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Booking Through Thursday time again, and a very good question this week which has got me thinking...

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?

Well, there was a definite change in my tastes between 1985 and 1990...

Hmm. I suppose I'd be better qualified to answer this question in a few decades' time, since I'm only twenty-two, and haven't really had time to alter my reading patterns since I started reading 'grown-up books'. Those started to appear on my horizon when I was about thirteen - up unto that point I'd gone from Enid Blyton to Goosebumps to Point Horror, with only some dips into Agatha Christie which could really count as more mature material. That's an interesting development in my reading, actually - I certainly couldn't cope with horror now, unless it's heavily tempered by exaggerated Gothic aspects, such as Shirley Jackson's novels.

So, interwar domestic literature became my reading choice of choice, and to a large extent it still is. I suppose my reading trends have mostly developed into being more widespread, because of a far-reaching English degree, and latterly all the review books I read. If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't read so many modern books - but I don't get sent much by authors writing in the 1930s, funnily enough! I try and dabble in more foreign works now, and more non-fiction (though still almost always connected with literature in some way). So perhaps I'm in the midst of a widening phase, and will settle with some favourites in a few years' time. I wouldn't like to spend the rest of my reading life trying out new things all the time - it would be like always trying to find a comfortable chair, and never buying one. By all means, dip toes in lots of pies (to mix metaphors in a rather unhygenic way), but I need a comfort zone to which to retreat. Or, rather, quality guaranteed.

Over to you...

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

If that title doesn't make you want to find out more, then your natural curiosity is sadly deficient. Elaine at Random Jottings obviously felt the same, and I am indebted to her for asking Bloomsbury to send me a proof copy to review of Mary Ann Shaffer's novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. In fact, lovely Steph from Bloomsbury sent 12 books, but my Reader's Block struck at the same time, and I'm only now able to pay proper attention to the beautiful pile of books. This one had to come first.
It's been a while since I read an epistolary novel - I think the last was Fanny Burney's Evelina, (that is letters, isn't it?) or perhaps the joyous Pamela, which repeats the same letter more or less every page anyway (oo, almost caught by my master in some thin disguise; wasn't quite...). My sentences do tend to wander off into the obscure, don't they! ANYWAY, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society takes the form of letters to and from writer Juliet Ashton, in 1946. She has become popular under her pseudonym Izzy Bickerstaff, writing Izzy Bickerstaff Goes To War - which put me in mind of EM Delafield and The Provincial Lady in Wartime, which is all to the good. She describes herself in one of her letters, saving me the trouble of doing so:

'I am thirty-three years old... In a good mood, I call my hair chestnut with gold glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown. It wasn't a windy day [in a photo]; my hair always looks like that. Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different. My eyes are hazel. While I am slender, I am not tall enough to suit me.'

I think I fell in love with Juliet when she revealed that a)she had also written an unpopular biography of my favourite Bronte sister, Anne - and b)that she broke up with her fiance when she found him 'sitting on the low stool in front of my bookcase, surrounded by cardboard boxes. He was sealing the last one with tape and string. There were eight boxes - eight boxes of my books bound up and ready for the basement!' What is more, he'd replaced her books with his sporting trophies. Obviously he had to go.

All this has happened before the novel opens - Juliet is in the throes of trying to find material for a new book. Her correspondance is with her loveable publisher Sidney and his sister Sophie, until out of the blue a letter arrives from a Guernsey farmer, Dawsey Adams, who has found her address inside a secondhand copy of Charles Lamb. Juliet gets the idea to write about Guernsey under Nazi Occupation - and strikes up a correspondance with several Guernsey residents (shy Dawsey; eccentric Isola; fisherman Eben) and decides to visit them to find out more. The letters continue to those back home, including would-be lover Markham Reynolds, and Juliet's life becomes increasingly bound up in Guernsey and its inhabitants.

So what is 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society'? To cover up the eating of an illicit pig (one of the things Nazi Occupants forbade) quick-thinking Elizabeth says that they were at a literary society - to make the story believable, they start one up. And the sustenance is in the form of potato peel pie, being all the food they could find. Elizabeth - who was sent away to a Continental prison during the war, and has not returned - becomes the central figure of these people and the novel, despite her protracted absence.

