Cornflower Books

Good lines: women who read too much

 

    "Mrs. Birch-Blackie had been pursuing a thought of her own, and she now came out with it.

    'Charles Povey ought never to have come back to Brockholes. It wasn't even his property. He had to buy it. And he was simply running his neck into a noose.'

    'Corps and Hoobins?' Appleby asked. 'Only a petty sort of noose, that. It can't really be what's now controlling the man's way of life.'

    'Probably not. But it needn't be vast financial troubles either. He shuts himself away because he's morbidly sensitive.'

    'Morbidly sensitive?' Colonel Birch-Blackie repeated. 'Extraordinary things you sometimes say, Jane. Often can't make head or tail of them. No getting a handle on them. Comes of reading all those rubbishing novels from the County Library. By papists and communists and unnatural women. Litter the place. Can't think why you do it. Damn it, woman, you can still sit a horse.'

    Mrs. Birch-Blackie was quite unperturbed at being thus publicly indicted of a premature indulgence in literary pursuits. She simply turned to Appleby and continued her remarks."

From The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes, with thanks to Lindsay for giving me that passage.

Tidying up loose ends

   

    Tidying seems to be the theme of today as I thought I'd post briefly about some books which I haven't covered here properly yet.

    Let's start with P.D. James' much-anticipated Pride and Prejudice 'sequel' Death Comes to Pemberley. I've read mixed reports of this novel in which a murder throws the happy, settled life of Elizabeth and Darcy into disarray, but I enjoyed it very much and felt above all that it showed its author having fun! At the age of 91 and with numerous bestsellers behind her - not to mention a career in public service - I think Baroness James is allowed a little self-indulgence, and it strikes me that in a justifiable way, that's what this book is. 

    Life on Mr. Darcy's estate runs smoothly for family and servants alike, but on the eve of the annual ball, a chaise appears out of the night, its passenger a hysterical Lydia Wickham arriving uninvited and screaming that her husband has been murdered in Pemberley’s wild woodland. While a search party sets out to find victim and attacker, unease and disquiet threaten the peace of the great house.

     I found this an elegant novel full of dry wit and astute observation, one in which Jane Austen’s much-loved characters are treated with affection and respect. I enjoyed its social satire, its casual references to characters from other Austen novels, even its murder mystery which is not vintage James but which given the constraints of period, setting and already fully-formed protagonists, passes muster well enough. There are some lovely lines and some touches of delicacy and intelligent insight which really do bring the book to life, I felt, but you'd expect nothing less from either author - to that extent it ought to appeal to fans of both.

    Here is a five minute clip of P.D. James discussing the book and here is an extended interview; just for fun, here are her Desert Island Discs.

Book group favourites

    The Cornflower Book Group has read ten books this year and they range - to my mind, at least - from the sublime (Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop) to the ridiculous (that wretched Good Soldier). If you've read some or all, perhaps you'd like to name a favourite or two, and if you need to refresh your memory, just click on the authors' names below to go to the posts on those books. I enjoyed them all except for the purgatorial Ford Madox Ford, but my very best ones would be, as I've said, The Bookshop and The Secret History. How about you?

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

South Riding by Winifred Holtby

A Morbid Taste For Bones by Ellis Peters

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

Babette's Feast by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

The Extremely Irritating Soldier* by Ford Madox Ford

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

    Oh, and by the way, don't forget that our January book (for discussion beginning on the 21st.) is Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (introductory post on it here) so do please join us for that, and just to whet your appetite for future group reads, I have something good in mind for February - details soon.

*Edited to add: please see my reply to Sandy's comment (below).

Have you read ... Adrian Mole?

 

    The series is thirty years old and has sold eight million copies, but I have never read any of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books. Now's a good opportunity, though, because to celebrate that milestone anniversary, Penguin are re-issuing the books on 19th. January (the first volume has a foreword by David Walliams), and they have most kindly sent me a full set.

