Category: Blog

Fun bookish stuff

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book-map

I was looking for a book recommendations tool online and found some excellent stuff. The Lovereading Google Maps Book Mash-up and the Mappit Global Book Map are both user-generated maps of book settings. The content varies widely but they’re both fun to explore and could be useful if you fancy recreating my recent attempts to list authors from my home town and region.

However, what I was really looking for was a place to type in the names of authors I know a friend likes and get recommendations of similar authors. And that’s just what the Gnooks Map of Literature is. I have had a lot of fun playing with this. Again, it’s user-generated so there are some spelling errors (which you can fix if you see them) but the more people who contribute, the better the data that comes out of it, so do go have a look at the Suggestions tool to help build the Gnod database.

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My literary heritage: Forest of Dean

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Mr blue sky

Last week I blogged about authors from my home town of Coleford. But when people ask where I’m from I don’t say Coleford, I say the wider district of the Forest of Dean. Yes, that’s partly because they’re more likely to have heard of it, but not much more likely. I identify with the lakes and woodland of the Forest more than being from a small town. Living in a city now, I miss trees; I don’t miss those same old four pubs and no shops being open after 5 pm. The Forest of Dean is truly beautiful and while it has an industrial past, these days the economy is mostly tourism and leisure, so I can see why writers might move there. Here are some Forest writers to add to the list from Coleford.

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My literary heritage: Coleford

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Inspired by Louise of Lone Star on a Lark I have been researching authors from my home town. I’ve looked before at books set in Bristol, but this is my adopted home, not where my roots are. So what about my original home of Coleford, Gloucestershire?

Men of Iron and Steel

Now, Coleford is a pretty small place, a country market town of 8000 people, and a good third of those have arrived during my lifetime, so you might not expect there to be many authors with links to it. But, partly thanks to a local literary culture cultivated by the (now sadly closed) Forest Bookshop, Coleford is a bit of a writers’ hotspot.

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January reading round-up

Correggio by Corrado Ricci, 1896.
Correggio by Corrado Ricci, 1896.

It’s been a pretty eclectic month, reading-wise. There’s been short stories, novels, poetry, work in translation, graphic-novel memoir and more non-fiction of very different kinds. Which I think is an excellent start for a new year.

I did break my book-buying rule very slightly last week, but as Tim bought me tickets to see author Matt Haig as a Christmas present it would have been rude not to buy the book! Haig was a great speaker – warm, funny, intelligent and honest – and I’ve added his older books to my wishlist. I’ve already read the book he was speaking about, Reasons to Stay Alive, and thought it completely brilliant. (Review will follow soon.) And I’ve been to bookshops no less than four times, so only buying one book for myself is frankly amazing, if I do say so myself.

In book-relatedness, I have watched the films of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (great, possibly better than the book, though equally hard to follow to begin with); Push (which is fun if ridiculous and has a comic-book mini-series prequel); and Limitless (pretty good despite the annoying premise and based on the book The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn).

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Sunday Salon: Quiet January?

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The Sunday SalonFor most people, January is pretty quiet. You might be drinking less so you maybe cut down on socialising, when the booze might get tempting. You might be eating more healthily after Christmas indulgence so you don’t go out for meals. The weather is nasty and the evenings long and dark, so walks and other outdoor activities are kept to a minimum. Which makes it a great time for catching up on reading books and watching films.

On the other hand, January is also traditionally time for a fresh start: a new exercise regime, a new project at work, an honest look at all those DIY projects that need finishing. Which isn’t so good for the ol’ leisure time.

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Sunday Salon: Getting the New Year going

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The Sunday SalonIt’s been mostly a good start to 2016 for me. I got through the first week back at work with not only no major mishaps but also no major stresses, which is nice. I’ve got another year older but don’t feel it, which is also good. I’ve just had a lovely weekend away with friends. The only negative is my apparent lack of attention span to any one book. It’s not that I’m not reading, I just seem to have picked a couple of giants to start the year with, and then I got disheartened that I wouldn’t finish a book for several weeks, so I started yet another book. I did finish that one, and I’ll try to review it this week as it has a certain timeliness factor.

