Micro Review 5

One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake

Despite having over flowing bookshelves and a Kindle full of unread books I still found myself with nothing to read a few weeks ago and so started to browse the Library ebook shelves again. I think that the impossibility of travel and the boredom that is meal planning drew me to this book.

Cloake sets off by bike to spend a few weeks cycling around France trying the various local specialties of the regions and also trying to find the best croissant in France.

I don't hugely enjoy cycling, and there are certain foods even I'd never try (andouille sausage I'm looking at you here) but Cloake's enthusiasm is infectious and I now have a list of places as long as my arm that I'd like to visit.

I also liked that often Cloake gets fed up with the weather, camping and cycling and so checks into hotels and uses trains to get from place to place. This made 90% of her trip sound fun rather than a punishment. For me this was ideal lockdown escapism and encouraged me to open some of my recipe books and try some new dishes.

Books of the Year 2019

My top rated books of 2019.

After the shocking discovery yesterday of just how many books I've read in the past decade it is time to look more closely at the list from 2019 and pick my top reads from this smaller set.

It was an interesting book year, I am by no means back to where I was for reading stamina and plot retention and so to be honest looking over the past 12 months worth of books I was very thankful for the one line synopsis I do write for each one as an aide memoir.

The books on these two lists (fiction and non-fiction) needed no prompts for me to remember how much I enjoyed them!

Fiction (in no particular order)

• If I Could Tell You by Hannah Beckerman
• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
• Those Who are Loved by Victoria Hislop
• Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain(trans. Jane Aitkin)
• Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
• Umbrella Mouse by Anna Fargher
• A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
• The Flat Share by Beth O'Leary
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (trans. Geoffrey Trousselot)
• After the End by Clare Mackintosh

Nonfiction (in no particular order)

• The Eastern Most House by Juliet Blaxland
• Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es
• Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig

Somewhat unusually for me I think that the majority of the these books were published (in English at least) during 2019. I know that I read a lot of them through Net Galley or thanks to projects with the Reading Agency or of not that they came from the library.

I read a lot of nature writing books/memoirs in 2019 but it was the Easternmost House that has remained lodged the strongest in my memory - not least for the sad, newsworthy end it had in real life. 

A friend challenged me last night to whittle this list down to just my top books but even though I gave her three titles (kidlit/fiction/non fiction) under 24 hours ago this has already changed and in all honesty I don't think that I can get it any lower than these 15 titles.

Here's to another year/decade of reading pleasure!

Writing Britain: The Broads Effect

Writing Britain: The Broads Effect, Norwich, February 2013.

This is going to be a terribly indulgent blog post as yesterday was the official launch for a project that I've been involved with for two and a half years and I am feeling tired, proud and just a little emotional.

I moved to Norwich in September 1998 to come to uni here, UEA was my first choice of place to study and not only for the course choice.  I'd had two holidays to Norfolk in the past - one family trip involving a day on the Broads and then a school holiday where brave teachers took 6 boat loads of teenagers on a week long boating holiday! The county weaves a spell over you and I feel like Marmite you either love it or loathe it.

Unlike Marmite I love my adopted county.

In the summer of 2012 the British Library held an exhibition celebrating the links between the landscape and the literature of the British Isles.  Thanks to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation partner libraries around the country were picked to host their own smaller scale exhibitions and projects.

Norfolk is a county of many landscapes: we have The Fens, The North Norfolk Coastline, the Brecks, Thetford Forest and of course the Broads.  It was the latter that we decided to focus on as they are unique to Norfolk (and Suffolk).

Even the Broads have a wide literary heritage and at first, with my bias for children's literature, I instantly thought of both Arthur Ransome and Anna Sewell as authors to pick.  When we thought more however we decided to take a different tack and showcase some very famous people but whose links to Norfolk may be less well known...

We decided on John Betjeman (who unlike me didn't have happy childhood holidays in Norfolk) and Harold Pinter (a man who refused to consider faking Norfolk when it came to filming The Go-Between).

As well as borrowing items from the British Library and holding an exhibition we also ran a project with a group of young people. They were taken on trips around the county, into our collections, to London and to art galleries and then they all came up with new pieces of literature based on their responses to Norfolk's landscape and history.