    Beginning as a half-hour piece on Radio Four entitled The Diary of Nigel Mole, the publication in 1982 of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 followed two years later by The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole made Sue Townsend the bestselling author of the 1980s, and Adrian came to life not just on the page but through various adaptations for radio, television and theatre. I hadn't realised that there were as many as eight books in the series now with the latest being Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004) which sees AM working as a bookseller and finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair, and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (2009) in which our hero is facing troubles at work and on the home front.

    The reviews have been rapturous: "One of the great comic creations of our time" (The Scotsman), "Effortlessly hilarious. Brilliant satire ... " (The Times), "Richly comic ... stuffed full of humour, tragedy, vanity, pathos and, very occasionally, wisdom" (The Guardian), "What words can one use to describe Sue Townsend's prism-like view of 20th. century Little England? Funny, witty, human, anarchic, perceptive, cringe-making" (Zoe Wanamaker).

    The books' following is clearly large and loyal, but are you part of it? Have you read Adrian Mole?

Bargain of the day

 

    Just a quick word to say that Marika Cobbold's latest novel Drowning Rose is available in the Kindle edition for only £1.29 today (Wed.). It was one of my books of the year, and there's a full post on it here, but I summed up by saying "it's a warm, compassionate and often very humorous story, atmospheric and with a lightness of touch to temper the serious subject-matter. It is, ultimately, an optimistic novel and it's a highly readable one, a mature piece by a writer whose gift for telling detail and the quirks of personality make her a great pleasure to read".

First impressions - The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall

 

    Although I often write briefly here about books which have just arrived to join the Himalayan tbr piles, those are usually very short introductions to flag up what's new, and rarely will I have actually begun to read them. While that's fine as far as it goes, I'm conscious that it might be preferable to set down not only the bare bones of the story and a line or two from a review or a puff from the cover, but also some idea of what the book is like.

    I thought I'd start that today with the most recent arrival, giving you some impressions gleaned from the first chapter.

    The Roundabout Man by Clare Morrall*:

    The gist - "He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a nearby motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books, but he's nearer retirement than childhood. What he hopes no one will discover is that he's the real Quinn, immortalised as a child by his mother in her entrancing tales about a little boy's adventures with his triplet sisters. It is this inheritance he has successfully run away from - until now. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he is forced to face his past, and the uncomfortable truths and secrets it contains about himself, his sisters and, most of all, his mother."

    That's a strong-sounding background; shades of House of Silence?

    The opening passage - "I exist in the eye of the storm, the calm in the centre of a perpetual hurricane of cars and lorries heading for the M6, the north and Scotland, or south to Penzance and Land's End. I sometimes wonder if they don't go on the motorway at all, that I hear the same vehicles circling endlessly, a kind of multiple Flying Dutchman, doomed to travel for ever. I don't regret for one minute that I am no longer one of them.

    "I call my caravan Dunromin, in the solid tradition of all those semi-detached streets that form the vertebrae of the country, because that's exatcly what I've done. Stopped roaming. I've anchored myself in the middle of one of the few patches of land where no one goes, among well-established birches, ashes, sycamores, surrounded myself with nettles and claimed sanctuary...."

    The first chapter is an intriguing beginning in which Quinn Smith is surprised early one morning by the arrival on his roundabout of Lorna Steadman, a junior reporter for a local newspaper. She's there to write an article for a series on unususal people and has heard about this man who apparently used to be a pilot and now lives an unconventional existence, without money, close to a motorway service station, but no one knows Quinn's true identity, and when Lorna finds in his caravan a very familiar picture, one which almost every child in the land would recognise from the bestselling children's book The Triplets and Quinn, her subject claims it's a print he found in a bin and took because he liked it - in fact it's the original ... "It's delicately drawn, washed with watercolour, a nostalgic image of childhood. There's a signature in the bottom right corner: Larissa Smith."

