July Round Up

 

Another month gone and we're well over half way through 2026 which doesn't seem possible.

July was a mixed month for reading - the end of our holiday and the post holiday slump hit hard, not helped by the heat and a selection of books for a project that I really struggled with.

Highlights were definitely the days I could get out and about with the camera, especially the day my nephew (Kentishbookboy for long term readers) and I had in London. He is about to start photography A level and had a summer project to work on, so we spent the morning in various buildings and locations around the city looking and light, shape, and form before heading to the beautifully airconditioned National Theatre to see War Horse. When the show was last on stage KBB was too young to see it so I was really pleased to see it back on in London, and on the stage it was initially written for. We were both blown away by it and hopefully this won't be the last day we have in London before he is too grown up to want a day out with his aunt...

Bookwise I got through a fair number of books and visited Greece, Japan, Finland, France (twice), Italy, Saudi Arabia, and Slovakia - the ones that were new to me being Slovakia and Saudi Arabia, I also got to tick off Idaho and Quebec as new States/Provinces.

Our Reading Around the World group met on Bastille Day to (appropriately) look at books in/from France. The choices and discussion was great, not least because several of us picked books by the same author - although all different titles - so we could look at how the writing styles change, common themes, and suggestions of other titles to try if the initial one didn't hit the mark!

I'll be missing the next session and my friend/sometime book group attendee is leading it - they'll be looking at Scottish books and the joke is that A chose this because she doesn't have a passport!

My top reads of the month were Victoria Hislop's The Wine-Dark Sea (not out until Sept so review/thoughts then), Louise Penny's Miss Wolcott's Ghost, and Annie Ernaux's A Man's Place. No real stinkers (that I can talk about) but a very average selection on the whole.

My Read the World Map as of end of July - it doesn't look hugely different as many of the books have been from smaller countries!

March Round Up

 

March seems to have passed in a flash this year but it was another good reading month - this time helped by two days of travel and also being trapped in Iceland for an extra day thanks to a late winter storm shutting everything down!

Before it all got complicated and we had to try to rebook flights and hotels etc we'd had a lovely time in Iceland - we saw the Northern Lights, tried the food (including the infamous fermented shark!), got to see the most amazing scenery on a sunny day, and also spent hours lounging in the Blue Lagoon!

I did also find the theatre and a couple of bookshops so all was well in the world 😉. I am even more at a loss to explain the proliferation of dark crime novels set in Iceland. One of our tour guides talked about the incredibly low crime rate on the island and also said that the total prison population is only around 80. Sadly it is the case that the majority of prisoners are foreigners, and the guide postulated that this was because Iceland is so small that every local knows everyone else making crime hard to get away with!

Before we went away it was the third Reading Around the World book group meeting where we talked all things Japanese. There was very little duplication in titles read this time although books by Murakami did crop up a few times. For April we're reading from North Africa...

In my own project I read books from China, the Australian state of Victoria, Oregon, Malaysia, Morocco, Mongolia, Japan, Venice, Mali, South Korea, Albania, Denmark, and Taiwan. Only those in italics  were new locations to me and my map of the world doesn't look too different this month. 

My top reads of the month were the International Booker shortlisted Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (translated by Lin King) along with Cecile Pin's second novel Celestial Lights.

I didn't read a lot of non fiction this month and while Alan Bennett's new volume of diaries started well by the end the title, Enough Said, felt very apt. 

Non Fiction November

 

A monthly challenge that I can get behind!

I keep setting myself laudable reading goals/challenges and then failing miserably to keep to them but Nonfiction November is right up my reading alley!

It is supposed to be a month where you try something nonfiction if it isn't a genre you often read but for me it is an excuse to think about the non fiction books I've read all year, as well as the ones from November.

Keeping detailed reading journals through various apps (I'm paranoid that one might vanish and I'll lose all the data)* I can see that so far this year 42% of the books I've read have been nonfiction and so I really don't need a dedicated month to appreciate the genre so I looked a bit deeper in to the types of book I go for...

The majority are biographies or autobiographies, and within those nature and travel writing make up a large proportion, and following this come the books about books, but like most of my reading its really hard to pin down what is 'my type' of book as I'll try most things, except true crime!

