Cornflower Books

Bookish knitting

    Just a quick link to point you in the direction of Eva's blog and podcast The Charm of It, should you not already know them. Eva is one of those people who make mere mortals like me feel inadequate: she reads several hundred books a year, she knits nineteen to the dozen, and she designs her own complicated (knitted) garments, to boot. In documenting her progress she is always an informed and interesting observer and critic.

    On her latest podcast episode she's talking about bookish knitting, specifically how she manages to combine knitting and reading, and the knitting references she's come across in her recent reading, and that segment begins around the 19.20 mark. Look out for Thistle and Moth, Eva's sweet dog and cat, too.

Out now in paperback - Jakob's Colours

    

    Lindsay's Hawdon's debut novel Jakob's Colours is a superb piece of work and a heart-rending one. It's out today in paperback and really does deserve a wide readership, for its quality and its subject matter. It deals with an overlooked aspect of twentieth century history, the persecution of Europe's Roma people which culminated in death camps and genocide, and it follows Jakob, a young half-blood gypsy boy, his Roma father and his English mother, and moves from Jakob's flight from the Nazi net in 1944 back to his parents' earlier lives in the '30s.

    When I reviewed it last year I summed up thus:

    "A novel of great beauty, compassion and sensitivity which yet portrays man’s inhumanity to man at its very worst, the book’s episodic structure - taking the reader back and forth in time and place - adds to its intensity, while Lindsay Hawdon’s gift for language makes for luminous, affecting writing."

Costa Book of the Year

   

    We had the category winners earlier in the month, and yesterday Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree was announced Costa Book of the Year.

    It's the first children's book to win in more than a decade, but the judges said "we all loved this dark, sprawling, fiercely clever novel that blends history and fantasy in a way that will grip readers of all ages".

    It sounds very interesting indeed - as you'll see if you pop over to the author's website, and watch a short interview with her here.

 

    Edited to add: a quote from this article by Philip Womack -

"The Lie Tree is a substantial text that is complex and intelligent: a lustrous, delicious romp about evolution and feminism, which contains a Hamlet-esque revenge plot. Crucially, [...] it comes from a place of wonder. Regardless of the age of the reader, our whole literary system is predicated on wonder, a fact that is often neglected [...]"

I shall be watching ...

    ... tonight's Patricia Routledge documentary on Beatrix Potter, and all the more keenly in the light of today's news.

    See also this article, and this one; and once again, I'll recommend Beatrix Potter: The extraordinary life of a Victorian genius, Linda Lear's excellent biography (which makes reference to the 'new' book).

Friday reads - Those Wild Wyndhams

   

    So far, so very good: I'm finding Claudia Renton's prize-winning biography of "three sisters at the heart of power", Those Wild Wyndhams, thoroughly engrossing. It's described as "a spellbinding chronicle of the last days of Edwardian England," and while I'm still in the Victorian period with the girls as youngsters, it's gathering pace and promising much interest.

    Anyone else reading anything good just now?

Looking forward to reading ...

 

      ... Peacock and Vine: Fortuny and Morris in life and at work by A.S. Byatt, due out in July.

    "An alluring and atmospheric enquiry into the creative impulse -- as seen through the work and lives of Mariano Fortuny and William Morris -- by one of our greatest novelists. This ravishing little book, glowing with colour and generously illustrated throughout, opens a window on to the lives, passions and designs of two great artists a generation apart, William Morris and Mariano Fortuny. Inspired by a vision of the aquamarine light of Venice balancing Morris's green English countryside, A.S. Byatt delves into the world-transforming magic of their art, asking what fired them, how they lived and worked and how each man's art mirrors and confronts the other. A.S. Byatt combines her brilliant gift for character and place with a deep understanding of the craft, and the combination of profound ideas and sensual delight that make the art of Morris and Fortuny endure -- a ghostly presence outside time. "Peacock and Vine" is a work of art in itself -- the perfect present to give, to keep, to ponder over and to treasure."

    A.S. Byatt has just been named as the winner of the prestigious Erasmus Prize.

Words in the Square

    This looks good.

Literary links

    -  As winter does its worst, why not take shelter at Hearth, a micro-literary festival at Gladstone's Library in Wales next month.

    -  Jewish Book Week in London later in February will be playing host to many big names, among them Judith Kerr, Tracy Chevalier, Victoria Glendinning, and Howard Jacobson.

    -  If you're a writer yourself and short fiction is your thing, you may be interested in the Mogford Food and Drink Short Story Prize or the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook Short Story Competition; deadlines for both are approaching but there's still plenty of time to enter.

    - Lastly today, a poem I came across recently (which is right up my street).

Bargain of the day - The Song of Achilles

    With one foot in the stirrup, as Patrick Leigh Fermor would say, I must just draw your attention to today's Kindle bargain, Madeline Miller's Orange Prize-winning The Song of Achilles: review here, interview with Madeline here.

Village voice

   

    To return to Thursday's post for a moment, Patrick Leigh Fermor mentions Mary Russell Mitford and Our Village in one of his letters to Deborah Devonshire quoted in In Tearing Haste. MRM was a member of the same Northumberland family from which DD (née Mitford) was descended, and she replies with the following aside:

    "When the French Lady⁽ⁱ⁾ wrote Highland Fling⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ Lady Redesdale⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ suggested it should be called Our Vile Age (see?) but Evie^(iv) had just done Vile Bodies so it wasn't."

 

(i) Nancy Mitford

(ii) her first novel, published in 1931

(iii) Mother of NM and DD

(iv) Evelyn Waugh

Costa category winners

    The Costa Book Awards category winners are as follows:

First Novel - The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

Novel - A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Biography - The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science by Andrea Wulf

Poetry - 40 Sonnets by Don Paterson

Children's - The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

    The overall winner will be announced on 26th. January.

If you're missing Downton ...

... you may like to know that Julian Fellowes' next project is coming soon.

    Belgravia is an app-based book in weekly instalments set to be released in April. It's set in London's Belgravia in Victorian times, and here's the author to tell you more:

    On the subject of Downton, I know that US viewers are only just beginning the last series so I'd better not comment for fear of giving anything away, but suffice to say we shall miss it.

    In other television news, how good to see Endeavour back!