Other People’s Bookshelves #71 – SE Craythorne

Hello and welcome to the latest Other People’s Bookshelves, a series of posts set to feed into the natural filthy book lust we all feel and give you a fix through other people’s books and shelves. This week we are off to lovely Norfolk to meet author and bookseller Sally Craythorne, or SE Craythorne as she is otherwise known. So let’s grab a nice cuppa and some of those lovely biscuits that Sally’s put out for us and get to know a little more about her.

I live in Norfolk with my husband and my twin girls.  We have a small-holding, with goats, two rescue donkeys, and a field full of rabbits that eat our carefully grown vegetables.  We also have a dog, called Daisy, a mutt of such mixed breeding that people actually stop us in the street to ask ‘what is that?’  She’s gorgeous. I work as a bookseller at The Book Hive in Norwich.  My debut novel, How You See Me, was published by Myriad Editions on 20^th August, and I’m working on my second.

Do you keep all the books you read on your shelves or only your favourites, does a book have to be REALLY good to end up on your shelves or is there a system like one in one out, etc?

I buy books all the time, but mostly don’t read them straight away.  I’d be a terrible reviewer.  It often takes me years to get round to something, even if everyone has told me it’s brilliant – or because everyone has told me it’s brilliant.  I think that timing is paramount when it comes to enjoying a book.  I don’t keep a diary, because so many of my memories are wrapped up in what I was reading at the time.  When my grandfather was dying I read Under the Net by Iris Murdoch; travelling through Africa on a particularly terrifying bus will always be remembered for trying to read Women in Love.  My read books are my diary, in a way.  So I keep them. That said, if I think a book’s terrible, it goes.  And if I’m having a particularly horrid time, I often blame the book I’m reading, and abandon it in favour of something that I hope will change my mood.

Do you organise your shelves in a certain way? For example do you have them in alphabetical order of author, or colour coded? Do you have different bookshelves for different books (for example, I have all my read books on one shelf, crime on another and my TBR on even more shelves) or systems of separating them/spreading them out? Do you cull your bookshelves ever?

Chaos reigns on most of my bookshelves, but occasionally I throw a small fit and try and introduce some order.  Crime – only polite murders, none of your gruesome – lives downstairs in the living room, and poetry – for unknown reasons – is heaped up in the bathroom.  It’s heaped because I panic about the covers curling, but I like looking at their spines, and sometimes their contents, when I’m in the bath. Everything else is everywhere else.  It’s mostly fiction, but it’s not in any order.  I find the book I’m after through a kind of divining process, without the rod.  It rarely works for locating what I have in mind, but usually turns up a book I want to read. When we moved out to the wilds and decided to have babies, I was forced to into a book cull.  My husband had the idea that we should be able to move through the rooms without negotiating piles of novels.  Years working as a bookseller meant that I’d collected a lot I was never actually going to read, no matter what the timing.  And books that had been tried more than once and never completed went too.  It was rather a relief.

What was the first book you ever bought with your own money and does it reside on your shelves now?

Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea (this is one of Simon’s childhood favourites).  I bought it at Diss Publishing Bookshop when I was eight.  It was my own choice and paid for with my own money.  It’s a quest story with beautifully drawn characters set in Ireland against a background of Irish mythology.  It’s probably the book I have read and re-read most often.  The book I turn to in times of trauma.  The reading equivalent of sucking your thumb.  I love it. My original copy was lost, but it does turn up second-hand and I always buy it.  I only buy the same edition I had as a child, with the epic 80s illustrative cover, which was what first attracted me to it.  This was the book that made me a reader.  It also made me want to be Irish, but I’m mostly over that now.  Mostly.

Are there any guilty pleasures on your bookshelves you would be embarrassed people might see, or like me do you have a hidden shelf for those somewhere else in the house?

I don’t believe in guilt for my pleasures.  I’m quite happy for Marian Keyes to sit alongside Sartre and Freud, I think they all get along famously.  If a book really irritates me, I have a habit of throwing it across the room, so there is a small pile of books with battered spines residing by the wall.  But they should be ashamed of themselves!

Which book on the shelves is your most prized, mine would be a collection of Conan Doyle stories my Great Uncle Derrick memorised and retold me on long walks and then gave me when I was older? Which books would you try and save if (heaven forbid) there was a fire?

It’s a small paperback poetry collection called Love Songs of Asia, translated by Edward Powys Mathers.  Its spine is broken and it was long ago fixed with tape, now yellowing with age.  It was given to me by the poet – and my greatest friend – Oliver Bernard.  He carried it around with him for over sixty years and read me many of the poems from it whilst we sat in his living room, smoking and drinking blackberry tea.  Oliver gave me his copy when I presented him with a fine edition I found second-hand, and inscribed it to me. Oliver died two years ago.  That small volume and the memory of his voice reading, in particular, ‘Ghazal of Iza Akhun Zada’, are amongst my greatest treasures.

AppleMark

What is the first ‘grown up’, and I don’t mean in a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ way, that you remember on your parent’s shelves or at the library, you really wanted to read? Did you ever get around to it and are they on your shelves now?

I’ve always envied those who can claim a precocious childhood of reading the classics.  I was the most age-appropriate of readers, until I reached adulthood and realised I could read whatever I liked.  The ‘grown-up’ books looked terribly boring to me.  I do remember my despair that one day I would too have to grow up and read books without pictures. I do remember resolving to read War and Peace when very small.  My mum read it twice during each of her pregnancies, or so she told us.  I have multiple editions on my shelves, the full range of translations, in soft and hardback, I’ve bought it new and secondhand.  It’s my husband’s favourite book.  I’ve never read it.

If you love a book but have borrowed the copy do you find you have to then buy the book and have it on your bookshelves or do you just buy every book you want to read?

I use the library regularly now, in the vain effort to keep down the quantities of books that I buy.  But, if I love a book I have to own it.  And I get rather irritated when I go looking for something I know I’ve read, only to remember it was a library loan. I am not a gentle reader – I’m a page folder and spine breaker – so I rarely borrow books from friends.  At least, not more than once.  But I do press books onto people to borrow and read, whilst repeating the mantra that my friend taught me: ‘never loan a book you don’t expect to be dropped in the bath, or covered in coffee’.  (Once a friend of my mother’s borrowed a John Irving signed first edition from me and gave it back with the casual aside that her daughter’s puppy had been visiting.  When I opened the cover, half the pages had been chewed out). I buy them again if they are amongst my beloveds.