My colleague Charlotte took on this role in the project leaving me free to learn how to curate an exhibition.

This experience has been - in the words of many talent shows - a real journey.  And a test of patience. However in the past 10 days it has all come together wonderfully and last night at the launch I was very pleased with the results.

We had new museum grade exhibition cases made as part of the project and their arrival really did mark the start of the final preparations. They arrived a week before the loan items from the BL and so we filled them with treasures from our collection - including a holiday scrap book from the 1890s:

Then on Thursday 7th February a curator from the BL arrived with a secure briefcase filled with the manuscripts we were borrowing:

Before the items arrived the stress levels had been growing but once we saw the items being unpacked all of that melted away and it felt a little like Christmas.  In this folder there were hand written notes by Harold Pinter on how he envisioned scenes from the Go-Between film as well as some annotated, typewritten script pages:

When the curator unwrapped the bound book of Betjeman correspondence, including a draft of the poem 'Norfolk'. John Betjeman wrote this poem after the death of his father and in it he is remembering the holidays they took together:

Friday was a calmer daytime but in the evening Charlotte and I had to install the exhibition, in quite a tight window as it all had to be done between 8pm and midnight.  To ease things we installed the library part first:

After a quick supper we moved out in to the Atrium of The Forum which is hosting the main part of the exhibition, as well as the results of our photography competition and some of the work created by the young people during their adventures:

the space we had to fill

working out what goes where!

just after 11pm - hanging the last panel.

After a calm weekend, including seeing The Go-Between on the big screen, thanks to a local cinema who'd got involved in the project, Monday 11th rolled round and it was launch day.

We started with a talk from one of the British Library curators. Tanya talked us through the London exhibition and how they picked the themes and items for this and then let us into a few secrets from the Library - some of which reassured us after our experiences!

Then last night was the 'gala' launch.  

The eight young people from the creative writing project were the star turn and after a little socialising and some welcoming words they all got up in front of about 100 people and read their own works. There were poems, stories and ghostly tales from some incredibly talented young people and all of us who've worked with this team were so proud.

The 8 have also documented their project and presented the library with a new scrap book to add to our collection. Who knows perhaps in 100 years time this will inspire a new project and inspire a new generations?

The winners of our photographic competition were also recognised last night as two of he judges presented them with their prizes. 

The evening finished with people having the chance to look around the exhibition and to talk to all involved in the project.

We have a week of events to run surrounding the exhibition all of which are just as exciting but documenting the project after such a great day yesterday seems important.

We have so many people to thank for the project that should I list them here I'd be in danger of sounding like a gushing actress at the OSCARs but I do have to thank my dad who did all of the design for our exhibition boards, invitations and fliers. I think you'll agree he did a great job:

I've learnt a lot about the heritage and influence of Norfolk's unique landscape over the last few months, discovered a lot of new authors that I'd probably never have read and also discovered a love of John Betjeman's poems.  

For me I think that the Broads will continue to inspire me as a photographer mostly but I now have a list of new authors as long as my arm to try and many items from our own heritage collection that I'd love to look at in more detail.

Time to celebrate

6 Years in a row!

Whilst the headline in this news article is very depressing the fifth paragraph has made me and a lot of other people happy today.

For the sixth year in succession the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library has retained the status of busiest library in the country.

In fact we have retained the double crown - we issue the most books of any library in the country and we have the most visitors through our doors.

We know we can't rest on our laurels - there are lots of other fantastic libraries out there all of whom would love to take our crown but thanks to the support of our customers, a County Council that sees the benefits of a world class library and all of the guests we've hosted we can add this celebration to Christmas 2012.

I am well underway with event planning for 2013, January looks exciting and then in February we are working with the British Library and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to bring their Writing Britain exhibition to the city.  The British Library are loaning us some items and we have a full week of events planned to celebrate this.  More details will be coming early in the New Year but it you are on Twitter please do follow the project to keep fully up-to-date with our plans.

Courting controversy

Forgotten gems?

One of the things I love about my job is the variety of events that I can plan and hold. Recently we've held two connected talks about books rather than given by specific authors.

