Books Bring People Together…

It always amazes me how small the world is. Obviously in reality it is an absolutely giant planet hurtling thorugh space, though I don’t like to think about that last bit too much. Anyway, in the last two weeks I have been reminded once more just how small a place it is and bizarrely through books and conversations, in one way or another, that they have sparked. These events have also made me doubly sure that books bring people together, despite reading being such a solitary activity.

You may remember when I came back from my blogging break that I gave you a summary of what I had been up to and I introduced you to a new feline friend called Tolstoy (see picture —>). Well, imagine my surprise when I received an email that informed me that the cat I had taken a picture of was actually called Santiago and that the writer of the email, Charlotte who had been looking for a new book group, knew this because it was her sister’s cat and who lives next door to me. How crazy is that? It seemed all the more crazy when I discovered that Charlotte had also seen me read at Waterstones on World Book Night and neither of us had a clue who the other was then. We have since been to book group together and travel back chatting about books all the way home, lovely.

I mentioned on Sunday, in the post on my London trip and book looting spree, that thanks to books I made a new friend on the train journey home. Now here I have to admit I am not the most befriending kind of person on public transport. If I happen to have a long train journey I always see it as ‘reading time’, in reality I spend most of the journey looking out the windows and staring at the British countryside.

However after a long day in London the train back to Manchester was a late night one so there was no countryside to steal my attention. I headed to the quiet coach and sat down opposite a woman reading. In my head this meant I would have two and a half hours silence in which I could read; this wasn’t to be. You see I couldn’t help rummage through the selection of books I had nabbed and spotted out the corner of my eye that the woman opposite was crowing for a sneaky look. Once I had put them all back she carried on reading, I spotted she was reading Haruki Murakami’s ‘Kafka on the Shore’ and had to hold back from saying ‘ooh I have read that isn’t it marvellously bonkers?’ I was on the quiet carriage after all! That said I had no sooner taken out Toni Morrison’s ‘Home’ to read than I heard ‘Excuse me, is that the new Toni Morrison book, the one that’s not out yet… how have you got that? I love her…’

Well that was that, we both downed tools, well books, and proceeded to spend the rest of the journey talking about books, books and more books as we walked home and discovered we lived on the same street! How mad is that? Maybe there is some literary subconscious draw to that road? I just thought it was so nice and I came away with about five more authors I am keen to read.

Of course these are both people who live in and around Manchester and so that could be part of it, yet there is one more story that I thought I would share. I opened my emails to one entitled ‘OMG… It’s You’, initially I did think ‘oh **** what spam is this’ until I discovered it was my step-aunt Jane. This might not sound a big deal, but actually it is because she was my first stepdad’s sister, he sadly passed away a few months after he married my Mum almost 20 years ago and she had moved abroad and we had lost touch. Well, she had been looking for a ghost story for her teenage son and a review of mine popped up, she followed the trail and found my email. How nice is that?

See, proof right there that books bring people together and reunite people. I bet this has happened to some, if not all, of you in the past. Care to share your stories of books befriending you to someone or reuniting you?

(Some of My) Summer Reading…

As it is just two weeks away, I thought I would give you a reminder that The Readers Summer Book Club is just around the corner. I am not suggesting that you read every single one of the eight books on the list, though if you wanted to that would be lovely (and they are available in libraries here there and everywhere from what we gather, so we aren’t trying to flog books) as we would love to get as many of you, wherever in the world you are, taking part in what we hope is going to be a worldwide book club.

Here is a picture of all the books in the order we are reading them (I have read three now and liked every single one and I am not just saying that) with the dates below…

28^th May – The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
4^th June – Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
11^th June – Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
18^th June – Bleakley Hall by Elaine di Rollo
25^th June – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2^nd July – Now You See Me by S.J Bolton
9^th July – Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
16^th July – Pure by Andrew Miller

We are still looking for victims volunteers to join us on ‘the discussion panel’ part of the show, so if you have read any of these already, or you want to (and there is a free copy of the book if you do) and would like to speak to us on Skype with some other readers about them, love them or loathe them, then we would love to hear from you via bookbasedbanter@gmail.com you can find more out about the summer shows here too.

What has been lovely to learn is that people are meeting up to discuss the books in the flesh too, and there is proof if you look at one of our goodreads forum threads. I will be talking about how books bring people together tomorrow. Interestingly, and on a similar theme, Gavin and I (with our OH’s) will be meeting in Cardiff next week and actually spending time with him face to face rather than on Skype. I am so excited about it I could burst, and meeting Gavin too. Ha! And seriously, please do let us know if you would like to join in and your thoughts on the books.