What was the last book that you added to your bookshelves?

Can I have two?  I bought two.  I’m having two. One: Letters to Anyone and Everyone by Toon Tellegen.  Now I have children, I’m allowed to buy more children’s books.  Yes, they are only babies, but they will grow!  This is an eccentric masterpiece of epistolary fiction.  And it’s very funny.  And it has one letter that goes:

            Dear Ant,

            Ant

            Ant

            Ant

            Ant

for a whole page.  I bought his book of stunning poetry about his father, Raptors, a couple of years ago when it was part of Writers Centre Norwich’s ‘Brave New Reads’ scheme and am now desperately trying to track down everything he ever wrote. Two: All Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith. This was a second-hand find, and one I’d been after for a while.  It’s a book of aphorisms (or what he terms ‘moral prose’) and it’s just beautiful.  Everyone should have a copy. I told you I’d be a terrible reviewer.

Are there any books that you wish you had on your bookshelves that you don’t currently?

After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry.  It’s the strange and compulsive tale of a man that, to his own astonishment, lies his way into a household and becomes embroiled in the lives of all that reside there. I keep buying it and then giving it to people, and – quite rightly, it is that good – they never give it back.  I’ve bought it more than five times, and I intend to buy it again.

What do you think someone perusing your shelves would think of your reading taste, or what would you like them to think?

This woman reads too many novels. They’d be right.  My general knowledge is completely founded on the reading of fiction.  I buy non-fiction, but more often than not, trail off after a story from the shelves before I’ve reached the halfway point.  It’s an illness, and it means I’m highly unreliable when it comes to facts.

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A huge thanks to Sally for taking part in Other People’s Bookshelves. If you would like to catch up with the other posts in the series of Other People’s Bookshelves have a gander here. Don’t forget if you would like to participate (and I would love you to – hint, hint, hint as without you volunteering it doesn’t happen) in the series then drop me an email to savidgereads@gmail.com with the subject Other People’s Bookshelves, thanks in advance. In the meantime… what do you think of Sally’s responses and/or any of the books and authors that she mentions?

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Other People’s Bookshelves #50 – William Rycroft

Hello and welcome to the latest Other People’s Bookshelves, which has now hit its fiftieth post in the series. I think this calls for a celebration, party poppers and lots of cake and so we are heading over to the lovely William Rycroft who has kindly said we can have a party round at his whilst we have a nosey through his bookshelves. I have known William through the blogosphere for quite some years both from his written blog that’s now a vlog and sparkly new YouTube channel (he’s so modern) yet next month we will finally meet in the flesh in London town, very exciting. Anyway, before we have a good old nosey round William’s shelves, and get celebratory cake crumbs in his carpet, here is a little bit more about him…

Whilst working as an actor William Rycroft started writing about books online in 2007 with his book blog, Just William’s Luck. The blog came a vlog on YouTube in 2013 and his passion for books led to him recently becoming the new Community Manager for Vintage Books. Whilst that means he won’t be treading the boards he can still be heard reading at events, narrating audio books and talking all things Vintage on their various online channels.

Do you keep all the books you read on your shelves or only your favourites, does a book have to be REALLY good to end up on your shelves or is there a system like one in one out, etc?

I used to keep every book I bought and was in fact very proud to see those shelves filling up as I grew older. Then there came a point when space became an issue – or as some people like to call it: marriage. Becoming a blogger obviously upped the ante, with books arriving through the letter box frequently to add to those I couldn’t resist buying. As you’ll see from the photos we are overflowing. So I have to be tougher now. Books I buy tend to stay, books I receive from publishers will only stay once read if I feel like I have to keep them on the shelf. I’m not a great re-reader so it isn’t that; it’s more of a statement along the lines of this is who I am.

Do you organise your shelves in a certain way? For example do you have them in alphabetical order of author, or colour coded? Do you have different bookshelves for different books or systems of separating them/spreading them out? Do you cull your bookshelves ever?

There’s a rather ad-hoc system in place. Special books like first editions, signed copies and collectibles tend to reside in my bedroom away from kiddy fingers. I used to have my books alphabetised and vaguely themed, and once I organised them by colour, but when we moved here things got all messed up and have never really recovered. I now have some books gathered together by publisher because I like seeing collections together on the shelf. As for culling, I had to force myself to do it a few years ago, something I would previously have considered unthinkable. But once I’d done it once I suddenly found it much easier to do it again. I don’t feel a need to keep all the books to retain their worth anymore. I’m not much of a re-reader as I said so why am I keeping them? The answer it seemed was that as I grow older I feel like I’m building up a library. There are simply some books I cannot let go, some that deserve their place and some that are trying to earn it. It’s nice watching it evolve.

What was the first book you ever bought with your own money and does it reside on your shelves now?

Oooh, I have a terrible memory so I don’t honestly know what the first book was but I’m sure I don’t have it. Funnily enough I wasn’t a huge reader as a kid. I remember loving those books where you had to make choices for the main character along the way and flick to different pages accordingly, a literary precursor to interactive video games. I do remember being gifted books by my dad however for significant achievements, one of which was an illustrated Wind in The Willows in a slipcase. I still have that and it’s on my kids’ bookcase now.

Are there any guilty pleasures on your bookshelves you would be embarrassed people might see, or like me do you have a hidden shelf for those somewhere else in the house?

How very dare you! It’s all classy round here. Seriously though, I can’t really think of any guilty pleasures. The closest might be the trilogy of werewolf novels that Glen Duncan wrote recently but he’s a fab writer of literary fiction so there’s no guilt there at all.

Which book on the shelves is your most prized, mine would be a collection of Conan Doyle stories my Great Uncle Derrick memorised and retold me on long walks and then gave me when I was older? Which books would you try and save if (heaven forbid) there was a fire?

Very tough one to answer this. I might have to grab a few. I have an early edition of Mcsweeney’s (No.4) which is a box containing separate booklets. My wife gave it to me on our first anniversary so it’s very special. I have a few signed first editions on the same shelf so I might have to grab those too.