Like many people, I suspect, I knew little about the wartime occupation of the Channel Islands - Mary Ann Shaffer's novel is so illuminating about the conditions and experiences of those being controlled, but more than that, she creates unique and sympathetic characters. There are some upsetting details, but never gratuitously harrowing - Mary Ann Shaffer obviously knows how much more affecting it is to give us lovable characters and then see how the situation changed them. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is full of such characters - I worried that there were so many letter-writers, but they swiftly became identifiable and dear to me. Above all else, the novel is warm, funny and lovingly written. Bloomsbury plan a large-scale advertising campaign for this novel when it is published in August (sorry! you'll have to wait) and no novel deserves it more - it is sad that Shaffer passed away before she could see her novel published, but she died knowing that it would be, which must have been a great joy.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is something special - Juliet Ashton is a protagonist with just the right levels of humour, fondness and self-deprecation ('Oh, I can see it all now: no one will buy my books, and I'll ply Sidney with tattered, illegible manuscripts, which he'll pretend to publish out of pity. Doddering and muttering, I'll wander the streets carrying my pathetic turnips in a string bag, with newspaper tucked into my shoes'.) The characters are an ensemble cast, you'll love the lot of 'em, and fall in love with Guernsey too. I confidently predict that potato peel pie will be plat du jour up and down the country all August. Maybe.

Could Kindle Kill Publishing?

An interesting question, in my opinion.

More Tea, Author?

I think it was Becca's post about Daphne du Maurier, and my recent purchase of Letters from Menabilly, which got me thinking about authors' houses, and visiting them. A while ago my friend Barbara-from-Ludlow wrote to me, mentioning a course she was running - the importance of the horse in literature; as an extra character; providing atmosphere etc. etc.... I was bemused until I realised that I had misread 'horse' where she had in fact written 'house'... !

Authors' own homes are fascinating. I find it really interesting to see where other bloggers are blogging from - and have provided shots of my views in Magdalen and Somerset - but it is even more engaging to seek out the stamping grounds of my favourite writers. Sometimes these are open to the public - like Jane Austen's lovely home in Hampshire, Rudyard Kipling's 'Batemans', and Thomas Hardy's in Dorset - others, like AA Milne's and EM Delafield's aren't. In fact, with both of those, I had to use my knowledge from biographies to find the house - the photos are below - and took the photos illicitly by running down the driveways.. It is Milne's and Delafield's which felt most special, because, being privately owned, it felt more like I was visiting them rather than a tourist attraction. I suppose seeing the home is a step away from visiting the author; makes them more tangible and almost friendly.

E. M. Delafield's in Kentisbeare, Devon - I first went there in 2005, and lost the photo when my computer crashed. Our Vicar's Wife very kindly took this picture for me on a return visit through the village.

AA Milne's house in East Sussex, hidden away along a rough track - a very special moment for me. Taken in the days before the digital camera, so this is a photo of a photo... it sat on my wall at university, and confused those who thought I lived there (I wish!)

Which authors' houses have you visited? Open to the public or, like me, hunted out? Do tell...

An Ode to Goose

I feel like posting when you don't have anything to say is like riding the highway to the danger zone. Don't worry, I haven't lost that loving feeling for the blog, I'm just moving in slow motion a bit today.

Damnation Falls

Congratulations to Ed Wright, whose new mystery Damnation Falls has been nominated for a Barry Award!

Ed also just got a smashing review in Publisher's Weekly, where the "complex plot makes the most of tangled smalltown connections, moving fluidly from nostalgic remembrances, ruminations on friendship and filial devotion, to old-fashioned suspense and violence. Wright captures the rich, earthy essence of the South and wraps up his story with a sweet coda, all the more touching for being understated."

More Malvern

Some photos I took during my day out yesterday...

The view from the park where I had my ice cream... and later fell asleep on top of my book (no indictment of the book, which was excellent)

A lot of Malvern is an beautiful mixture of maintained and natural - none of the fussiness of some cities' parks, but still well looked after.

If anyone fancies buying me a house, then I would be willing to accept this one...

I accidentally discovered the world's smallest theatre! (Shown both above and below) Converted from a Victorian lavatory, it hosts a tiny theatre, which at the moment does shows on request. Sadly, I made no such request, but next time might be tempted. Tis wittily called The Theatre of Small Convenience, and they even have a website. Apparently they were on BBC's The One Show recently.