P.S if you are a Readers listener the podcast will be up later today, there was a technical fault, oops (just as there was with a post saying The Green Carnation Prize would be relaunching today when it is in fact next Monday the 21^st, dear oh dear).

Lovely London Loot…

The week before last I finally bit the bullet and went back to London for the day. Having left almost a year and a half ago, and not under the most favourable of circumstances, I will admit I was feeling very nervous about it. However, the day was mainly about books and if anything is going to make a daunting trip somewhere better then it is going to be books isn’t it? I had been kindly invited by Lynsey at Transworld to come to a dinner with S.J Bolton in the evening and as a trip down to London is rare for me now I decided to make a day of it.

I could bore you with the dreadful journey down, I had reserved seats (thanks again Lynsey) and yet the train was so overcrowded, from the start, they cancelled all reserved seats and so it was a fight for any seat going. Oh the grump I was in! Fortunately the man who decided to tell me his life story (and I had my best ‘I am reading’ expression/concentrated glare on too) got off after two stops by which point reading went out the window as I was too busy eavesdropping (see Dovegreyreader’s post on the joys of being nosey here) on the fascinating conversation between mother and daughter who were dishing all the family secrets. I actually had to hold myself back from say ‘oh she sounds awful’ when the mother had finished a five minute rant about her son’s new girlfriend and asked her daughter what she thought.  I do love a family drama, which was apt as my first meeting of the day was brunch with my aunty who was in London too. I then had the joys of meeting my friend Dom for lunch (who I hadn’t seen since I left, which was far too long) and then headed to meet some publishers, the first of whom reside in my favourite place in London, Bedford Square…

The reason I love this square so much is that it feels like Victorian London, be it the posh bit, is still weirdly living and breathing there. The area doesn’t seem to have changed and still has a certain atmosphere. If I could ever afford to live anywhere I could then I think it would be Bedford Square. Anyway the reason I was there was to meet Alice at Bloomsbury! I couldn’t actually believe that I have been emailing Alice for about five years and I had never met her before, and I even lived in London for a few years of the correspondence, shocking. We had a lovely brew and discussed lots and lots of bookish bits and bobs, both projects coming from me and titles coming from Bloomsbury. I also laughed when I discovered Alice knows me so well, she has speedily discovered ‘hmmm, I am quite busy at the moment’ means ‘I have absolutely no desire to read that but am too polite to say, thanks anyway’ – we both giggled about this as I was unaware, till she pointed it out, that I did it. It was too soon time to leave but I did manage to take some books, just a few…

Next up I headed only a few streets further afield to meet Frances and Corinna from Atlantic Books. Again, these are two of the publicists that I have had the longest relationships with (I am not showing favouritism here, it’s just true) and yet had never met even though emails and parcels often fly through the ether/through the joys of Royal Mail (any publishers reading this please stop using DPD couriers, you will notice I never receive these parcels because they are useless) and so it was lovely to sit and get to know two people, who I already feel I already know, all the better over coffee. We discussed some very exciting autumn titles and I came away with yet more gifts…

I don’t want to appear to have favouritism towards a certain book; however, Frances and Corinna had been discussing new books when Frances ran off to get an older book. She had suddenly thought of it and ‘just know you will love it, seriously’. Well as soon as I saw the cover of ‘Woman’s World’ it was love, however when I opened it I was spell bound. Graham Rawle’s debut novel is made from cuttings from magazines and papers used to make a story, it sounds bonkers so here is a picture…

Doesn’t that just look amazing? Even the page numbers are from magazines. It really blows me away. Apparently Rawle’s new book is experimental too, based on random cards he has found on the streets over the years, I am very excited about these and ‘Woman’s World’ is getting read very, very soon. So with my new loot I dashed off to meet the lovely Jane Harris, this is the joy of books – you sometimes fall in love with an author’s voice in books then meet them and they are just as lovely. We had a nice glass (or two) of wine, cackling away in the corner of a private members lounge.

I had to dash quickly after that to get to The Cage in Villiers Street to meet S.J Bolton for cheese and (more) wine. This was when I realised I had left my wallet somewhere during the day, would you believe it… I rang around and someone had handed it in (whoever you are thank you), isn’t that amazing? I didn’t even begrudge a round trip, lots of walking as my travel card was in my wallet, to get it, though I was embarrassed to then turn up to meet S.J. Bolton about an hour and a half/two hours late. She was lovely though, and it was nice to meet her before we record The Readers Summer Book Club which her novel ‘Now You See Me’ is one of the titles Gavin and I have chosen. I left with another goodie back of her books, a mug (which is in the dishwasher) and some other treats. Lovely stuff.