What is the first ‘grown up’, and I don’t mean in a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ way, that you remember on your parent’s shelves or at the library, you really wanted to read? Did you ever get around to it and are they on your shelves now?

I remember hearing a discussion of a book called Deception by Philip Roth on the radio and then seeing it on my Dad’s bookshelf. I knew it was all about an affair and so hopefully filled with sex so I nabbed that to read. I went on to become a huge fan of Roth and I still have that very copy on my shelf at home. I also remember looking at those big Russian novels like War and Peace and Anna Karenina and had great fun on a binge of epic fiction many years ago, all of which still have their place on the shelf.

If you love a book but have borrowed the copy do you find you have to then buy the book and have it on your bookshelves or do you just buy every book you want to read?

I don’t tend to borrow books from friends, I prefer to have my own copies of things and like many book lovers, it’s the buying of the thing that first thrills.

What was the last book that you added to your bookshelves?

It was a graphic novel called Here by Richard McGuire which was recommended by Chris Ware who is a genius and who said that this book was a work of genius. It is.

Are there any books that you wish you had on your bookshelves that you don’t currently?

I like first editions, especially signed ones, so yes, there are loads of books I’d love to have on my shelves but they’re just so damn expensive. I hope to be able to add to my collection surreptitiously over the years.

What do you think someone perusing your shelves would think of your reading taste, or what would you like them to think?

What I’d like them to think: “That man has impeccable taste.”

What they really think: “What a ponce.”

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Huge thanks to William for taking part in Other People’s Bookshelves and being my 50^th guest! If you would like to catch up with the other posts in the series of Other People’s Bookshelves have a gander here. Don’t forget if you would like to participate (and I would love you to – hint, hint, hint as without you volunteering it doesn’t happen) in the series then drop me an email to savidgereads@gmail.com with the subject Other People’s Bookshelves, thanks in advance. In the meantime… what do you think of William’s responses and/or any of the books and authors that he mentions?

The American Lover – Rose Tremain

If one book could sum up my reading year it would probably be Rose Tremain’s collection The American Lover. In part this is because this has been a year in which I have rediscovered my love of the short story. It wasn’t that I had abandoned them; I think I was just reading the wrong ones. It is also the year that I finally read Rose Tremain, after reading her work in honour of Granny Savidge who rated her as one of her favourite living authors. I am kicking myself for not having read her sooner and The American Lover again shows why she is such a master of the story whatever length.

Chatto & Windus, 2014, hardback, short stories, 232 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

One of the things that I most love about Rose Tremain’s writing is how she gets into the heads of the outsider or the underdog, or indeed the forgotten voices in society. This is probably the theme that runs through all her work and is the only thing that really connects The American Lover which is about as eclectic a selection of short stories as you could ask for in terms of scope, lengths and subject matter.

We have all felt, even the most confident of us, like outsiders at some point in her lives and this theme chimes within us even if we aren’t like the two old men in Captive or Smithy, who both live alone and try to get by and be helpful both (heartbreakingly so), we can empathise with them from what we have experienced as we do in all the stories. Rose also looks at people who choose to be outsiders such as Walter and Lena in A View of Lake Superior in the Fall who have become recluses hidden away in the wilds to hide from their grown up daughter, you will laugh and you will cry; and in another tale the very real Leo Tolstoy who appears, having escaped his horrendous wife in The Jester of Astapovo. She also looks at Sapphic love and how being different in whatever way makes us feel an outsider in the brilliant Extra Geography. Another highlight for me though was the appearance of one of my very favourite fictional outsiders…

Everybody believes that I am an invented person: Mrs Danvers. They say I am a creation: ‘Miss du Maurier’s finest creation’, in the opinion of many. But I have my own story. I have a history and a soul. I am a breathing woman.

You can imagine my chills of excitement when I saw that yes, Rose Tremain takes on Rebecca in The Housekeeper looking at it from a completely different angle of the relationship between muse, writer and the finished works. In fact writing is one of the themes interspersed throughout The American Lover, indeed in the title story we discover the tale of Beth whose affair with a much older man when she was younger inspired the bestselling novel The American Lover, yet what was she left with after. This is a wonderful and, another Tremain trope, heartbreaking tale and you can see why it was up for the short story award earlier in the year. As we have a reimaging of how Rebecca was inspired and how Tolstoy spent his last days we also get a wonderful modern retelling of a rather famous Shakespeare play with 21^st Century Juliet, which had me cackling. The excerpt below made me laugh and also reminds you all to pop my birthday date in your diaries, ha!

24^th March
Cook supper for Cousin Tibs. I adore the bastard like the brother I never had. We get smashed on the (four) bottles of Corvo he’s brought and I tell him about Mayo and about Perry’s declaration. Relief to get everything out in the open. And Tibs is really sweet and on my side and agrees with me that good sex is awesomely rare and that Perry Paris is verging on being a pillock.

What I also love about Rose Tremain’s writing (and I have a lot of love for it if you hadn’t noticed) is that she explores all aspects of we strange human folk. She looks at loneliness, grief, rage, love, loss, death, kindness, bitterness in all their forms. One of the tales that did this best (and is probably in my favourites of the collection with The American Lover, Captive and obviously The Housekeeper) is BlackBerry Winter where we meet Fran as she goes home for Christmas. Here with time to reflect she does the things we all do now and again, and something that Tremain is very good at discussing in her work, asking the questions of ourselves we don’t like to face or are shocked to face. Some are hard and dark; what are we doing with our lives, are we in the right relationship, do we like ourselves? Some are dark but funny (Tremain does black comedy so, so well) like when we contemplate killing our mothers, or wishing we were dead, even just for a moment.

Fran unpacked her clothes and put them in her old wardrobe, which used to creak and grumble in the night, like something alive. Then, she sat down on the single bed and took out her BlackBerry and emailed David. She told him that she almost wished Peggy had been sliced in half by the gin trap; she told him that the moonshine on The Trib had made her long to be a Tahitian again; she told him that her love for him was as dark and familiar as the wood. When she signed off and contemplated her evening alone with Peggy and the TV, she experienced thirty seconds of wanting to be dead.