The first, at the start of May, was held in conjunction with UEA and Persephone Books. It was all about forgotten authors and forgotten books and how a book that was a bestseller in it's day can so quickly be forgotten. And then how it can be rediscovered and republished thanks to the multitude of specialist publishers, especially Persephone,  that now exist.

There was lots of talk and discussion around this topic from the audience and, not least in the semantics of calling a book forgotten. Most of the books picked by Persephone are 'gentle' in tone and whilst I love the books I can sometimes see that without a 'champion' they might never be rediscovered, and possibly may deserve to stay in obscurity.

The second event was held at the start of June, again in conjunction with UEA, and this one was the total antithesis to the first event. We spent the evening discussing Norman Mailer and Henry Miller, trying to decide if it was just their subject matter that kept them in the public eye and that without the shock factor would they too have become obscure authors rather than much studied, modern classics.

No area of these authors books or lives was shied away from and the discussion was full, frank and fascinating.  Personally I came away with the feeling that without the shock factor these authors would perhaps not have become so feted and also that I'd have hated to have been trapped in a lift with either of them!

We are hoping to continue this idea of talks about less well known areas of literature and also hope to start a 'forgotten gems' book group in the autumn.  Usually the words 'classic' and 'must read' send me running for the hills but now I'm not so sure...

Pipped at the post

 Sadly the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library didn't win the Library of the Year award on Monday night.  We've shrugged off the disappointment and have started working on projects that will hopefully mean that 2013 is our year.

It was a shame we couldn't have added this award to Norwich as it would have been the icing on the literary cake as last Thursday it was announce that Norwich had become the first English UNESCO City of Literature.

We did lose to another City of Literature, Edinburgh, so there is no shame in it!

Trumpet Blowing

I always knew I worked somewhere very special but we are all very proud and excited at the Millennium Library because we've made the short list for the Library of the Year award at the Bookseller Industry Awards.

We are up against some really strong competition but to be named one of the top 5 libraries in the country is something special.

We find out if we are the winner on Monday 14th May and I think I'll be keeping everything crossed between now and then.

In addition to our wonderful news, the children's book department at Jarrolds here in Norwich has also been nominated for an award - Independent Children's Bookseller of the Year. Just goes to show how great Norwich is!

Less regular than usual

While I know that I am not the most prolific and regular of bloggers I have a feeling that service may get even more sporadic over the next 2 months.

But I do have a good reason as I am heavily involved in the planning and running of the first Norwich Crime Festival, as well as being in charge of creating the online content.

Crime isn't a genre I generally read a lot of but I am quickly learning that I might have dismissed it too quickly. I'm never going to be a fan of the gritty, violent books. Or those based on pathology but thrillers and historical crime is certainly growing on me.

Anyhow the Norwich Crime Festival runs from March 21st through until March 31st and all of the details can be found here on the official website.

Busy Week

Double Celebrations

This week was one of the best I've had at work for a while. The Forum (pictured, and where the library is situated) turned 10 this week.

In 1994 a catastrophic fire destroyed Norwich City Library, lots of books and historical documents. The BBC has a great piece here about the fire.


Out of the ashes came the wonderful building we now have, this opened to the public in November 2001 and was officially opened in June 2002 by the Queen. I can't believe that it has been ten years time does fly.

We've had lots of activities planned to celebrate the birthday - story time sessions with Maisy Mouse making a guest appearance, a quiz, author event, a huge 'create the birthday bunting' competition and of course a birthday party complete with cake:


What made the day even more special was the release of this story by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy stating that for the 5th year running the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library is the busiest in the country.

Wow - for half of the library's current incarnation we have been the busiest in the country.

In fact the statistics get better for not only is the city the busiest library but Norfolk is also the busiest Shire County when it comes to Library use.

We are very proud - there are lots of jokes about Norfolk, few of them flattering, but we are obviously doing something right in this time where there only seems to be bad press for libraries.

Now comes the hard work - keeping the standards this high for the next 10 years!

Incredibly Cross

I think that regular readers to this blog know that I work in a library.

In fact I work in (currently) the busiest library in the country - in the last year that we have figures for 1,502 449 people came through our doors.
Every morning there are people waiting outside the doors to come in.