So a big thanks to everyone I saw, and apologies to some of the people I couldn’t see (next time I promise) but especially BIG thanks to Lynsey who treated me to such a lovely day out overall. It was nice to visit London, if briefly, and I am looking forward to returning in the not too distant future for something very exciting. I was shattered on the train back however I made a new friend, again thanks to books, but more on that later…

The Winners… Madeline Miller Giveaway

Two weeks ago I gave away five copies of the wonderful ‘Song of Achilles’ (a very apt picture below if you have read it already) to those of you who told me Your favourite fairy tale or myth.

Now alas 24 people didn’t read the small print and left a comment in the wrong post, I did feel a bit mean but rules are rules. So the winners are…

The Ramblings of a Demented Mind
Sharkell
Geraldine
Nose in a Book
Katie

So if you have won then please email me savidgereads@gmail.com and I will forward your details to Bloomsbury who are kindly sending them out!

Home – Toni Morrison

There are some authors who have such a presence in the literary world that it can actually put you off reading them, Toni Morrison has always been one such author for me. I have heard so many people talk about her work, in particular with reference to ‘Beloved’, and how amazing her writing is that I have always feared I might pick a novel of hers and simply not ‘get’ it. Yet, as I am sure you all know, sometimes life throws these authors and their books in our paths. I ended up being sent ‘Home’, Morrison’s latest novella, by We Love This Book to review and so, with slight trepidation, I finally got around to reading my first Toni Morrison work.

Chatto & Windus, hardback, 2012, fiction, 160 pages, sent for review by We Love This Book

In the very first chapter of ‘Home’ we are given a flashback of something horrific happening in a young man’s childhood sometime in the past. In the second we join him (well we assume it is him) as he lies trying to work out his escape from a psychiatric ward in the 1950’s. It is in these two brief and instant portraits of a character that we meet our narrator, 24 year old Korean War veteran Frank Money and instantly we want to know more about him. What happened in his childhood that he barely comprehends and yet leads him to drink? Why is he locked in a psychiatric hospital and why must he escape at any cost? It’s this style of mysterious, yet very restrained, prose that makes us as the reader almost unable to put ‘Home’ down for its deceptive 160 pages.

Though a novella, which may lead us into believing ‘Home’ could be a slight book for the big subjects it covers, there is so much going on in the book you can’t help but be impressed by how its crafted. Morrison doesn’t let a word run spare. The prose is poetic yet hard and forceful. Every single word matters, you have the feeling the author has made them work for their rite to be included.

As Frank makes his escape and heads to Georgia, relying on the good will of people, we get further flashbacks of brief, yet harrowing, insight into the part he played in the war and how it’s affected him. We also get to see the darker parts of life and society at the time through Frank’s observations as he travels. These, like his flashbacks, come in short, sharp and rather shocking bursts, confronting the reader in varying ways and providing food for thought from sentence to sentence.

“The abused couple whispered to each other, she softly, pleadingly, he with urgency. He will beat her when they get home, thought Frank. And who wouldn’t? It’s one thing to be publically humiliated. A man could move on from that. What was intolerable was the witness of a woman, a wife, who not only saw it, but had dared to try to rescue – rescue! – him. He couldn’t protect himself and he couldn’t protect her either, as the rock in her face proved. She would have to pay for that broken nose. Over and over again.”

Because ‘Home’ is quite short I don’t want to give too much more away. That and the fact that Frank is quite an enigma really though the novel, you learn as you go and so to spoil that would also be wrong of me. I did really like the way I couldn’t decide if he was a decent guy, completely mad or just dangerous though. But I don’t think I should say more than that.

Darkness and questions seem to be its themes, that in part might be why I liked it so instantly to start with, and Morrison keeps hints of things from the past popping up in the present to keep us reading on. I think that the best novella’s leave you in one of two states; you either come away feeling perfectly sated from the experience or you come away wanting more. In the case of ‘Home’ I came away wanting, not because the novella wasn’t full enough but because I wanted more of the back story in even more detail, but then that isn’t really what ‘Home’ is about. Only the best authors can make a novella epic and, with ‘Home’, America’s only living Nobel Laureate shows us how it is done and gives us a sign that there is yet more to come in the future. Until Morrison’s next novel appears I will definitely be making sure I try some of her back catalogue in the meantime.

Has anyone else read ‘Home’ and what did you think? I would be interested to see how a Morrison aficionado rates this novella compared to her other work. Which of Toni Morrison’s other novels have you read? Where should I be heading to next?