I loved the whole collection of The American Lover, there is so much that is wonderful in here I haven’t managed to mention A Man in the Water, Juliette Greco’s Black Dress, Lucy & Gaston  or The Closing Door which are all marvellous, and all have all the Tremain-isms in them that I mention above. Also you might need another reason to quickly run and get this from the shops for loved ones, though really I would recommend you just treat yourself and find a few hours to curl up with it and all the worlds and stories Rose Tremain creates for you.

When Simon Met Rose…

I had the joy of meeting Rose, who is just lovely, and talking about The American Lover and some of the other books she has written (and indeed I have read for Trespassing with Tremain, the review of Restoration coming before the end of the year) a month or so ago which you can listen to here on You Wrote The Book. Who else has read this collection and what did you think? What about Tremain’s other works? I still have plenty to go which I am so excited about; she is definitely a firm favourite author of mine now.

#LockedInABookshop – The Books I Would Read if I Found Myself in the Position of the #WaterstonesOne

Most of you will have undoubtedly heard about the luck misfortune of David Willis who suffered the amazing awful ordeal of being accidentally locked into the Trafalgar Square store of Waterstones for a few hours before, having tweeted, he was rescued. The most amazing thing I found about this story was that he actually told anyone that he was stuck in there, I wouldn’t have. If you haven’t been to the Trafalgar Square branch of Waterstones it is one of my favourites, floors and floors of books, loads of stationery, comfy armchairs and a wonderful cafe and restaurant. It would be a dream to spend a night, let alone two hours, stuck in there. We have all surely had that thought of hiding somewhere in a bookshop and waiting to be locked in haven’t we? I would have had a good old wander through the store and picked up some books to read, made a cocktail or two at the bar and headed for a comfy sofa for the evening. I certainly wouldn’t do this…

Waterstones have themselves blogged amusingly about the types of books they would recommend if you were stuck in there for two hours. Kate of Adventures with Words, has gone for a list of five books that she would recommend if you were stuck in there the whole night, or maybe with her list if you were stuck in there for a few days – maybe over Christmas, if you really want to avoid the family (light bulb goes on in head). I thought I would be a bit different and so have come up with the top five books I might read if I was lucky enough to have the wonderful ordeal myself…

Finish the book I am currently reading…

I know this might sound really boring but before I could even consider reading anything else I would have to finish the current book I was reading. I am a real stickler for being monogamous with books, unless you are reading something really, really long (be it fiction or not) and have something very different to read between. At the moment that would mean finishing off Sacred Country (my hands automatically always type scared, what does that say about me?) by Rose Tremain which I mentioned I was reading yesterday. I am really enjoying this thought provoking novel of a young girl who aged 6 decides she wants to be a boy, so that would stand me in good stead for a while. So that would be my first port of call, the T section for Tremain. Oh and don’t even question if it would be in stock, Waterstones Trafalgar Square has almost every book in the world in it.

Go and grab that book by a favourite author I have been saving for a rainy day/saving for being locked in a bookshop…

We all do it, don’t we? We buy books by our very favourite authors that we leave languishing on a shelf because we know that there will at some point be that just right rainy day, or night locked in a bookshop, when we will turn to that book because we know it will be brilliant. I have a few contenders for that title; Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill, and Music for Chameleon’s by Truman Capote, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. That’s a list of five books in its own right so for the sake of this exercise I will pick just one… Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood would be my choice today.

The book that everyone else seems to be going on about and I haven’t read yet…

This would easily be We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves  by Karen Joy Fowler. I wanted to read it when it came out. Then I heard the spoiler twist, which I won’t spoil, and still really wanted to read it. Then almost everyone seemed to be reading it. Then it was long and shortlisted for the Man Booker and the whole world seems to have read it but me, even my aunty text me this very morning asking if I knew the ‘yellow and black book with ourselves in the title’. Not everyone loves it, my dear friend Tracy Trim – as I like to call her – is struggling at the mo, and some people downright hate it. I still feel it is a book I need to read, so I would get that from the entrance hall where it’s bound to be on several tables.

A book completely at random…

As I am in a bookstore and have potentially read a book or two and a half by now, I would probably need a longer wander than just to the bar or the loos to stretch my legs. So I would go and just have a wander and see what randomly took my fancy. Quite probably something short and in translation!

That big bloody classic I have always meant to read…

Yes I am talking about that masterpiece that everyone else has read, probably twice, and I just haven’t. For some people it is Moby Dick (it’s boat based, I will never read this book, I am at one with that fact), for some it is War and Peace (which my mother waited until she was on maternity leave, awaiting the arrival my sister, to crack) for some it is Crime and Punishment or one of the other Russian greats. For me it is Gone With The Wind. I took it away with me to the US and came back with having made a small, rather pathetic, 150 page dent in it. The bookmark is still stuck in page 150. I need to be stranded somewhere to read it from cover to cover properly because while I was enjoying it, now back home I have so many other books to choose from. Oh, I have seen a major flaw with this choice… Let’s move on.

So if you were to be locked in a bookshop over night which books would you go and find and read? Which books, like Kate, would you recommend to others? I haven’t done this because there are only so many times I can mention Rebecca on this blog in a post and sometimes I worry I am in danger of reaching that limit. And this last question almost seems silly to even ask, but would you actually tell anyone? I think I would simply stay in there all night and wait for the staff to arrive the next day.

Other People’s Bookshelves #26 – Lucy Rock of Relish Reads

Hello and welcome to the latest in the series of Other People’s Bookshelves, and the first of 2014 so I thought we would have someone rather special to start the year with in the form of Lucy Rock who blogs at Relish Reads. Lucy became one of my best bookish chums when I was living in Manchester for a year, after I had left London. We went to the Women’s Institute to talk books and help set them up a bookish group and set up our own one in Manchester which is still going only now with Just Lucy at the helm *coughs – nothing to do with Lucy making me read Elizabeth Gaskell*  swiftly moving on before I dredge all that up I will hand you over to lovely Lucy and her shelves…

My day job takes up huge swathes of my day, come playtime I reach for my books and bury my head in characters and fantastical lands far, far away. I grew up in a close family full of avid readers where a full bookshelf in every room of the house was ordinary and a trip to the library a huge excitement for my little brother and me. Although I can’t say I really started reading ‘properly’ (i.e. at least one book a month) until I had grown up a bit, I still remember taking the maximum amount of books out just for me to pop on the shelves and dream about picking up! Nothing’s changed really… I have been book blogging for the past three years and the vibrant and friendly community online has truly transformed by reading experiences.

