Bloggers Galore!

My laptop is still not working, although there is hope on the horizon, but I'm managing to sneak onto the internet for a few minutes to give you a little round-up of bookish things from the past few days.

First things first, Saturday saw the first UK Book Bloggers' Meet-Up - hopefully the first of many. Although numbers dwindled steadily, due to all sorts of unfortunate reasons, there were still 18 of us who met up. Some started at the Persephone Books shop (where I resisted temptation manfully, partly aided by the fact that I have twenty-three unread Persephones at home - and partly be sublimating my desire to buy into an over-zealous desire to recommend) and then we moved onto The Lamb, a very nice pub with an elegant function room. We talked books, and exchanged ones we'd brought wrapped up (picture below, courtesy of Marcia). I did well - receiving Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, and also Nightrunners of Bengal by John Masters: David Nolan had won this on Gaskella's blog, but very kindly asked Annabel (Gaskella) to pass it onto me - thank you David, and thank you Annabel!


The bloggers present were, apart from me:

Annabel (Gaskella)
Boof (The Book Whisperer)
Claire (Paperback Reader)
David (Follow the Thread)
Guy (Pursewarden)
Hayley (Desperate Reader)
Jackie (Farm Lane Books)
Katy (5th Estate)
Kim (Reading Matters)
Kirsty (Other Stories)
Lizzy/Marcia (Lizzy's Literary Life)
Naomi (Bloomsbury Bell)
Polly (Novel Insights)
Rachel (Book Snob)
Sakura (Chasing Bawa)
Simon (Savidge Reads)
Verity (The B Files / Verity's Virago Venture)

Do go and see them, they're all wonderful. And fear not if you weren't able to make this meet-up - we're already talking about the next one, which will hopefully be in Oxford in the summer. The prize for furthest-distance-travelled went to Marcia this time, all the way from Glasgow to London - who will win the prize next time? Although it's got 'UK' in the title, anybody fancying getting on a 'plane is very welcome...

In other news... I've been meaning to mention Nymeth's 1930s Mini-Challenge - basically the idea is to read at least one novel from the 1930s before July 18th. The challenge actually started about a month ago, but I forgot to post it in a Weekend Miscellany - better late than never! Now, it's no hardship for me to read something from the 1930s. It's probably the decade from which I read most, although review copies etc. now slant things towards modern-day as well. But I thought I'd pick a novel in particular to represent this challenge. It was recommended by my (non-blogging) friend Clare, and is Images in a Mirror by Sigrid Undset. I don't know much about it, but Clare says it is right up my street, and she knows my tastes pretty well by now. I'll be writing about it before too long - and to sign up for Nymeth's challenge, pop along here.