These are people from all walks of life, some come in for advice, others for books, some to use the computers and others for the regular training or story sessions that we run. The one thing I know is that we are busy from the moment we open at 9am until the minute we shut the doors at 8pm.

I'm lucky, I work for a council that sees the value of libraries - unlike many areas around the country.

Just this week the author Nicholas Rankin gave a talk here in Norwich, he started it by saying that he'd spent nights this week camping outside his local library to stop it being shut. There is currently a legal challenge in progress trying to save his library - Kensal Rise - which was ironically closed 111 years to the day since it was opened by Mark Twain.
It isn't just authors and celebrities that are trying to save local libraries whole families are standing vigil trying to save these precious resources.

Just today figures were released showing just how many children joined the Summer Reading Challenge in 2011. This is an annual game that is run through libraries during the summer holidays. Children are encouraged to read six books during the holiday and are rewarded throughout and then on completing the challenge come to special ceremonies where they receive a certificate and medal. This challenge has been proven to help participants with their school work in many ways.

Libraries are important for so many reasons - personal and national - which is why articles like this one in the Telegraph make me so angry. Happily it seems that most people agree with me and not the author and the Twitter and Blogosphere are full of examples showing just how wrong this article is.

However our libraries are under threat so please if you are reading this and you don't usually visit a library please find your local branch and borrow a book or two. They might be there at the moment but once they are closed I can't see that they will be reopened and we need libraries.

For more information about campaigns to save libraries please have a look at Voices for the Library or The Bookseller's Campaign. For up-to-date information on library closures Public Library News is place to look.

Currently 428 libraries are under threat of closure in the UK - sign the petition to save libraries.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it - attributed to Voltaire.

Banned Book Week 2010

I've been working on a big project for work just recently. The last week in September is the ALA's Banned Book Week and this year Norfolk Libraries are taking part.

The library where I work is planning a discussion evening and to prepare I am reading lots of books that have been banned as well as lots of reference books about censorship.

It is a really interesting project to work on and my eyes have been opened to a lot of things - including just how much censorship has taken place in this country in the not too distant past.

I don't know if I am too liberal but so far while I haven't liked some of the books we've read there is nothing I'd want to ban or restrict. Just because I don't like something, or find something uncomfortable to read it doesn't mean that I don't think anyone else should read it, it just means that it wasn't my cup of tea.

I'm not even sure where I stand on books like The Satanic Verses. OK I don't think that people should go out of their way to insult other races/creeds/religions etc but at the same time if you know you are going to be offended you don't have to read it and for most views it is possible to find another book proposing the other side of the story...

This whole project is stirring up a lot of thoughts and emotions in me, and one of the things that it has really done is to make me want to study seriously again.

If anyone is interested the discussion evening is going to be on Tuesday 5th October at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library. We will spend a little time talking about the ALA, Banned Books Week, Censorship in the UK and Norfolk and how we buy books for the Norfolk Library Service and then we shall move on to discussing ten books that have been banned or challenged around the world.

The ten books are:

Alice in Wonderland
James and the Giant Peach
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Tropic of Cancer
Fahrenheit 451
Beloved
To Kill a Mockingbird
Not Without My Daughter
Nineteen Minutes
The Da Vinci Code

Lost in Translation

One of the projects that I started through work was an International Literature Group.

Over the past 5 months a small group of us have attended monthly meetings where a lecturer from UEA has come along and taught us all about translating. Rather than all reading a set book we've all then been reading any book that has been translated into English and thinking about it using the guidelines given in the session. It has been great fun and I've really read my way around Europe this winter and spring. It has also been nice to think in more depth about what I'm reading, rather than just reading for pleasure. I miss studying sometimes.

May's challenge was a little different, our group was shadowing the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. We'd been sent 4 of the six books to read, talk about and then review.

None of the four books was an easy read, and we had only limited time to read the four titles. I managed to get through 3 of them:

Philippe Claudel's Brodeck's Report (translated from the French by John Cullen.)
This was my favourite of the 3 read. On the face of it this was a simple book about a very rural village trying to put itself back together after WW2 and a dramatic event. The more you read however the deeper the story went and it really was like an onion - each layer was good but taken as a whole it was fantastic.
The themes covered were not easy and despite the apparent simplicity this was a book that had to be read slowly so that none of the detail was missed.