This is an extended version of a review I wrote for We Love This Book which you can see here.

Turning Detective…

As you probably know, if you read this blog regularly, I do love a good detection novel. The other thing you might not know is that I am a huge fan of the TV show ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ and have a huge interest in family history. I wonder if that is why I enjoy a good family saga novel so much. Anyway, I was talking to my Gran (who I know regular followers of the blog love) on the phone and I discovered that a lot of my non-Savidge side of the family were based in the Wirral, which is where I am spending half my weeks at the moment. So I decided to do some digging and see what I could find out.

This was all sparked after I had said I was visiting New Brighton. I had gone with two objectives; to do some rock pool exploring (which is something I loved as a child and still do) and to find a local bookshop which alas was closed. I did get to do some wonderful rock pooling near a lighthouse which was just too stunning not to share a picture with you all…

So I mentioned this to Gran and she said ‘Oh Simon, that is where Nana Elsie’s [her mother] grandfather had a bakers’, this was news to me. Gran said his name was Hockley and he lived on Victoria Road in the Victorian era (my favourite period in history). Well I couldn’t not try and find that when its ten minutes down the road could I? So myself and the Beard, with our deer stalkers and pipes like Holmes and Watson, went off to see what we could see, alas nothing, lots of former Victorian looking shops but no bakers then Gran told me it was in fact Lockley and so on the off change I googled ‘Lockley Bakers Victoria Road Wirral’ and suddenly I discovered a wonderful website called ‘The History of Wallasey’ and then discovered this…

Well Victoria Road is no more, it changed names and is now Borough Road, it also turns out that the Victoria Road it once was wasn’t in New Brighton but in fact even nearer in Seacombe. Not only did George Lockley have one building there he had two… so back in the car we went and guess what we discovered? While his house at 101 is no longer there, it’s now some new build flats, but I couldn’t believe my eyes that 166 was still there and pretty much in the layout which it would have been when my Great-Great-Great Grandfather owned it…

I had a brief moment where I thought ‘oh, it’s not a Bakery anymore’ but as I said the layout is the same and George Lockley became a ‘confectioner’ as well as a baker and ‘flour dealer’ and was both still in the 1920’s. What is even more amazing is that then looking into the area further the building was almost demolished by a bomb in World War II and thanks to ‘The History of Wallasey’ website, who I hope won’t mind me using this picture, here is proof how close it was.

Isn’t that incredible? I actually found myself getting quite emotional standing in front of it and thinking ‘wow, my family once owned this’. I know that it isn’t like I discovered my family were descended from royalty or had some dark connections to the Pendle Witches or something (though who knows what else I could find) but it just amazed me that I found it, and I like to think it might explain my love of all things cake and pastry based, it’s in the genes it’s not my fault, ha!

So there we have it. I know it’s not a bookish post today but it’s something I wanted to share with you all. What things do you know about your family history? Do share with me I find it all fascinating.

Never Mind – Edward St Aubyn

I am not a fan of ‘real life’ tragic stories, nor am I in general of their fictional counterparts. To me these tend to be a) melodramatic and b) someone making a vast amount of money out of their misery. I am sure that these people had an awful childhood and so some people may think I am a little harsh, but I don’t like a whinger. In fact moaning is one of my least favourite things on earth, nothing puts me off people faster. I mean we all have really rubbish times now and again but frankly we can either whine about them or, as I hope I do when things get cruddy, try and do something positive about them or start a new project you can throw all your negative energy at in a positive way. This is all sounding a little self-helpy but hopefully it might explain why I have always resisted the, possibly autobiographical, Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn whenever someone has heartily recommended me them (and many people have). Yet when someone compared them to Augusten Burroughs novels, which I love because of the humour in the darkest of subject matters, I decided to give them at try and so picked up ‘Never Mind’.

Picador Books, paperback, originally published 1992 (reprinted 2012), fiction, 197 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

I always admire an author who can write beautifully and simply, an author who can create the most understated of melodramas will win me over. I also always admire an author who can write a passage that chills you before one that makes you laugh out loud and then another which horrifies you all over again. All these things are encompassed in Edward St Aubyn’s first Patrick Melrose novel ‘Never Mind’. I say that this is the first Patrick Melrose novel and yet Patrick is not really the focus of this book, it is his father David who we encounter most as we witness the Melrose family having guests for a weekend to their house in Provence.