I did gain a few books for my birthday, which is inevitable and I am not at all upset about it, but it’s probably for the best that it’s a much smaller pile than I got for Christmas!

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New Year TBR clearout

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New bookcase - ready and waiting.
New bookcase – ready and waiting.

Happy New Year! For 2016 I have set my Goodreads challenge to 80 books (I don’t really use it as a target so much as a counter to check against my spreadsheet. Last year I was somehow 6 books out, so I either read 85 books or 91. Or maybe a number inbetween!). I have already made a good start on my primary aim to reduce my TBR by giving it a good old clearout.

For my birthday my Dad bought me a set of shelves for the master bedroom, which gave me the perfect opportunity to collect my unread books from the spare room and give them a thorough sorting before re-shelving them in their new home.

I thought I would struggle to discard any of my books so I gave myself the rule that I would remove anything I’ve had for more than 10 years. I’m not sure if I quite stuck to that but I actually found it fairly easy to set aside no less than 35 books! These are mostly older classics, with a handful of freebies and other books I’ve tried once and decided not to give a second chance to.

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Another year, another stats post

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christmas-tree-2015Happy New Year’s Eve! I have about an hour before I go out for party party fun times (board games and chilli) to rattle through my annual stats. Well, I find them interesting, even if no-one else does!

In 2015 I read 91 books according to Goodreads, 85 according to my spreadsheet (I think I got a bit lax about recording comics at one point). Which means these stats aren’t quite accurate, but close enough. 37 books were by women and 5 were by a man and a woman, so that’s a pretty even split. 10 were works in translation and 16 were by authors from a country other than the US and UK. Only 8 were classics from my Classics Club list, so I have some catching up to do there.

I’ve just spent a lovely day buying and building a new bookcase with my Dad and his girlfriend, and loading it up with my TBR. I haven’t yet picked my first book of 2016, but I think I have weeded out enough of the old that I am excited by every single book waiting to be read, which is after all how it should be. I’ll post about my TBR cleanse in the new year, hopefully with added photos!

I hope you have a great New Year’s Eve and wish you all the best for 2016.

December reading round-up

Woman Reading by George Henry Boughton, c. 1900
Woman Reading by George Henry Boughton, c. 1900

This past week I seem to have started and abandoned at least four different books, which doesn’t look good for my Goodreads stats, but I have read a lot of other great stuff this month, including finally picking up a New Yorker summer fiction special that a friend loaned me more than a year ago. Yay for holidays!

The Christmas holiday has so far been more about watching films than reading books. I’ve watched Inside Out (brilliant), Kingsman: the Secret Service (fun but silly, better than the comic book), Admission (better than reviews suggested but not Tina Fey’s best work), Mermaids (I love anything with Christina Ricci), My Sister’s Keeper (not as good as the book) and Happy Christmas (Anna Kendrick is great in everything she does, even, or perhaps especially, odd indie films made for about ten pence) and I’m only halfway through my time off!

Tomorrow I’ll do a summary of the year (though I’ve already revealed my top five books) but for now here’s how my December went. Happy holidays!

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Sunday Salon: Merry Christmas!

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The Sunday SalonI hope you are all having wonderful Christmases/end-of-year breaks. It’s still unseasonably warm and our time with family was brief, but it’s been lovely. We had a big family party at my Grandad’s yesterday for the first time in years and it was just like the Boxing Days of my childhood – completely wonderful.

Did you get any good presents for Christmas? I got the usual mix of DVDs, CDs, chocolate and random awesomeness, such as a diary stuffed with tickets for awesome events throughout 2016 (Tim’s pretty great at gift-giving). And of course, as usual, I got lots of books. I love getting new books, always.

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