On the wish list ...

   

    The list of books I'd like to read grows ever longer as I collect additional titles from here and there. This morning, for instance, I read a review of Tom Service's Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and their Orchestras - the title says it all, really, and it sounds like a fascinating and very accessible study.

    Then this post from The History Girls had me rushing to bookmark The Knot by Jane Borodale, "the perfect book for the green-fingered reader": a sixteenth century herb garden, a manor house, a scholar, "great anguishe of mynd"...

    Having enjoyed Clare Leighton's Four Hedges so much (I quoted from it here, here and here), I was looking at the website of its publisher Little Toller Books, an imprint of The Dovecote Press, to see what else they have. H.E. Bates' Through the Woods is now in my sights; a portrait of a woodland through a year, and a magical cover image by the wonderful Nicholas Hely Hutchinson.

    What's on your wish list - real or notional? What have you spotted recently that you'd especially like to read?

Comments

[Claire]

After your recent reviews, I'm tempted by the Tolkein biography and The Inklings.

[Cornflower]

I went straight on to The Inklings because I enjoyed the Tolkien biography so much, and I love Humphrey Carpenter's style.

I've just gasped because after I wrote that paragraph above I went to one of our biography shelves to see if we had anything else by HC, and guess what I found - that very Tolkien book in an American edition, bought by me when I was a teenager! I had no idea I already had it and certainly don't recall reading it.
Time to catalogue our collection, I think.

[Georgina]

I loved Four Hedges (first recommended by Posh Dee) and Through the woods. I've now got my eye on Robert Macfarlane's 'The old ways' . It's being read in abridged form this week on Radio 4. I'm also really looking forward to winning that copy of 'Shadow of night'.

[Dark Puss]

What is the wish list of which you speak? I have more books I'd like to read than hours left in my life, but I'm not going to worry if I read none of them (or all of them) or indeed if I know what they might be. Perhaps you (and surely many of your readers) suspect I'm not really into books very seriously at all, but I'd argue that's not true and with so many books published annually my passion for literature can easily be satisfied without wishing to read any on a "wish list" at all. The only "wish list" book I've had in the last few years was 1Q84 and good though it was my life would not have been any poorer if I had not read it but chosen something else instead.

[Cornflower]

Was it Dee (who has good taste in books) who first wrote about Four Hedges? I'd forgotten where I saw it initially.
While I'm tempted to tune in to the radio adaptation of The Old Ways I think I'll wait and read it first.

[Cornflower]

Tell me this, DP, if you will: prior to Christmas or your birthday, does any family member ever ask you what you might like to receive by way of a present, and if so, do you ever put a book on your 'list'?
It may not surprise you to know that that is common practice in this house!

[Dark Puss]

Almost never! The only example I can think of in the last decade was indeed 1Q84 and I was very pleased to be given it. I expect that before I am 60 something I may come up with another book.

This does not mean that people never give me books, only that I very rarely ask for them. Nearly all that I receive I am very pleased to have been given.

[Cornflower]

How the other half lives!

[Margaret Powling]

I was very fortunate, several years ago, to win a book giveaway in a magazine and received a lovely facsimile edition of Four Hedges, also The Farmer's Year ... indeed, I've just taken that down from the shelf and the date inside is 1993! There is even the letter inside, congratulating me on winning this copy and it was from Country Living.
Now, of couse, you knew didn't you, dear Cornflower, that I wouldn't be able to resist The Knot! Anything horticultural, and about a house in nearby Somerset, too. Already I have ordered it.

[LizF]

Four Hedges and Through the Woods are both on my list and have been for a while although I first saw them on Dovegreyreader.
I am also looking forward to The Silver Dark Sea by Susan Fletcher and Sarah Moss's new book about Iceland (although I can't remember the name at the moment!)

[Cornflower]

Thanks for the reminder about Sarah Moss's new book: http://cornflower.typepad.com/domestic_arts_blog/2012/07/book-of-the-day-names-for-the-sea.html

[Cornflower]

It does look good, doesn't it?