Vintage Classics Day

     On Saturday I attended my second event of the Vintage Book's 21st birthday celebrations (the first being the Vintage Open Day; read my account here), the Vintage Classics Day, at Foyles on Charing Cross Rd. It was a star-studded event that sold out days in advance and served very well to illustrate the beauty and depth of the Vintage backlist and our own literary heritage, the idea being that we were ‘celebrating classics with the writers who will be the classics of the future’. These writers were, namely, Sebastian Faulks, Lionel Shriver, Mark Haddon, Sadie Jones, Jake Arnott and Rose Tremain.







Book Quote Friday: Kew Gardens

     Today's post comes from a short story that entered my life long ago, but recently re-entered it thanks to the swag obtained from the Vintage Open Day: ‘Kew Gardens’ by Virginia Woolf. It is an ecstatic account of a sunny afternoon spent amongst the flowers, which sings with lyricism, colour and life. It is stunning, as hopefully the quote below, the first paragraph of the story, will demonstrate:







7 People I'd Like To Be [Friends With] When I Grow Up

Everyone needs role models. Here are mine:







A Royal Wedding Tribute

My friend's Mum provided all this
beautiful china... I didn't make all this :)

    So, the royal wedding day is upon us. I am beyond excited as I love a good wedding and there's going to be some awesome tea party action in my neighbours front room as we all swoon over the pomp and circumstance and Kate's sure-to-be-beautiful dress. Rare is the occasion when I find myself in a tea dress and hat in my local Co-op at 9am on a bank holiday, desperately clutching whipping cream and lemon barley squash, as I was this morning :) It's a lovely occasion I think; poo poo to the nay-sayers who need to lighten up a bit and have a bit of cake.







Is this Machine Lying to Me?

     At the beginning of last month I read a very entertaining post by Helen Caldwell on her blog 'My Writing Life' about a piece of online software called 'I Write Like...' which tells you, based on a passage or two, which famous writer your work most resembles.

     She got Agatha Christie for prose, Chuck Palahniuk for blog posts and H.P. Lovecraft for interviews. I just did it too and got the following results:
 








Book Quote Friday: Searching for the Apolitical

     Whilst involved in the conversation about whether writing needs to be political to matter on this blog a few weeks ago, I tried to think of a novel that, rather than engaging with the politics of its era or setting, shunned any discussion of them, and was all the the richer for it. So often the personal struggles of characters are wider political commentary, and on occasion, if they is no political feeling in a novel, it can be unclear whether they were shunning involvement in it or whether there was just nothing going on at the time.

     A thought then came to me, a whisper of a memory of a review, which turned out to be this:







100 Things...

There is nothing for me to add to this. Just read it:

100 Things About a Novel by Koreanish.

It's perfect and ethereal and lovely. And true.