A busy week

    As posts are coming thick and fast here - and I'm sorry to bombard you but there's a lot to keep up with - I thought a brief recap would be in order, beginning with last Friday's A poem a day. I've been turning to The 20th Century in Poetry every morning and reading just one poem, so from Thomas Hardy in 1900 we've moved on to Flannan Isle by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, The Ballad of Jimmy Governor by Les Murray, 1901 by Noël Coward, Kipling's Bridge-Guard in the Karroo, Story of Lilavanti by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Nicolson), Masefield's wonderful Sea-Fever (for John Ireland's setting, do listen to Sir Thomas Allen's recording), and on to today's poem, Autumn Morning at Cambridge by Frances Cornford. So far, so good.


    My Edbookfest event on Saturday was all about cover design - how best to tell the potential reader what's inside the book. We learned that boys won't pick up a book with a girl on the front (until they get to a certain age and it's a certain type of girl), that humans require Vitamin 'S' - 'S' for 'Story', and that the design process, over several editions, is a constant process of refinement and audience-targeting.


    If you're a lover of food in novels, Sunday's post gave a link to a special edition of The Food Programme on 'cooking and crime', or eating with the detectives. Much there to whet the appetite for certain books or just plain make you hungry.

 

 

    On Monday I posted details of the Cornflower Book Group's next book. Our September read is Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam (whose Edbookfest event - a delight - I attended last week), and I hope lots of people are getting their hands on a copy ready to join in with our discussion.

 

    I 've posted only one review this week but it's of a cracker of a book, Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season. However, I have just finished another treat of a novel, and I'll write about it in due course, but for now, look out for the fun, sweet, warm-hearted, mad-in-a-good-way Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore.

 

    If you haven't already done so, there's still time to enter the draw to win a book bag, and I'm so enjoying all the suggestions of books as travelling companions which you're leaving in the comments there.

 

    It was back to the Book Festival yesterday to hear about two very different books (and a controversial opinion on historical fiction!), and as I have more events in prospect, I'm off now to sharpen my pencils and get ready to report.

Comments

[LizF]

You might be interested to know that The 20th Century in Poetry is currently £3.49 from the Book People.
Your mentions of it inspired me to go in search of a copy as I am woefully ignorant of poetry (apart from W B Yeats).
I always felt bad that while both my parents who went to school in the 20's and 30's could recite large amounts of poetry by heart and recognised many a quote, all I could really muster was the first verse of The Highwayman and half of Sea Fever along with one or two poems by AA Milne!
I have to start somewhere and this seems as good a place as any!
Thanks for the inspiration.

[Cornflower]

That's a bargain! Thanks, Liz.