Do you keep all the books you read on your shelves or only your favourites, does a book have to be REALLY good to end up on your shelves or is there a system like one in one out, etc?

Unless something was absolutely dire, I used (much to my boyfriend’s dismay) to keep every single book I read, regardless of whether it would just sit on the shelves for the rest of all time collecting dust. However, our local train station now has a wonderful little library where you can take and leave books as you please, no strings attached. I now have a mini rule with myself; if neither of us will ever pick it up again/lend it to someone, it goes in the box for someone else to enjoy. Even if I hated the book, I like to think that everything I leave in there is pretty decent and I therefore get REALLY mad if it’s still sitting there after a day!

Do you organise your shelves in a certain way? For example do you have them in alphabetical order of author, or colour coded? Do you have different bookshelves for different books (for example, I have all my read books on one shelf, crime on another and my TBR on even more shelves) or systems of separating them/spreading them out? Do you cull your bookshelves ever?

Because I like to just pick books to read on whim – apart from those I have to read for reviews/book club, etc – I try to keep our books almost entirely randomly organised, which I know would drive most avid readers potty!  That said, we recently had our local joiner do us some lovely shelves and there is now some slight organisation going on. Classics downstairs (because the room is pretty and it makes us look clever) and everything else in ‘Lucy’s Room’ upstairs; where we aim to have an entire wall of modern fiction, climbing, outdoorsy books, maps, coffee table books and rafts of foreign fiction, which I always buy on a whim telling myself I’ll bother to read it in the original language and never do. As you can see from the photo, our ‘wall of books’ is looking a little bare at the moment, which is pretty depressing. There are many books still holed up in our loft from moving house, I must liberate them immediately!

What was the first book you ever bought with your own money and does it reside on your shelves now?

I think the answer to this question is either Junk by Melvin Burgess or Great Expectations by you-know-who. Junk was, as far as I can remember, a marvellous, incredibly enlightening tale of teenage angst which I read and re-read as a teen and, for nostalgia’s sake, still resides on my shelves to this day. I had only ever read the first few chapters of t’other one until a couple of months ago, but my lovely Vintage copy, not the original version I panic-bought and I think is now with my brother.

Are there any guilty pleasures on your bookshelves you would be embarrassed people might see, or like me do you have a hidden shelf for those somewhere else in the house?

The only people in my life who read as avidly as I do is my family so really, any kind of book seems to make a cosy impression upon our friends. I’m not easily embarrassed and believe that, as long as you’re reading, that’s the most important thing of all. I’ve read everything from Charles Dickens to Barbara Erskine this year and I’m dead proud.

Which book on the shelves is your most prized, mine would be a collection of Conan Doyle stories my Great Uncle Derrick memorised and retold me on long walks and then gave me when I was older? Which books would you try and save if (heaven forbid) there was a fire?

I have a number of old books my parents have bought me over the years that I treasure. Some of them deal with medieval French history, courting and troubadours, which I studied at University and one particular fave is an old collection of Prosper Mérimée’s short stories. It has a lovely old inscription to the recipient and was obviously a Christmas gift. Mine was too and there’s now a message for me in there. All in all though, I’m not too precious about my books and most of them are very paperbacky/drop-in-the-bathable.

What is the first ‘grown up’, and I don’t mean in a ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ way, that you remember on your parent’s shelves or at the library, you really wanted to read? Did you ever get around to it and are they on your shelves now?

The big Russian door-stop novels by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy have always been hugely fascinating for me. Even now I’m a grown-up and have them on my shelves I still haven’t read them! My Dad can be rather philosophical and his collection of Jean-Paul Sartre novels also always intrigued me. I thought I might have some kind of awakening one day and discover myself….I still haven’t read them.

If you love a book but have borrowed the copy do you find you have to then buy the book and have it on your bookshelves or do you just buy every book you want to read?

Back in the days where I would keep every book I read without discrimination, I would also go on uncontrollable book-buying frenzies, the speed of which my reading can simply never keep up with. Nowadays, if I’m lucky enough to be in the vicinity of a good indie/charity bookshop (which I happily do have locally) I’ll have a peruse and go a bit mad and, to keep my faith in the chain bookstores going (we sadly don’t have any decent independent bookshops in Manchester) I’ll purchase my monthly book group book full price if it doesn’t look completely rubbish. Even if I don’t manage to read them all, I make a point of taking books out of the library and renewing them until I’m forced to take them back! The decent loans I do read I won’t buy myself but WILL then buy as gifts for other people.

What was the last book that you added to your bookshelves?

Something I bought would be Misfortune by Wesley Stace, our latest book group read. Thoroughly entertaining and quirky and we had an excellent discussion on gender-identity, etc, to boot. The latest thing I’ve been sent is Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi, which I am very excited about. Sounds like the perfect wintery, fantastical read.

Are there any books that you wish you had on your bookshelves that you don’t currently?

I really don’t think you have the room on your blog for a frank answer to this question BUT, what I will say is, there isn’t enough life to read everything I want to read. That scares me and means I simply couldn’t have everything sat there staring at me. The pressure would be too great.

What do you think someone perusing your shelves would think of your reading taste, or what would you like them to think?

I think my boyfriend and I’s little library reflects the reading of open-minded, thoughtful people who are as at home with Solzhenitsyn as with Joanne Harris. Considerate, left-of-centre, intellectual, outdoorsy, unpretentious and INTERESTING. All the things I would love to be.

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A huge thanks to Lucy for taking part in Other People’s Bookshelves, if we don’t meet up much more often this year I will be simply furious! Anyway… Don’t forgot if you would like to participate (and I would love you to – hint, hint, hint) in the Other People’s Book Shelves series then drop me an email to savidgereads@gmail.com with the subject Other People’s Bookshelves, thanks in advance. In the meantime… what do you think of Lucy’s responses and/or any of the books and authors that she mentions?