The set up of ‘Never Mind’ is beguilingly simple at the start, we join the Melrose’s over an initially none descript weekend where guests are visiting. As we read on we soon learn that there is much more going on behind this family facade than we think, and it’s dark. We have a very dysfunctional family in the Melrose’s; fiver year old Patrick is a slightly fearful boy, who will be all the more fearful by the end of the book,  and somewhat a loner, his mother, Eleanor, is an alcoholic and quite possibly due to her husband, David, who married her for money, is a vicious cruel man who I would describe as psychopathic as when he needs to be (or when he wants to be) switches on the charm and has his guests enraptured, or so he likes to think.

“He knew that his unkindness to Eleanor was effective only if he alternated it with displays of concern and elaborate apologies for his destructive nature, but he had abandoned these variations because his disappointment in her was boundless. He knew that she could not help him unravel the knot of inarticulacy that he carried inside him. Instead, he could feel it tightening, like a promise of suffocation that shadowed every breath he took.”

I did for a while start to ask myself the question of ‘why are the guests visiting, why does St Aubyn want them there’ I couldn’t see the relevance as I thought the story was about an evil man abusing his wife and eventually his own child. As I read on however, I realised St Aubyn not only wanted to talk about class through this bunch of rather vile characters but he also cleverly uses the couples (Victor Eisen and Anne Moore, Nicholas Pratt and Bridget Watson-Scott) to give us their thoughts on the other characters both from what they know of them and what they observe throughout their time together. Anne being the most normal of the lot even spots there is something dark lurking in the Melrose atmosphere, Bridget just made me laugh at her blunt selfish nature.

“The thing about Nicholas was that he really was rich and beautiful and he was a baronet, which was nice and sort of Jane Austeny. Still, it wouldn’t be long before people started saying ‘You can tell he used to be good looking,’ and someone else would intervene charitably with, ‘Oh no, he still is.’ In the end she would probably marry him and she would be the fourth Lady Pratt. Then she could divorce him and get half a million pounds, or whatever, and keep Barry as her sex slave and still call herself Lady Pratt in shops. God, sometimes she was so cynical it was frightening.”

It is in fact Bridget that really brings the humour into the novel, because of her thoughts and observations, yet she also adds to the element of discomfort. Some authors use humour to lighten a novel, St Aubyn does it almost to highlight the real depths of the darkness, there is a sense of relief when you laugh out loud, but its shortlived and you know something darker will follow. The scenes around their welcoming drinks where Bridget knows just how David has made Eleanor get rid of the fallen figs from the tree, and then comments on how many figs must be wasted, are so uncomfortable you read on transfixed, rather like how you can’t help but stare at a car crash. The dinner table conversations also read like extreme dark frosty comedy of manners pieces, the humour adds to the darkness rather than detracts from it if you get my drift. It’s not something I have come across before in a book that I can think of and it’s stayed with me.

I don’t want to talk about the moment of utter darkness in the book in too much detail, not because I shy away from the uncomfortable subject of child abuse but because I think you need to read it without knowing when it’s going to happen, or how St Aubyn writes it so understatedly, for it to really have the desired effect and leave you winded. Like the whole book it’s economical and therefore only hits you harder. It seems odd, and a cliché, to call ‘Never Mind’ a masterpiece especially with some of its subject matter but really there is no other word for it. To quote Maggie O’Farrell, as she puts it so well, this novel is ‘At once epic and intimate, appalling and comic’ and that is exactly how I felt when I had finished ‘Never Mind’. Recommend seems the wrong word, but I would suggest everyone gives this book a try, I will certainly be reading the rest of the series without a doubt.

A Good Bookshop Guide?

There are book reviews coming I promise, in fact there is a backlog of about ten which I really want to get on the blog, however you probably know me well enough by now that if there is a project in my head my full focus goes on that until I have cracked it. Yes, that’s right, I have another project that I want to start and this one involves a guide to bookshops.

You may have noticed in the last few weeks that I have been checking out bookshops in Liverpool and the area surrounding in Merseyside and the Wirral. When I find a new area I like to look at where I can get my hands on books, we all do don’t we? Since I visited one that had sadly closed down on Sunday and then saw three yesterday, including one where the Savidge family love of books might have started, I have been thinking wouldn’t it be a good idea if there was a really good guide to book shops. Not just the new ones but also the old ones too.

 

You see like most book lovers I do like to spend my time perusing lovely new bookshops as well as spending hours trying to find gems in all sorts of second hand shops (as the pictures above show, and thanks to The Beard for showing the excitement a random second hand bookshop finding can bring) as well as charity and clearance bookshops of course. So why is there not a guide for bookshops available in book form?

