Month: September 2010

Stuck-in-a-Book’s Week(ahem)day Miscellany

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Hi there – sorry for a silent weekend, but it comes with a nice excuse. It was Our Vicar’s Wife’s birthday on Friday, and Colin and I decided to surprise her with a visit – so I drove down and picked up Col after his work, and we arrived on the doorstep about 6.30pm, cue a very spectacular and lovely scene of surprise. We went out to dinner, Colin beat us at Scrabble, and we dug a trench in a graveyard… all the normal, really.

So, no weekend post – I was too busy having fun! Also have lots of comments to reply to, I’m aware of it – I will do it, and I do so love getting your comments. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.

The unseasonal day will mean the Miscellany isn’t quite the same as usual, nor as colourful, but here are a few things I’d like to point out to you all…

1) Via Facebook, this week I discovered the blog/website Hyperbole and a Half, possibly the best thing ever. Possibly (of course) not… but anybody who (a) likes funny things, and (b) is a stickler for spelling and grammar MUST have a look at this. Thank me later, when it’s 2.30am and you’re still reading her posts…

2.) I love it when people read the books I’ve talked about (or when I read books recommended by other bloggers) but I love it JUST AS MUCH when people bake my recipes! So, thanks Darlene, so pleased to have spread the rock bun joy – have a gander at the results of Darlene’s labour. And Susan, I’ll reply soon to comments, but I’m afraid this is one recipe where chocolate wouldn’t work in place of currants. I’m not sure it would work with mixed peel and mixed spice? Of course, you could miss those out too… but then it would just be chocolate chip buns. Which I’m sure would be lovely, come to think of it!

3.) India Knight is a lass who knows her apples – and, more to the point, her books. I think ‘comfort reads’ can sound a little dismissive (for some reason ‘comfort zone’ doesn’t have the same connotation for me) but I know what she’s getting at, and this list of comfort read books – mentioned by my friend – is absolutely brilliant. Regular SiaB readers will doubtless find great things to read there, and I know it’s reminded me of a few I want to try, and lots I’ve already loved.

4.) DO go and help Yvette choose from her latest library books… some really interesting reading material there, including everyone’s favourite novel about a fictitious woman coming to life in a cathedral city…

5.) Lastly, check out my friend Soph’s new recipe blog…

Snowballing…

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Project 24 – #18, #19, #20, #21…

Oh dear, blog readers, you see before you a humble and mournful man. Am I to come this far and fall at the final hurdle? Project 24 has not been easy… it involves repressing all that part of me which screams joyfully, waving my hands around, whenever I see secondhand books… to come before shelves of lovely, musty, well-loved hardbacks from the 1920s and 1930s, it goes against everything in my nature to be circumspect and sensible.

My better side was trampled in the dust the other day, when I scooped up three books at my favourite shop in Oxford, Arcadia. It’s mostly gifty, cardy, wrapping-papery but also has a back room of secondhand books, specialising in Penguin paperbacks. In said shop, I bought…


I’m going to have to work hard to defend these, aren’t I?

-Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay looks like great fun – a bit like Modern Delight (see here) or presumably J.B. Priestley’s Delight, which I haven’t actually read. It has many short chapters on things with please Macaulay – from ‘Departure of Visitors’ to ‘Turtles in Hyde Park’; ‘Hot Bath’ to ‘Improving the Dictionary’. I think it’s going to be fun… it’s readily available, and I could have left it there and bought it later… but… but…

-As It Was & World Without End by Helen Thomas – these autobiographical books by poet Edward Thomas’ wife appear on my 50 Books list, but I have only got them in a modern reprint called Under Storm’s Wing. When I spotted these loved old editions, I couldn’t leave them there – do go and see what I wrote about them then, including the stunning final paragraph of World Without End where Helen bids farewell to her husband for the last time as he heads to war, easily the most moving writing I have read outside the Bible. Oh, I’m going to go ahead and put the paragraph here too. A thick mist hung everywhere, and there was no sound except, far away in the valley, a train shunting. I stood at the gate watching him go; he turned back to wave until the mist and the hill hid him. I heard his old call coming up to me: ‘Coo-ee!’ he called. ‘Coo-ee!’ I answered, keeping my voice strong to call again. Again through the muffled air came his ‘Coo-ee’. And again went my answer like an echo. ‘Coo-ee’ came fainter next time with the hill between us, but my ‘Coo-ee’ went out of my lungs strong to pierce to him as he strode away from me. ‘Coo-ee!’ So faint now, it might be only my own call flung back from the thick air and muffling snow. I put my hands up to my mouth to make a trumpet, but no sound came. Panic seized me, and I ran through the mist and the snow to the top of the hill, and stood there a moment dumbly, with straining eyes and ears. There was nothing but the mist and the snow and the silence of death.

Then with leaden feet which stumbled in a sudden darkness that overwhelmed me I groped my way back to the empty house.
I’ll give you a moment to recover… There we go.
But these three books are not the only ones I have bought. On Bank Holiday Monday my housemate Mel and I decided to visit Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds, because (a) it looked pretty, and (b) it has a funny name. Little did we know that they had a fete on…


Against my better judgement, I sidled up to the book stall… and saw (and grabbed) Susan and Joanna by Elizabeth Cambridge. She wrote the wonderful Persephone book Hostages to Fortune, and I’ve been trying to track down Susan and Joanna for a while (since a TLS review of it has featured in several of my essays) but can only find one copy for sale online, and it’s a fortune. Just one English pound to me – how could I say no?


But I won’t be buying any books for a month or two… honest, I won’t… will I?

Tara Books

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In one of those nice little coincidences, which make life that much more interesting, I got an email the other day from someone called Maegan, about Tara Books. They’re an Indian company specialising in visual art books (for adults and children) and create beautiful and interesting books. Which would be enough to make me excited – but the coincidence I mentioned is that Maegan is known to me as Migs, and we were friends at Oxford. I had no idea she was working for a publisher, or that she had left the country – so I was surprised and delighted in equal measures!

There was a small part of me thinking “Oh dear, what if I don’t like the books she’s representing?” but I needn’t have worried. These are beautiful books, and would make brilliant presents. Let’s look first at Tsunami which is a ‘Patua’.


According to the back, Patua is a ‘form of narrative graphic art, comprising a series of panels, stitched together to form a scroll. It belongs to a performance tradition of Bengal when song-writer and artist went from home to home, showing pictures and singing out their stories.’


Tsunami is the first Patua scroll to be published in book form, and unbelievably this is silkscreen printed by hand. Tara Books have a printing unit run by fair-trade standards. This is such a stunning book – playing with the boundaries of the book, perhaps – and would make a wonderful gift.


And then there is In the Land of Punctuation by Christian Morgenstern, illustrated by Rathna Ramanathan and translated from the German by Sirish Rao. It could have been made specifically for me. It’s a 1905 poem which combines a fun, whimsical story about punctuation with political undertones about segregation… didn’t think that could be done, did you? What makes this version so special are the illustrations, all of which are composed of punctuation marks.

And then the captured creatures freezeImprisoned by parentheses

Tara Books also publish novels, and I have The To-Let House by Daisy Hasan to try later, but I wanted to draw attention to these artistic books. Any grammar-stickler you know would love In the Land of Punctuation, and anybody who appreciates Indian art would adore Tsunami. Go and see Tara Books’ website for more info – I hope we hear a lot more about this company, they seem really special. And I’m not just saying that because Migs knows where I live!