As Good As Jane Eyre?

I have had the utter joy, amongst several children’s parties this weekend where I think I had as much fun as the children, in watching the latest film adaptation of ‘Jane Eyre’ which came out in cinemas last year. Adaptations are a tricky beast, in fact Gavin and I were discussing this on The Readers earlier in the week, and I have to say that I think that this latest version of Jane Eyre is utterly superb.

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga manages to perfectly capture the brooding atmosphere (it made me jump a lot), its dark mysterious aspects and secrets and the wonders of the Yorkshire countryside and also the gothic nature of it all. It does help that Michael Fassbender is a little bit brilliant as Mr Rochester and that Judi Dench is superb in it as Mrs Fairfax and most importantly Mia Wasikowska is a very understated, subtle and powerful Jane Eyre too. It might have missed a few set pieces I love from the book but no adaptation can ever be as perfect as the film version in your head can it. It actually made me want to re-read ‘Jane Eyre’ all over again.

I really do love the book so wasn’t expecting much from the film but I do recommend it, I could also do with some recommendations from you. As I mentioned it has made me ponder a re-read of ‘Jane Eyre’, however it is not long since I have read it and there are so many other classics I really should read (I bet a few of you have just muttered ‘Dickens’ or ‘Austen’ under your breath haven’t you?) and I would like to know which you would recommend for when the dark autumnal nights* draw in? They need to have a brooding atmosphere, some mystery and characters that will walk off the page and hold me through a good few hundred pages. I already have ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Villette’ as possibilities, do they fit the bill? What else would you recommend?

*I am not wishing the autumnal night upon us by the way, I just won’t be able to start on these until October/November when Green Carnation reading dies down.

The Mum Booker Longlist

You might possibly have an inkling, can’t think why, that today is the day when the longlist for this years Man Booker Award is announced. I have already had a crack at guessing just what books might make the list which you can have a peek at here. We all love a good list of books don’t we? Well, I do so I am assuming there must be more people like me? I really enjoy seeing people’s top ten or top forty books (which reminds me I need to add mine back onto the blog) and thought that today I would share with you my mother’s top ten books as she is a voracious reader and always has been, but more on her in her ‘Grilling’ later in the week.

I said it would be my Mum’s top ten books which she claimed would be ‘really easy’ however after a few minutes I got the look and a slight moan of ‘ooh its really difficult’. There was also some excuse of needing to be ‘standing in front of all my shelves so I can think more clearly’ but soon enough we didn’t have ten books but twenty, and here they are for you delectation with some snippets of conversation that were sparked by them.

1. Iliad by Homer – “being a Classics teacher you can’t be surprised”
2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – which she read when on maternity leave before my sister (another book devourer) was born after which reading went out the window unless it was ‘Spot the Dog’.
3. Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien
4. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins – ‘much better than The Woman in White’ something we strongly disagree on.
5. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
6. Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
7. The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks – “I worry it has dated terribly by now so have never re-read, would rather have the memory of it being brilliant.” It’s just arrived at Savidge Reads HQ and I will be reading it soon.
8. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
9. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
10. Taking The Devil’s Advice by Anne Fine – “possibly the funniest book I have ever read”
11. The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
12. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon – “a truly original book”
13. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
14. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
15. I, Claudius by Robert Graves – “naturally it’s the classic thing again”
16. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
17. The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
18. Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver – loves the series and got very excited when I said that Paver’s adult book is out in October.
19. Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
20. The Adventures of Tintin by Herge – “after all these years I still get huge enjoyment from these”

I was really surprised by this list and in particular the fact there was no Jane Austen, no Bronte’s and shock horror no Margaret Atwood. The latter seemed most bizarre as whenever I think of Atwood I think of my Mum. I asked her about these and she said “they are all great writers just no specific one book of there’s has made the top lot… you didn’t ask me for my top ten authors though did you?” I was also surprised no Shakespeare but apparently that’s because “you can’t choose one best Shakespeare play, it changes daily”.

So there you have it, my mother’s favourite books, don’t forget her Grilling will be up on Thursday. Until then what do you think of her list, was it what you might have expected? Which books have you read and loved on the list? Could any of my mothers top books be found in your list of favourites?

The Book Confessional

I really like today’s Booking Through Thursday question it looks at Big Book Fibs or Little Literary Lies and asks us if we have ever lied about reading a book that we haven’t. I think there are going to be some brilliant answers from people. There was an article earlier in the year that said that two thirds of British people have lied about reading books they haven’t… I do want to know who they asked, they never asked anyone I know and why is it always the British people that get accused of these things. Sorry, went off on a tangent…

Have I ever lied about a book? When I was in my early twenties and just getting back into reading and meeting other bookish folk I quite possibly told a few porkers about stuff that I read to impress people but that is so far back in the recesses of history that I cannot remember the ins and outs of it.

In the recent past I can only thing of one and that was probably about two years ago (pre-blogging, I couldn’t ever lie about having read a book that I hadn’t on my blog it would just be wrong on so many levels, and one thing regular readers will know is that I am very honest on here) at a book group. Not about the book the group was supposed to be reading, if I don’t like a book or couldn’t finished one I will just come out and say it.

One of the book group members at the time, who did eventually get the boot as you may see why, was bragging about all the classics that he had read and complaining the boo group didn’t read long enough or old enough books to be considered a proper group and was making everyone feel quite inferior, or trying to. So when he said ‘oh and I am sure none of you have managed War & Peace yet?’ with a slightly wry smile. To which of course without thinking I responded ‘oh I have… and I don’t see what all the fuss is about’. This of course got a death stare (and that’s putting it mildly) before being asked if I could back up my opinion. Well once challenged like that I am unlikely to back down and so said “well it was just too much wasn’t it really, too many characters, too many pages and too much War and not enough Peace” I don’t think I got away with it. I did relieve a tense situation though and try and fight back against a “book bully”. I may have to trademark that! Either that or I made myself look a bit of a wally!

So yes I have lied about a book but at least I made it count after all War & Peace is meant to be one of the greatest novels of all time, isn’t it? I am sure I will attempt it one day, just when I have much more time on my hands. Now that I have ‘fessed up it’s your turn… have you ever said you read a book you hadn’t? Also have you ever come into contact with a ‘book bully’?