The answer is that there might be… somewhere. Though I would have thought in the years that I have been blogging that if such a book existed then someone might have just put me in the direction of it, or said book/guide could have crossed my path. Nothing has as yet, though now some of you might send me the link to one. I have found websites here and there, but all seem to simply give the details, and maybe a picture, but no sense of what the shop itself might be about, its atmosphere etc. So I thought, as I do the ‘Bookshops I Love’ posts maybe I should do one, or try to, and went off to a nearby bookshop in search of some material that could inspire me. I came back with these…

One book I have been familiar with for a few years, possibly since childhood though not for all the wrong reasons, is ‘The Good Pub Guide’. This is like a bible for pub lovers, like my family are (every time we were in a new area or town this book would come out at some point be it a day trip or a ten mile walk in the countryside), as it lists all the pubs in all the counties in the UK. It gives you some details about the country and then all the pubs; where they are, the food they do, the atmosphere, the prices etc. What could be a better format for a bookshop guide?

The reason that I also pulled Bill Bryson’s ‘Notes from a Small Island’ off the shelves in the shop was that this is the book in which he wittily captures British life (I haven’t read it but this is what I have heard) and what my idea was, if I could pull it off, would be to describe the area the book shop is in and the other people who peruse it. This could be done by sitting in cafes for a while, or merely ear wigging my way around the shelves. What could be a better way for me to spend my time?

I would of course also mention the staff, for example the horrid woman in one of the Southport bookshop’s who yesterday only stopped scoffing her second cream cake in a row, in the slightly hidden office where she was lurking, to shout ‘IF YOU WANT TO TAKE PICTURES THEN ASK’ across the store. She then sneered a ‘hello’ at every customer who came in after so at least I knew it wasn’t me, but it did stop me from picking up any books for purchasing sadly, there were some gems but I didn’t buy to spite her – just being honest.

I am hoping that something which is a mix of the two might not only make a good proper guide, but also be something that’s quite fun and also embraces the love of bookshops of all kinds… So that is what I am planning to do, the research is obviously going to be very difficult for me, ha. So what do you think?

I will write more once the website is up and I have had a crack at writing a few!

This Could Be Where It All Started…

Today I visited a bookshop in Southport that, if the Savidges could dish them out, should have a blue plaque above the door for services to readers and reading…

The reason for this is that ‘Broadhursts of Southport’ was were Granny Savidge Reads would go in as a child “I couldn’t afford the books, but I would sit in the corner and read, hopefully hidden”. So the love of reading that’s been passed down to me, via Mum of course, could have started here.

Alas it was closed today, though fortunately two other bookshops in Southport weren’t, so I couldn’t have a good wander around. However I will have to go back, maybe with Gran, as I am thinking of writing a ‘Good Bookshop Guide’ of the UK, I don’t think such a thing exists shockingly!?!

Please Love Your Local Independent Bookshop, Even More…

I’ve been out and about this weekend, I have been ignoring the internet of late at weekends but as mine is kaput at the moment I’ve been doing it more so, this has included the seaside a few times, house and furniture hunting, family history hunting (all of which I will report back on) and much more. Today I wanted to visit one of the wonderful book shops I had heard about called ‘The Amorous Cat Bookshop’ only imagine my dismay to see from a distance it was closed, and not just for Sundays…

Yes sadly the shop had closed for good! Now my initial thoughts, because around Liverpool in recent weeks I have come across a few shops where this is the case, we’re that people simply weren’t shopping there anymore. Well the owners have left a lovely note saying that actually they were retiring and were continuing online…

Yet the ‘online’ part of the letter did make me ponder. We all like a bargain, I know this, I like one too, and this is exactly why we need wonderful second hand bookshops ALONG SIDE the new ones, it’s a recession after all! I do sadly ponder if the recession and certain online websites might have contributed too maybe?

My first thought at all this was personally a sense of sadness because even though the owners don’t seem too sad (though maybe brave faces?) about it there are many book shops facing closure and they can’t simply retire. Bookshops are a heart of the community and Lark Lane, where this shop was, is a wonderfully thriving hub in the suburbs near the gorgeous Sefton Park, a throng of cafes and the like. Perfect bookshop clients and passerby potential? So I felt sorry for the locals too. I have to admit I was also gutted on a personal level as I sensed this store was full of gems and I couldn’t get my hands on any of them…

So what can we all do? Well, we just need to make sure we all visit and buy from our local independent bookshops don’t we? I don’t think that many of us really need an excuse to buy more books do we, but I’m telling you to do it even more. We also need to share and discuss these wonderful shops so that others can find them too. So I am going to be featuring more local, and randomly discovered bookshops on the blog in the future. I would also like to hear about your local favourites, so do share them below… Go on…

Disrupted Savidge Service…

Apologies as there may be a slightly more sporadic than unusual service to Savidge Reads as I seem to have broken my computer (yet again, really I need a new one) and so all my reviews and discussion posts I had planned are inaccessible. This is hopefully temporary, I’m awaiting some magic to happen.

