Advent calendar 15th December – the book I own more than one copy of

Posted on December 15, 2015 by vanessa

The Provincial Lady by EM DelafieldActually, there are several books that I own multiple copies of, but of all of them I love the Provincial Lady, the nameless semi-autobiographical Devon-based diarist created by EM Delafield in the 1930s, best.

The first novel about the life of this upper-middle class character was originally written as a serial for the magazine Time and Tide and was followed by three more novels: The Provincial Lady Goes Further, The Provincial Lady in America and The Provincial Lady in Wartime. I have this book in an dog-eared Virago omnibus of all four books, a gorgeous Folio Society edition and when I was in the Persephone shop last autumn I discovered that they had produced a gorgeous edition of the first book so I snapped that up too.

As I said in my post about the book I give as a present most often, Persephone’s book are perfect gifts and the Persephone Provincial Lady is a gift that can’t be bettered. Everyone I’ve ever introduced the Provincial Lady (we never learn her name, the books being written as first person diary entries) to has adored her and I re-read regularly when I feel in need of comfort and cheer. Sadly, only my fragile Virago has all four books in so I’m hoping that Persephone will bring out the others too.

If you haven’t discovered her do go and buy a copy – get the Persephone for the sheer tactile pleasure of their Munken paper and perfect grey dustwrapper – and make a new friend.

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Advent calendar 14th December – my literary guilty pleasure

Posted on December 14, 2015 by vanessa

Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet EvanovichI’m not entirely sure that I believe in guilty pleasures but sometimes you want to substitute the literary equivalent of the wholemeal scone and vegetable soup for something a little less penitential. Something that doesn’t require deep consideration and is pure entertainment.

For me, that’s where Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter heroine of Janet Evanovich’s best known series comes in. Every autumn there’s a new adventure and the latest Tricky Twenty-Two was a lot of fun when it arrived last week. Some of the books have been better than others but that’s the case with any long series and the movie-version of One For The Money was a hot mess that only a true fan could love, at the same time as being a hot mess that maddened true fans. I enjoyed it but was so disappointed, not least because I imagine it killed the possibility of a series of films.

So that’s my guilty pleasure. Okay, that and Jilly Cooper. But to be honest, a good book is a good book whether high-brow or more commercial and I don’t feel especially guilty about any of my reading matter. What about you?

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Advent calendar 13th December – What I’m reading now

Posted on December 13, 2015 by vanessa

Product Details imageJoanna Cannon and I have been Facebook and Twitter chums for a long time now and I have seen her writing go from insightful and moving blog posts written between shifts as a doctor in a hospital psychiatric unit to where she is now – poised on the verge of what I’m convinced is going to be a huge success when her first novel, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, is published in January.

I’m not going to say anything about the plot, but her 10 year old detectives, Grace and Tilly, are brilliantly drawn and I love the way that she creates characters – you can see that this is a writer who spends her life observing and picking up on cues that most would miss.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to add Joanna to my list of author interviews around publication, but even if I don’t, I’m sure I’ll be back to rave about this book again.

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Advent calendar 12th December – The book I always give as a gift

Posted on December 12, 2015 by vanessa

I’m cheating a little here because it isn’t so much one book that I tend to give as a gift but one of (currently) 115. Persephone Books have been republishing neglected books by mostly women writers since 1998, specialising in titles that are “neither too literary nor too commercial” and they have some gems on their list by writers such as Dorothy Whipple, DE Stevenson and Monica Dickens.

All of their books are paperbacks and come with dustwrappers of matching gentle grey belying the vibrancy of the endpapers, all taken from fabric archives and contemporary to the book. The matching bookmarks – tragically not included in the ones bought other than directly from Persephone – are the perfect finishing touch.

There’s always a perfect book and one of their more recent reissues – and which I won’t mention because I’ll come to it later in this advent calendar – is currently being given by me to absolutely everyone regardless of whether they already have it in a different edition or not.

The Persephone shop in Bloomsbury, just around the corner from the equally delightful Pentreath and Hall, is a delight – full of Persephone’s own books, a small, curated selection of other interesting books, wrapping paper based on some of the endpaper designs and a genial air of literary vagueness. I love it and trips there when I’m in London are as much a habit as Tate Britain and Liberty.

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Advent calendar 11th December – Favourite movie adaptation

Posted on December 11, 2015 by vanessa

Mr Darcy & Lizzie (Colin Firth & Jennifer Ehle)Sometimes, when a book makes the journey to the silver screen, it isn’t always the easiest of transitions. Subtleties can get lost, characters can go AWOL, and sometimes even major plotlines can simply disappear into thin air. And that’s before you even get to casting – we all know what certain characters look like, not just from the writer’s words but from our own imaginations.

I’m sure that one of the reasons that the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 1995 was the casting – Colin Firth was the perfect Mr Darcy, Jennifer Ehle was just as I imagined Elizabeth Bennet and even Mr Bingley, played by the delightfully caddish-looking Crispin Bonham Carter, was spot-on. And that’s before adding to the mix the excellent script by Andrew Davies and the gorgeous settings and costumes.

The whole thing looked perfect, sounded perfect and because it was a six-part (six hour) series, there was space and time for the story to breathe. There wasn’t the need to rush to a climax before the next ad-break, nor to spend a couple of minutes after each ad-break reminding people what they’d just seen, as though their ability to retain information was somehow compromised.

I have it stored on our Tivo box and I’ll probably have a Christmas binge on it at some point because I think it might be the perfect light but clever antidote to too much cheese and wine and too much forced bonhomie.

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