Granny Savidge Reads

So Granny Savidge Reads (who it would appear is very popular and indeed in demand on this blog) has been staying and I know you have all been desperate to hear from the delightful Dorothy but we have been very busy hitting the museums, restaurants, galleries, cafes and of course bookshops of London town a city which my Gran ‘never tires of’ and still ‘gets excited by’.

Now I did ask Gran to write a blog but being such an upto date trend setter she has a mac and finds my computer a little bit daunting plus we didnt have much time and so until her next visit we decided she would do a top ten of her favourite books. This became a top twenty and I have been told to say that “at 67 years of age when you have been reading for almost 64 years having a top ten is impossible as you have read too many great books… well if you are lucky!” So here is Granny Savidge Reads (though if she ever heard me call her Granny she would be so unimpressed) top twenty books “in no particular order”…

• Rabbit Run – John Updike
• Emma – Jane Austen
• Barchester Towers – Anthony Trollope
• The Quiet American – Graham Greene
• Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
• Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
• For Whom The Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
• East of Eden – John Steinbeck
• Snow Falling on Cedars – David Gutterson
• A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• English Passengers – Matthew Kneale
• Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
• The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
• A Month in the Country – J.L. Carr
• Reading Tugenev – William Trevor
• The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
• Small Island – Andrea Levy
• The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque

When I said I had only read one of those (I didn’t feel mentioning I had read half of Anna Karenina would count) which is of course Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ I could have sworn she muttered “call yourself a book blogger” hahaha, before realising “but I have bought you three of them… haven’t you read any of the books that I have bought you?” I was fortunately forgiven. Though I do think that ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ need to climb my TBR sharpish before Dorothy descends again. Have you read any of these?

We naturally, especially in the 5th floor cafe/bar of the huge Waterstones in Piccadilly, talked alot about books. In fact Gran is one of the few people I can talk to about books on and off for two days without either party getting bored. We don’t agree on all books at all. I loved ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife” (which we discussed because of the movie being advertised everywhere) Gran thought ‘it wasnt up to much… and a naked man meeting a young girl, no its not right’ which of course made me guffaw.

I had lots of authors to ask her about and she came out with some gems. On Angela Carter “well its all this surrealism, and then she just rewrote someone elses stories no, not for me”. On Anita Shrieve “well I read one or two but by the third she is much of a muchness”. On Diana Athill (who’s ‘Somewhere Towards The End’ she read and cracked the spine of – I was shell shocked) “you wouldnt warm to her would you, and I don’t like all this pretending that she is poor”.

We do of course love some of the same authors. I have only just started reading William Trevor but agree “his prose is absolutely stunning” and that Margaret Atwood “isn’t one to be missed, even when I don’t like her – which is rare – she is still very good” and Anne Tyler “oh I do like her, does she have a new one out, can you get me a preview copy?”.

She has already booked her next visit, and may indeed be here for one of my theme’s coming up, either the whole September theme (I am teasing you all with that one) or for the special fortnight I am now planning in October which is also her birthday month and we are going to do afternoon tea at The Ritz just before or just after. On that visit she has promised she will do a blog or two “and you can show me how to create and work one of these blogs… I wouldn’t mind having a go.” Which sounds interesting!

“Book Notes Note Books”

A short second blog of the day today…You may remember a while ago that I spotted some gorgeous “Book Note Note Books” and it made me wonder, along with my love of stationary, if owning a special book to write about books would be something that would work for me. I said I would try it whilst I was in Switzerland… and didn’t. I then said I would try it again and few weeks ago… and didn’t and then I started Team Ulysses and as you can see from my review of the first chapter alone below its something that needs your attention.

Book Notes Note Book

So out came a notebook, though sadly not one of the fabulous Penguin ones as I didn’t want to spend money that could be spent on books on a notepad I never touched, or like a diary only wrote in a few days every year before giving up. Well I have been writing the odd note here and there as I go for a week or so and as you can see (from the picture on the right) its actually working. I am sure it wont make any sense to any one else, but to me having this whilst reading Ulysses on and off and other books as I go this has been a true help. (It’s also great if you need to remind yourself of something for the supermarket shop – as its one I take with me everywhere.)

I now only wish that I had done this ever since I became a book-a-holic once more in my mid-twenties (after a few years of sneering at books) as it would be like a diary of memories and reading. What’s going on in your life, I think, always has a great effect on how you feel about what you read and even if you read anything at all or not. I know certain books I was reading at certain times in my life clearly, like ‘The Crimson Petal and The White’ by Michel Faber when I got married, and trying really hard to read Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ in sunny Barcelona on my honeymoon. What about all the other books, and the books before blogging? There are loads I could have popped up reviews of on here by now, I guess the good ones I have kept I will just have to read all over again one day… Shame!

What about all of you? Do you keep Book Notes apart from if you blog? Do you have books and books about the books you have read in the past? Do any books remind you of a special time in your life? As ever I would love to hear your thoughts, if you would like to see a blog created thanks in part to my new Book Notes Note Book, just scroll down a little!

Cutting A Long Story Short…

Now those of you who pop by regularly will possibly have noticed that I have been having quite a fight on my hands with Anna Karenina. When I pick it up and sit and read it I find myself whizzing through the pages. However picking it up isn’t happening anywhere near as much as it probably should be and I don’t take it on the tube with me as it’s simply too big and is like having a brick in my bag all day long. Oddly I am also reading the Adam Mars-Jones’ Pilcrow in paperback which comes out in March and seriously is already proving a must read. This book itself is a fairly large novel but is somehow much lighter and so is being whisked to and fro on my travels.

When I was telling someone of my ‘Anna Dilemma’ they answered that it was simple ‘you’re just a thrill reader aren’t you, you don’t want to spend hours on a book, you just want to read as many as you can each year and Anna is conflicting with that’. Whilst I agree I do like to read a lot of books, I have nothing against a longer book although occasionally the thought of ‘oh I could be reading eight books to this one monster’ does pop into my mind. But what is a thrill reader when its at home? I dont read a mass of thrillers if thats what was implied, though I am partial to a good Tess Gerritsen.

