A Few Announcements

I have been a poor blogger of late, my friends, failing to make it around even my best blog buddies and owing several of you proper emails. It’s been very hectic here this past week as we not only have all the usual Christmas preparations to do, but we are heading off for a short holiday to Norfolk tomorrow, a kind of family break for us before we start the Christmas rounds, which has concertinaed all organization into an even smaller period of time than usual. It will be lovely when we get there, as they say. The reading room will be in abeyance until my return on Thursday next week.

I haven’t finalized the reading I’ll take with me. I have to confess to having bought the odd book, here and there of late from those tempting amazon marketplace sellers. I’ve recently received Javier Marías’s A Heart So White, which seems to have received universal acclaim and James Salter’s A Sport and A Pastime. Wanting to try Roberto Bolano, I ordered The Savage Detectives, which, when it came, turned out to be this huge chunky tome that I knew at once would never get read over the festive season. So this led me to pick up a copy of his short stories, Last Evenings on Earth which look utterly wonderful. I’ve also got Richard Powers’ Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, because everyone but everyone has read The Echo Makers and I wanted to read something different. I’m waiting for Edward Mendelson’s The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life, but I’m not sure that it will come before I leave, and the same can be said of Kate Sutherland’s All In Together Girls. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

I leave you, though, with a question that I hope you might be able to help me on. After Christmas I need to begin a whole new area of research into mothers in literature, and I am wracking my brains trying to think of which novels feature the most memorable portraits of maternity in all its stages. Obviously coming to mind are Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Colette’s Break of Day and My Mother’s House, the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich, books on being mothers by Anne Enright and Rachel Cusk, Marcel’s mother in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, and Colm Tóibín’s short stories, Mothers and Sons. And then… I’m not so sure. Does anyone have any novels to recommend or to remind me of? At this stage all and everything is welcome. Your suggestions will be most gratefully received.

Finally, I have to confess that another reason this week has been so hectic is that I’ve been compiling a book of my favourite blog posts from the past year and a half, which I’ve published with my husband under the imprint of TBR Books. (I’d like to thank Quillhill and Danielle particularly who encouraged me to do this.) We hope that by the time we return from holiday the books should be printed and will be retailing for about a fiver. It’s the end of anonymity for me, alas, but it has been a lot of fun to do. In fact we’ve enjoyed being publishers so much that we are now considering what project we might like to move onto. We’ve had one idea that I’m very excited about, but which I’m not quite ready to announce. But I’m keen to solicit blogger’s opinions: what would you like to see published? What kinds of books are missing from the current market? Have a think about it and let me know your feelings. And have a lovely few days!