In November standout non fiction so far has been:

What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts) by Stanley Tucci - this was a wonderfully gossipy diary from Tucci, heavily focussed on food, drink and travel so just my thing. There were a fair number of recipes dotted through it too and I made note of several of them!

A Cheesemonger's Tour de France by Ned Palmer - I've often said that my 'last supper' would be really good quality French bread, butter and cheese and this book really helped me create the cheese board aspect of the meal. I also liked the pairing suggestions of what to drink with the cheese, and which areas of France I should add to my travel list so I can try the food in the setting it was made for. 

Sapiens: A Graphic History Volume 1 which is adapted from Yuval Noah Harari's book and illustrated by Daniel Casanave and David Vandermeulen. I'd tried Sapiens before and got a bit bogged down in it but this way of story telling really broke the big ideas down. I think Mr Norfolkbookworm got bored of just how often I was bringing up things I'd learned from it - however it did give us lots to talk about while we were our walking... I'm looking forward to reading the next two parts immensely.

There's still a third of the month left so I am sure I'll read more non fiction in November but it is good to stop and thinking about what I'm reading - it will help when it comes to writing those best of the year posts in a few weeks!

*this did happen to one app I really liked and while I have a paper reading journal too I've not always marked books by genre and so looking back at them I'm sometimes not sure what books were about!

Time Flies

 

I really didn't mean for two months to go by without a blog post, this time my excuse is a travel adventure and then reading books in a very advance stage so that I can't talk about them yet!

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I had a wonderful time in Texas at the beginning of April when we went to see the total eclipse. Sadly the cloud rolled in with seconds to go and while we didn't get those fabulous views of totality we did experience the pitch darkness in the middle of the day *and* we were based on a vineyard in the heart of Texan Hill Country and got to try some of their wines while surrounded by swallowtail butterflies.

Since we got back I've been reading for a couple of projects and as these books aren't published for a while I can't really talk about them, however there are four that I really think every one should add to their readings lists:

• The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable (15th August)
• The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier (12th September)
• Berlin Duet by S W Perry (1st August)
• Broken Threads by Mishal Husain (6th June)

The first three are historical fiction, and the first two are set in Venice, and the final one is a biography of Husain's family and a tale of India pre/post partition.

All of them were brilliant reads and stand a good chance of being on my 'best of the year' lists in December.

Now I'm caught up with these I can concentrate on my library reservations and a few of the books I've bought recently so hopefully there will be some more reviews coming soon. But please don't hold your breath - there's so much to read that I forget to blog!

Book shadows

 

How Should One Read a Book by Virginia Woolf (and also Windsong Summer by Patricia Cecil Hass)

I wrote recently about how I was rediscovering old favourite books recently and it was a weird feeling when I read Sheila Heti's introduction to Woolf's essay around the same time.

Heti is talking about the 'shadow-shape' of books that we read and the lines that stood out were:

"A book is a watery sculpture that lives on in the mind once the reading is done. When I think back on the books I have loved, I rarely remember the names of characters, the plot, or most of the scenes. It is not even the tone or mood I remember, but some residue remains - and that unlikely word is appropriate here - of unique shape.

Sometimes the shape of an entire book will be compacted into the memory of a single scene: something simple - a room that was conjured in the mind, in which two characters sat, speaking." (p7)

Heti and then Woolf go on to talk about how to read and evaluate books but it was this initial sentiment that struck and then stayed with me.

Windsong Summer was another book I remember buying from the school book sale. Even though 30+ years have gone since I last read the book it definitely left a shadow shape with me. I remembered that it was set in the summer in a tropical location, that boats were involved and that there was a hurricane but very little else. Except that at some point in the book they eat chowder...

I had no idea what chowder was as a child but I know that as soon as I saw it on the menu on a trip to San Francisco a few years ago I had to try it and that it instantly took me back to this book. 

That feeling passed but earlier this year (before lockdowns and travel bans) Mr Norfolkbookworm and I were in the Florida Keys I instantly started thinking about this book again...the seas were the colour I imagined as a child and we even saw some yachts that had been damaged in past hurricanes.