Another Simon who loves books covered this on his Stuck In A Book blog (I have him to thank for letting me use his picture – thanks Simon) and asked the question which do people prefer long or short books and the answers are very interesting. I also admire Simon’s honestly regarding why he prefers something around 225 pages ‘because I like to make lists of my books, and I like them to be long…’ and I do have to admit I agree. But is that wrong?

So which do you all prefer, a long or a short book? How long is the perfect novel? I have to say I am a fan of anything between 250 – 400 pages so either I am sitting on the fence or I just like medium sized books. On another slightly similar note, does anyone remember the furore over Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach being too short to be on The Man Booker List (I thought it was an amazing book and just the right length), which raises the question can a book be too short? I await your thoughts…

What Are You Reading Right Now?

My Gran and I always have one question to each other when we are on the phone which is ‘so what are you reading right now?’ Its something we compare and contrast and gives us both new books that we might want to read. My Gran takes part in two occasionally three book groups and I have been known to follow along with a book they are doing. I was put off when they read The Testament of Gideon Mack which I read at the same time and didnt really love. I might however join in with the next one (I’ll email my Gran my thoughts – not actually sit in on the meeting in Matlock, its a bit far from London) as they are doing Engleby which I have had on my TBR for absolutely ages. Anyway I digress…

When I saw that Cornflower Books had done a blog on this last week the response she got, from me included, was fantastic. All sorts of people reading all sorts of books and yet there were slight trends. People wewre recommending what people should and shouldnt try, and I whole heartedly agreed with one comment that it was a shame we werent all in the same room together having a natter with tea and biscuits. It also made me decide that when i have finsihed and review a book I will let you know what am reading next in advance.

Anyway my reading has changed since Cornflowers blog I thought I would let you know what I am reading right now in case any of you are interested, or have thoughts, or want to join in and read a long. You all know that I have had Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy on the go since the start of the year, its weird when I pick it up and get reading I really do enjoy it but when I see the great bulk of pages it scares me off. Its still happening at a part at a time and lots of books in between parts. I refuse to give up.

The other book I am now reading is Pilcrow by Adam Mars- Jones which I only actually started this morning on the tube. I am now about 50 pages in and am already loving it. The voice of the protagonist is superb and at a fairly bulky 544 pages of small writing I am still pretty sure I will have polished this off before I know it. I have an inkling that unless something goes terribly wrong it might shape up to be one of my favourites of the year, we’ll see. You’ll now doubt be seeing a review soon. So what about all of you? What is everyone else out there reading? What can you recommend?

1000 Novels Everyone Must Read… So Far

So The Guardian (and Observer) are treating us to the ‘1000 Novels Everyone Must Read’ over seven days. I wasn’t sure how this would work it being that 1000 divided by seven means 142.85714 books per day. However what they have done is to theme each issue in the series. So far we have had Love and Crime. Though personally I didn’t exactly think that To Kill A Mockingbird or Jurassic Park was crime, or The Virgin Suicides a love story but I shouldn’t be picky. I was shocked The Time Travellers Wife wasn’t in love actually. I haven’t thought of ones I would put in their yet! That could be another blog for another time.

I don’t know about you but I go through the list and look at which ones I have read and then the ones that I should read in the future and these two issues so far have given me lots to read. What had I read?

Lady Audley’s Secret – Mary E Braddon
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Murder At The Vicarage – Agatha Christie
The Woman In White – Wilkie Collins
Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
The Hound Of The Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
American Psycho – Brett Easton Ellis
A Quiet Belief In Angels – RJ Ellory (I was shocked this was in here – hated it)
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
A Room With A View – E.M. Forster
The End Of The Affair – Graham Greene
Red Dragon – Thomas Harris (which I am going to re-read this year)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Pursuit Of Love – Nancy Mitford
Dissolution – CJ Sansom
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
Perfume – Patrick Suskind
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (well am reading it in the background)
Breathing Lessons – Anne Tyler
The Night Watch – Sarah Waters

Hmmm… 25/1000 so far… must try harder! If you have missed this so far then have a look here http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/1000novels

Bring On The Book Groups

As you may have read one of my resolutions in book terms this year was to read more varied books and in doing so join a few more book groups. I am already doing Rogue Book Group with Novel Insights which is fantastic as we have known each other for over twenty years and have a fairly similar taste in books. We are slowly but surely working our way through books we have always wanted to read and also books by authors that we both really enjoy reading and want to read more of. Currently our choice for this month is Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as this has been a book that has been on both of our TBR piles for quite some time and is a book that we have both been told ‘we simply must read’ over the years. So far so good though I have to admit I am reading a part a time, keeping furious notes of characters and sub-plots, and reading a different book between each part. So many bonuses to this book group, but one slight drawback being that it’s varying our reading but in our own comfort zone, not making me read fiction that I wouldn’t think to pick up otherwise.

So I went on the hunt for more. I decided I should do a book group or two where I didn’t know anyone else to start with, this meaning the choices would be more varied and I get out and meet more people who love books. Now you would think finding book groups in central London would be fairly easy… not so. After hunting for many, many hours I found ‘Thingbooks’ which ticked all my boxes; I don’t know anyone, they meet in a Waterstones in London (spending wise could prove lethal with all that temptation) and seem to have a possible TBR that I wouldn’t pick myself. The first book that we are doing (the book group is new so its not a clique yet) is Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and I managed to find an almost new copy for 50p so was chuffed that my spending hadn’t gone crazy, well not yet anyway. This one is happening on Sunday so will divulge all about it afterwards.

Whilst looking at some of my favourite book blogs I saw that Cornflower Books has an online book group. After the initial worry that these people would be way ahead of me on book knowledge and I might come across as a bit of a wally I thought ‘don’t be silly’ and emailed. I had a lovely reply from Karen the same day saying she was really pleased I had emailed and that the book group is quite informal and ad hoc so you can come and read as you like. It didn’t think it could have been more ideal until I saw they were reading Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler as this month’s choice and I have wanted to read much more by her since Digging To America was such a hit with me last year. So that’s it, all sorted. The only thing is they are doing theirs on the 17th so I now have all three of these to read by the end of next week. Mind you that’s hardly a hardship is it? I better dash off and get cracking, though not spine cracking as I cant stand it when people do that!