Julia Franck's The Blind Side of the Heart (translated from the German by Anthea Bell)
On the face of it this was the most appealing book, from a retail view point it looked like the most commercial too. Sadly it didn't live up to the cover.
The story starts with a most dramatic event - a mother abandons her child on a railway platform in what will become Russian East Germany, and then we go back into the mother's past to find out how she could do such a thing.
The problem with this one was that none of the characters captured me, it was obvious from the subject matter that none of them were nice, but they all remained flat on the paper and never came to life. The writing was also dull and the story stagnant. This could have been so good, and I was disappointed as it had won many prizes in Germany.

Alain Mabanckou's Broken Glass (translated from the French by Helen Stevenson)
This one was really not my cup of tea at all and even though I persevered for about 100 pages I'm still not sure what it was about.
The translation of this one really impressed me for not once in the text is there a full stop. To have the skill to translate a story with only commas for punctuation and keep it readable is a huge talent I feel.

I also had a copy of Rafik Schami's The Dark Side of Love (translated from the German by Anthea Bell) but although I do want to read this one it is a massive 853 pages long and I just ran out of time to read it before the prize was announced.

The prize was announced at a ceremony on Thursday, sadly our shadowing group wasn't picked as one to go to this party, and the winner was...

Brodeck's Report

The next time our group meets, in June, we are going to discuss this one further and with our 'critical translation' hats on, rather than our 'should this win a prize' hats!

Thanks go to the Reading Agency for the chance to participate in this project.

Piles of books and some disappointments

I've had lots of books reserved at the library and typically it seems that all of them have become available at once.

Luckily the housework is pretty much up-to-date (don't faint mum!) and the weather is nice enough that I can spend my days off in the garden reading.

We've recently discovered the Lake Woebegone podcast and have had great fun listening to these, so I decided to try some of the books. As luck would have it there is a new one just out, Pilgrims. This one is set in Rome, a city I have visited so I thought I'd really enjoy it. Being a new book there was a bit of a wait on this title so while I was waiting I read Pontoon.

This was a book that made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I wouldn't say that it was a great book but it was a pleasant interlude and really made me want to read Pilgrims. Sadly it didn't live up to my hopes, I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it as soon as I realised the author had written himself into the book and as a serious character not a cameo. The plot was a farce too far for my taste too. The Telegraph reviewed the book a couple of months ago and this is a pretty good summary of the book although I enjoyed it less than the reviewer I feel!

I shall have to listen to a few more podcast episodes to rid myself of the after-taste left by the book. There is the saying "he has a face for radio" personally I think that Garrison Keillor has plots that are best suited to the radio.

Now back to that stack of new books. How can I chose which to read first - the new book by a local author, the new travel biog, something topical like Eating Animals or a nice comforting old favourite....

Books, Blogs, Bookshops and Libraries

Reading Matters

I love the internet, I love the worlds it has opened to me - especially when it comes to finding new things to read.

There are some great review sites (personal and media) out there and my horizons have really expanded over the past few years.

When I worked in the bookshop this was expensively dangerous as I'd read about another new book that I'd want to read and find myself plucking it off the shelf (or ordering it in) and buying it straight away. Quite a lot of the time I didn't enjoy the book as much as I'd hoped.

For a while I didn't think about the library for these brand new books, to my shame I didn't realise just how many new books are available on publication in Norfolk's libraries. (I know better now I work for them!)*

Probably 90% of books reviewed that are produced by British publishers are available as soon as they are published, it is saving me a fortune. It doesn't matter if the review turns out to be better than the actual book - I haven't spent any money on it.

I'd like to say that I don't spend as much money on books now but it isn't quite true.
I now spend my money on books from America/Canada/Australia as well as building my antiquarian collection but I am buying less books. In fact Mr Norfolkbookworm has purchased far more books than me this year (probably by a 2:1 ratio so far) but he might not actually own up to this so I'll whisper it!

Perhaps I should now stop reading so many blogs and reviews and start reading the books they talk about. Then write about them.

Now where did I put my library card...



* I should add that this blog isn't sponsored by the library and it is just my thoughts not propaganda or advertising. Just happiness that I can get my hands on so many books and save some money for my other love - travel!