In the interim it might be a case of mini picture posts or random smaller ‘book based banter’ kinds of posts, basically the ones I can do on my phone without going crazy! Do bear with me, normal service should resume shortly.

Shameless moment alert! If any computer company owners want to sponsor a bookish blogger with a lovely new laptop, in return for immense gratitude, do let me know. Ha! I am half joking!

Briefs Encountered – Julian Clary

In another book review recently I discussed how assumptions with certain authors or book covers can be a dangerous thing. Well one author I thought I would like but wouldn’t take seriously was Julian Clary. That isn’t meant to be offensive, just honest. I think Julian Clary is great, I love his high camp and entendre filled comedy, he always comes across as a really nice chap in interviews but I imagined his fiction might be a little throwaway. Yet when I heard his new novel was about an old house, Noel Coward and ghosts, I knew that I had to read it, and I am so glad that I did because Clary creates a wonderfully funny and at times rather emotional novel.

Ebury Press, hardback, 2012, fiction, 384 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

From the title of Julian Clary’s ‘Briefs Encountered’ you would possibly be inclined to think that here we have a tale of farcical innuendo, not the case. This novel is in fact one of dual narratives, here we have two stories which intertwine with a common link – a house, and a haunted one at that. Sometime around the present day we meet the celebrated English actor Richard Stent who has just bought a house, Goldenhurst, from “annoying camp comic and renowned homosexual” Julian Clary. He plans on making it the perfect retreat for himself and his lover Fran yet the house seems to have other ideas.

The more we learn about the houses history the more we understand why it might have a ‘personality’ of its own and this is where the second strand of the story comes in. Back in the late 1920’s Noel Coward buys Goldenhurst (and it is true that Julian Clary actually bought the house Noel Coward once owned) as the perfect idyllic hideaway for himself and his lover Jack Wilson to escape from the gaze of the world, especially as during this period in history homosexuality was illegal in the UK. However something awful happens one summer and from then on the house becomes a much darker place and this then links back into Richard’s story and what might or might not be going bump in the night.

I liked the double narrative and piecing together what was happening in the 1920’s/30’s and how it was then affecting everything in the present day, I have to say though I would have liked less of the present and more of the past. That sounds like a criticism, and it’s actually not, I was enjoying the story with Noel so much that when we would alternate back to Richard I would race through them to the Noel sections again. I was enjoying the modern tale though it did become a little O.T.T three or four times and I found myself thinking ‘really?’ before quickly reminding myself that ‘this is fiction and sometimes it doesn’t need to be realistic, there are ghosts here for goodness sake Simon just enjoy it’ and so I did.

I think the other reasons that I warmed to Noel’s story so much more was the fact that he and Jack lived and breathed on the page. They seemed more real than Richard and Fran and their friends, and not just because Noel and Jack were real people obviously, it seemed Clary had a real passion and enthusiasm for their story and while he did with Richard and Fran too it was almost eclipsed by Noel presence in his half of the book and the wonderful characters, like his mother Violet and Aunt Vida, who surrounded him. I wanted more of them. I wasn’t quite as interested in Richard and his mad PA and agents (maybe because I work with people like that in my day job) or the celebrities, including Julian Clary himself (I couldn’t decide if it was a genius stroke or not that Clary put himself in the book, I am leaning towards genius), who seemed less real even though I recognized them all.

‘Am I to be relegated to an outside barn like a donkey?’ asked Violet, with a quiver in her voice, clutching a handkerchief to her bosom.
 ‘No, Darlingest,’ soothed Noel. ‘It’s the granary for one thing, and it won’t be anything like a barn once we’ve finished with it. It will be a terribly modern, roomy abode with hot and cold running water, stunning views across the marsh and a servants’ hall so close they will simply have to reach in and scratch your nose should you get a tiresome itch.’
‘Barns aren’t so bad. Christ was born in a manger,’ said Jack helpfully.
‘And we all know what happened to him’, put in Aunt Vida. She puffed out her ample chest and her weak chin wrinkled as she tightened her lips.

