published and thus unlikely to have percolated through the library system, and without beginning to search abroad (because that would be never-ending) do my best to pick something that 'everyone' can get hold of. I also always direct readers to The Book Depository, too, because while of course their books aren't free, they are discounted and delivery (both within the UK and internationally) is free, so if your local shop or library doesn't have the title in question, it is obtainable easily and at reasonable cost no matter where in the world you are. More than that I cannot do.

    - Satisfied customer of the day: my friend Sophie to whom I passed my copy of Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. She has just finished it and is "speechless"; "what an extraordinary story", she says. I knew she'd like it!

    - 'I was there' moment of the day: in the paper this morning is an obituary of Ramaz Chkhikvadze who "caused a sensation" when he appeared as Richard III at the Edinburgh Festival, the performance (without subtitles) given entirely in Georgian. I was there, and it was astonishing - although I was pretty young at the time, I can still recall it and the actor's amazing presence. It remains the most memorable theatrical experience I've ever had.

How to find your next great read

   Listen to today's edition of The Book Café on BBC Radio Scotland - available on iPlayer and as a podcast - and see what the show's guests (including me!) had to say.

   Speaking of great reads, come back later for news of a book which I hope will be a great group read ...