    With references and flashbacks to Quinn's former life with his mother and sisters in contrast to his solitary, scavenging present and now this intrusion from a well-meaning stranger, and all of it making for a promising beginning, am I inclined to read on? Yes, I am! 

 

*I haven't read any of Clare's books, though she is very well known for the Booker-shortlisted Astonishing Splashes Of Colour in particular.

By the way, cover illustration is by Tom Berry.

On miracles

 

    "Mabel could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather patterns that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?

    You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations, but instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you are able before it slips like water between your fingers."

From The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

                                                    *

To everyone who visits here, happy Christmas. 

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?

Where's your reading taking you?

   It's been a while since we had a "where are you?" post, one of those where we swap the literary locations we're visiting through the pages of whatever we're currently reading.

    With precious little free time at the moment, I'm taking Vanessa Gebbie's The Coward's Tale at a sedate pace, but I'm loving every word of it. It's not a book to rush, anyway, as that would be to insult the excellent writing and its beautifully crafted, cleverly interwoven stories, all set in a small Welsh mining town; this means that while I'm physically here at home trying to keep up to speed with Christmas preparations, my reading is taking me slowly and quietly up and down the streets inhabited by 'Factual' Philips the librarian, Baker Bowen - who is not a baker, Icarus Evans the feather-carving woodwork teacher, and Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the beggar-storyteller whose own history is just beginning to be revealed.

    Happily, words alone need not suffice as there is a lovely map of the book's location to help us picture it, and to have a proper look at it (and a listen, too, because it's a musical map), just click here.

    So that's where my reading's taking me - where's yours taking 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.

Tea at five in a sunlit reading room ...

 

    Bloomsbury have used Anna Wray's cover design for Magnus Mills's A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In for their lovely advent calendar - if you click there and open the doors you can find discounts and you might win things!

    I read the book recently and reviewed it elsewhere, but haven't talked about it here on the blog; seeing the calendar has prompted me to put that right, so here's a bit about it:

    It's set in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields where despite the appointment of a new head of state - who has yet to actually put in an appearance - things are falling apart. Members of the cabinet meet and try to get on with their jobs, but they are a sorry bunch, either having no knowledge of the departments they are required to oversee or being hamstrung by 'regulations' and endemic inefficiency. The Astronomer Royal needs a supply of sixpences to get the observatory telescope to work, the Principal Composer knows nothing about music, and the Comptroller for the Admiralty bemoans the lack of ships, but it's not just the Empire's shaky infrastructure which is putting it at risk, there's a neighbouring state intent on progress and expansion and it has designs on Greater Fallowfields ...

    This is the first of Magnus Mills's novels that I've read and I found it very engaging. It has a dry and deadpan humour and a plot which moves in ever decreasing circles, its tropes carrying both characters and reader further into its eccentric Ruritanian world of feudalism, ritual (hence the post title, though there's more to that than meets the eye) and complacency. It's both a fairytale of the absurd and an astute political satire, and as such is thought-provoking and fun; very original and nicely surreal.

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.

Cornflower Blues 2011: part 3 - more fiction

 

    When I drafted this post I wrote a long rigmarole about criteria for inclusion, giving what I thought might be helpful analogies and definitions of 'best' as it applies to my choices here.  On reflection I've scrubbed all that as we can do without it, so following on from Friday's first batch of fiction, here's my choice from the second half of the year, listed in the order in which I read them:

 

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - original, fresh and beautiful, this superb re-telling of the story of Achilles and Patroclus is a stunning novel.

The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas - lush, romantic fiction, an escapist treat of a book.

Drowning Rose by Marika Cobbold - a novel about guilt, but one which brings light and warmth to the subject; perceptive, compassionate, atmospheric, optimistic and highly readable.

Ghastly Business by Louise Levene - stylish, witty and great fun!

The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay - a work of great poise, sensitivity and intelligence about faith, belief, loneliness and love.