I also wanted more of a story line between Noel and a local policeman, who arrives for a reason I won’t digress, who is suspicious of Noel and Jack’s relationship and clearly wants to cause trouble if he can. The illegality of homosexuality in the UK is a part, or subject, in history we don’t read much about and I thought Clary could have intensified that even more. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned too much about the ‘ghost’ element of the book, which is occasionally rather eerie indeed, and that is because if I do then I might accidentally throw in a spoiler. I will say that it adds a delightful mystery element to the novel on top of all the drama, wonderful characters and the humour (both waspish and innuendo filled) throughout the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Briefs Encountered’. Yes, it got a little melodramatic here and there but sometimes you just want to escape into a book. I liked both narratives, though I would have liked less modern celebrities (I do wonder if anyone outside the UK would get who all these names are and therefore some of the jokes) and much more of the world that Noel Coward inhabited because when Clary wrote those bits, through his prose and passion, I was thoroughly lost in the 1920’s and 1930’s and didn’t want to leave.

Much Wenlock (A Town of Books)

What could be more perfect on my birthday than visiting a wonderful olde-worlde village brimming with history, antique shops, delis, tea rooms and book shops? Well actually going with my book loving Gran, mother and little teenage sister as it happens. Fortunate really as that is what I ended up doing on my 30th Birthday back in March. Knowing that if you read this blog it would be something that you would enjoy I took pictures along the way so you could do the jaunt with me, be warned though there are pictures of very tempting book shops and their contents ahead…

I didn’t know very much (pun not intended) about Much Wenlock before we took the thirty minute drive from my mother’s tiny village on my birthday morning. My 13 year old sister soon told me that it was the town which started the Olympics, which I refused to believe until my mother told me to ‘listen to your little sister, you might learn something sunshine’ and I learnt it was true. I have since found out it is the birth place of Mary Beard (who I am officially obsessed with at the moment) so it has grown on me favourably even more. The first thing I did notice was how quintessentially English it looked. To me this is the perfect stereotypical English country town in all its glory…

One of the reasons we had headed that way was that my mother and I had had the idea that maybe for my 30th we should get something from an antique shop that I could keep forever as a memento, and we found a brilliantly bonkers little store on one street which was literally crammed with delights…

Sadly nothing was quite what I was after, so we came away fruitless, though I was tempted by an owl…

So next came the bookshops, first of which was Wenlock Books a tardis of a store which has both new books and old.

You walk into the stores ground floor and are hit with a level of book porn which is almost too tempting for its own good frankly…

And thats before you go upstairs…

Where there are nooks and crannies of bookish delights awaiting you in secret corners.

I chose something suitably apt as my memento of my visit there.

Next up was Much More Books which is a solely second hand store just down the road.

You walk in and are hit with that always welcoming scent of old books needing a new home and the possibility of finding real gems on every shelf.

I made my sister spend her pocket money on this…

How could I not? It was on a very impressive Penguin shelf. The sea of orange is always so tempting.

I grabbed a rare piece of Daphne Du Maurier’s non-fiction which I had never heard of and seemed like it simply had to be bought by me and no one else.

I didn’t buy, and am slightly kicking myself for not doing so, a copy of a very rare Daphne Du Maurier short story/novella ‘Happy Christmas’. It wasn’t the fact it was a lot of money, it was more the fact that it was a Christmas book and I don’t read those at any other time of year.

I am hoping that someone (Mum, Gran, The Beard… anyone?) might just get me a copy for Christmas this year. Hint, hint.

So I came away with two treats, Gran with three, but my sister and mother did the best coming away with a whopping six books each! Well done them! Eventually, though it took a while, we were rather booked out and so we left (via a tea room, Abbey and a deli) and headed home for champagne. What a wonderfully bookish birthday treat!

Lovely Little Lambs…

It has been another wonderful weekend and I have been bonkersly busy going off to the sea side, rock pooling, fun fair riding and finding bookshops. Plus doing more un-me things like helping do DIY and decorating, selling cheese (don’t ask) and going out on the town. I didn’t want to do a big post on more sea side escaping too soon, so in the interim I thought that I would share some pictures of some gorgeous lambs… and how crazily two grown men reacted to them…

They were seriously THE cutest things ever as being hand reared they run to you for food, like being picked up and then they want to cuddle you! They actually lean in and are so soft and warm, anyway…

I have always dreamed of having a farm one day and that includes pet sheep and cows (not to be slaughtered as I can’t eat red meat) and of course a library. Well, my uncle hasn’t got a library but he does have a converted barn and lots of animals which as you can see I tried to befriend. It is in the middle of the countryside, near Cumbria, and with the lambs and the buds on the trees it really felt like spring had sprung, if a little belatedly.

How was your weekend?