I have now read the book, and I quite enjoyed it. Again it was an experience where I felt like I was reading a new book and at the same time reading a book I knew word for word... as an adult I can see more flaws in the book and I can see why it hasn't made it as a modern classic but I'm not going to focus on them as right now we all need nice things and I am going to take myself back to a world of clear blue seas, warm weather and summer adventures!

Many thanks to Net Galley for the advance copy of How One Should Read a Book.

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.

Micro Review 2

Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem

Since the whole Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak started the one thing I have discovered about myself is that water and water landscapes are very important to me. The three months of serious lockdown became the longest time I have ever not seen the sea, and I think that I would have gone stark staring mad if we hadn't found some riverside walks close to home.

Similarly a visit to London that doesn't include sight of the Thames also feels wrong to me and I can only image Maiklem's relief at being allowed back on the foreshore again.

This book is split in to sections, generally divided by the bridges and Maiklem talks if her finds and the history of each area specific to the river bank. For a mudlarker there are certain things that are 'holy grail-like' it seems as well as each person having their own special treasures, patches and stories to tell.

At a time that you can't travel this is a wonderful read, and it makes me want to comb the banks of the Thames at low tide next time I am on the Southbank with some time to kill.

When we were younger my sister and I did a little mudlarking of our own when visiting our aunt and uncle who lived by the coast in an area that was once a brickworks. The foreshore there was full of curiosities, pieces of china and glass and when the tide (and mud) were right we would comb the area looking for bottles and the like. This book brought back those happy memories too and so another reason why I see this one ending up in my top reads of the year in a few months time.

As I was writing this post a Tweet scrolled by saying that Mudlarking has won the non-fiction Indie Book Award 2020 a fact that has made me very happy!

August Reading Round Up

August saw me reading fewer books that in recent months but this was a for a great reason - Mr Norfolkbookworm and I have been on an American road trip.

We've visited Seattle, taken an overnight Amtrak train and then spent nearly 2 weeks in National Parks (Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Tetons) with the culmination of the trip being the 2017 Solar Eclipse.

The whole trip was amazing - we did visit bookstores and I did find a theatre! The highlights however have to be the scenery, the wildlife and of course the eclipse. I can't pick a 'top' thing from our experiences and you can find my photos (edited - we took 5000+ between us!) on my Flickr pages.

Thanks to the long flights and also to the unhurried itinerary I did still read 19 books in August. It wasn't a stellar month for books but there were a few standouts...

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar - this was sent to me for review and I loved it so much I'm part of the blog tour later in September.

Logical Family by Armistead Maupin - I've loved Maupin's books for years and the chance to read his autobiography in proof form was a great way to get over the holiday blues.  It is very frank and won't be for all but I enjoyed it a lot and was moved and amused by it.

Whitstable Hightide Swimming Club by Katie May - this was another book provided by the publisher for review and again it just hit the spot. My review will be out as part of a blog tour in September.

There were no duds in the month, and a couple of re-reads but most of the books have faded into the background because of our trip!

Happy Birthday Yosemite

Exactly 150 years ago today (June 30th 1864) President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill creating the Yosemite Grant. This was the first instance of American land being set aside for recreation and protection and paved the way for the creation of the first National Park (Yellowstone) in 1872.

I was lucky enough to visit Yosemite earlier in the month and I am so glad that even during the American Civil War protection of the wilds was considered important.

Visiting Yosemite was like visiting a old friend as a lot of the scenery was familiar to me thanks to the work of my favourite photographer Ansel Adams and the highlight for me was the chance to visit the Ansel Adams Studio and also to take a guided photography walk run by the gallery.

It wasn't a particularly long walk but we went to some of the iconic destinations and I learned a lot about how to use my camera better, how to compose shots and also how to convert picture to black and white.  I am very happy with a lot of the images I took and I can see an improvement in my photos already.

On our trip we also visited many other amazing places and saw some of the most incredible things ever - if you want to be bored by my holiday snaps then they are all visible on Flickr. Of course travel like this does mean no time for theatre and apart from the loooooong flights not too much time for reading, however when you see a bear while out for a walk other past times are forgotten!