The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner - ingeniously complex, dark and richly imagined, a novel for older teenagers and adults.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt - for me, the best of the book group books this year.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday - this novel hasn't had a post of its own (though its author has), but it's laugh-out-loud funny, very sad, most cleverly structured, and enormously entertaining.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey - no post yet for this one either, as I finished it only yesterday and feel quite lost without it now. A beautiful, magical book - thoughts on it soon.

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.

Cornflower Blues 2011: part 2 - the first of the fiction

   

    Oh, the agonies of deciding which novels will make the 'books of the year' list and thus which others will not! I've whittled down my long list of 24 to a more manageable dozen or so, but with my current reading looking as though it will join the chosen few, it's still 'fluid'. 

    I can give you the first batch now, arranged not hierarchically, but simply in the order in which I read them:

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald - "A miniature piece of perfection", I called it when the book group read it back in January.

The Blackhouse by Peter May - utterly gripping, this crime novel set on the Hebridean island of Lewis shows how the dramatic should be done.

House of Silence by Linda Gillard - an intricately plotted story for which you'll put everything else on hold.

Night Waking by Sarah Moss - "impressive and enjoyable in equal measure", a multi-dimensional, blackly comic novel set on a Scottish island. A writer to watch.

Half of the Human Race by Anthony Quinn - a beautifully modulated, moving book set in the early years of the twentieth century. (The paperback will be out in January).

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris - an ingenious, bravura work about an artist and a lady who befriends him. All is not what it seems! (Again, the paperback will be out next month).

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett - I've been going on about this book, but so have many others; it's a work of integrity and clarity with compassionate intelligence behind it; it's a story which holds the reader long after the final page has been turned, and it poses questions of ethics to exercise the intellect. Wonderful. (I do like the paperback cover - it won't be out 'til June, though).

The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson - a Jo Malone fragrance in book form, this novel about "the unquiet life of old houses" is a real treat.

    That's enough to be going on with, but there will be more soon.

Bargain of the day

 

    I've just noticed that today (9th. Dec.) you can get the Kindle version of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book for only 99p. I've raved about it in the past and shall do so again - it's quite wonderful.

Cornflower in conversation with Paul Torday

   

    This morning I had the great pleasure of talking to the novelist Paul Torday about his work. His first book, the bestselling, prize-winning Salmon Fishing in the Yemen has been one of the highlights of my recent reading: a highly engaging mix of the very funny and the very sad, poignant, satirical, enormously entertaining. With the film of the book due out next year, a novella being published as an e-book tomorrow (8th. Dec.), and a new novel coming out in January, Paul's is a busy and productive life, but despite numerous calls on his time he very kindly agreed to chat to me and answer my questions.

    We began our conversation by talking about the enormous success of that first book, published when Paul was in middle age and having had a successful career in engineering; it won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing, was serialised on BBC Radio 4, won the Waverton Good Read Award, and is now, as I say, a film starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and Kristin Scott Thomas (with which Paul is very happy, by the way) - surely that set the bar very high where subsequent books were concerned?

    It might have been 'easy' to have written more of the same - though not to repeat the structure of the first book, which is ingenious and very well done - but wishing to avoid being formulaic, Paul took a markedly different line with his second novel, prepared to let it stand or fall on its own merits. The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, 'a novel in four vintages', is a story of obsession and addiction, identity and the desire to belong, it's a darker book and one in which its author allowed himself the small luxury of self-indulgence, writing what he wanted to write, intent on doing his best without undue concern for commercial dictates. It's a book which I found fascinating, and while you don't have to be a wine expert to enjoy it, just as you don't require a passing acquaintance with a fly rod to read Salmon Fishing, I'd say a little knowledge just adds to the savour!

    Paul's 2010 book was The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers, "a sharp, funny novel about money, greed, redemption ... and dog food" set in the world of fund-management (there's a post on it here). For this he took inspiration from A Tale of Two Cities and the device of using two men who are physically very similar, but he also brings in characters from earlier novels, and when I asked about this, Paul likened it to a form of domestic economy, not wasting anything but making the most of one's resources and 'ingredients': a thrifty and successful technique.

    His latest work, Breakfast at the Hotel Déjà Vu, is a novella about a former MP who was caught up in the expenses scandal and is now on holiday, recuperating after an illness. It's typical Torday, perfect in pace and tone, concerned again with 'belonging', fitting in, being a decent person trying hard to do a good job, but all is not what it seems, and I found it nicely understated and affecting. Then in early January The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall will be published, though this will be a farewell to a location and those characters I mentioned above who have appeared in earlier stories. I haven't read it yet but it's firmly on my wish list.

    From his individual books, we went on to talk about Paul's writing methods and routine, and here he explained that due to other work commitments (essential to keep at least one foot on the ground, he says) he has to block out writing days in his diary. In his study overlooking a Northumberland valley, he tries to reach his daily 2,000 word target before lunch, then after a walk with his dogs he'll spend the afternoon editing what he has just written. Having found a theme and a 'hook' on which to hang it, a beginning, an end, and a rough sketch of the linking path between them, Paul leaves himself space so that his characters can effectively direct the plot, but nevertheless he keeps to a disciplined schedule, allowing roughly a year per book with six months of that for the first draft.

    I asked Paul about his own reading and he told me that he's careful not to read much fiction while he's writing as he fears he might subconsciously absorb others' ideas, so he sticks to biography and history, but he finds re-reading the classics particularly diverting. He enjoys Dickens, Trollope, Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, and he cited Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child and Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English as examples of recent fiction he has especially enjoyed.

    Paul's books remind me of Alexander McCall Smith's because, while often darker than Sandy's, they are similarly elegant, humane, sensitive, and often very, very funny. Both men have taken up writing in later life having had fulfilling earlier careers, and both have achieved great success; I wondered whether Paul had any advice for other 'literary late starters'. "Try it if you really want to do it," he says, "but take it as seriously as you would any other job. Commit to it and do your best, and what happens after that is down to luck."

    We'll end with those wise words, and my thanks to Paul Torday for an illuminating and fascinating conversation.  

                                                 ~~~~~

Other conversations: Alexander McCall Smith

                                Madeline Miller

                                D.J. Taylor

                                Sara Sheridan                           

Cornflower Blues 2011: part 1 - non-fiction

 

    The first of a series of posts on the Cornflower Blues, my books of the year - the best of those read, but not necessarily published, in 2011 - looks at non-fiction. This is the easiest category to cover as there is less to choose from to start with, but with or without huge competition the five which have made the cut have truly stood out. Of course, this is all subjective, but I'm choosing books whose scholarship and writing have impressed me, where the breadth and depth of the subject matter has opened up worlds to me, and whose style and spirit have entertained me.

    In no particular order other than as pictured from the left, Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris - a long title for a vibrant, accessible book, stimulating and exciting, and covering a rich assortment of people, places, ideas and more (there's a post on it here).

    Next comes Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (post here), a very engaging look at domestic life in the period, full of fascinating detail which shows the Georgians as real people, not museum mannequins.

    My third book is undoubtedly the best known as it has been featuring on the bestseller charts and winning prizes, so you won't be surprised to hear that it is Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes (there's a new illustrated edition). A family memoir, original in style, beautifully executed (there's more on it here).

    Molly Peacock's The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany begins Her Life's Work at 72 is a lovely, warm account of the life of a lady who achieved what we might call celebrity status, but at an advanced age. Mary Delany produced a vast and remarkable collection of botanically accurate paper collages, her work beginning by pure chance - read more about it here.

    Last of this group, Anne Scott's 18 Bookshops, a personal look at special examples of those places which can be the gateway to so much; thoughtful, quiet, written from the heart, its post is here.

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).