Flavour of the month #2b

Round up of March reading recommendations

Previously on Flavour of the Month #2 …

It turned out I had a lot to say about the films and TV programmes I’d watched in March, so decided to split my monthly round-up of recommendations across two newsletters to remain vaguely within the bounds of wieldy.

Herewith the promised second part—book recs for your delectation based on my March reading.

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We’re a third of the way through the Sense and Sensibility readalong now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

Plain Jane

is offering excellent weekly discussion posts and

Annette Gordon

has split her insightful analysis into chunky thirds. I’ll wait until we’ve finished to share my ‘Dashwoods do Devonshire’ themed newsletter, which will of course include a deep dive into the film and TV adaptations and a whole host of other interesting interconnections I’ve been busily squirrelling away over the past weeks. As that might not be until the start of next month, I may well come back and share some biographical Austen books later in April.

March saw me come to the end of another seasonal read of

Katherine May

’s Wintering. I wasn’t reading much at all late last year, but one weekend the pull of a comforting reread drew me back to this book—its episodic structure felt the perfect way to gently steer and reassure my fractured mind during the darkest months of the year. I was very happy to discover I was not alone in this choice of seasonal read and that—much to Katherine’s own surprise and years after its original publication—Wintering had climbed back up the book charts in the final months of 2024. If you haven’t read it, do put it on your list to start in September. A restorative gem.

After listening to a lengthy Claire ramble about the Brontës last month, my favourite rabbit-hole sounding board,

Helen Redfern

, put The Lost Bookshop into my literary link-loving hands. It’s a great read. Elements of magical realism (think Joanne Harris), multi-timeline storytelling, and an incredible list of favourite books and authors woven both literally and narratively into the story—Normal People, Persuasion, Little Women, Never Let Me Go, Le Petit Prince, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, The Count of Monte Cristo to name but a few. I loved that Evie Woods even mentioned Glass Town, a graphic novel on the imaginary world of the Brontës juvenilia that I’ve had my eye on for a while. The Lost Bookshop of the title is a place of hope and refuge for the various key characters when they need to find it most. It’s a clever and captivating story, and covers some difficult themes of domestic violence, control and coercion, with an ultimately rewarding end. If you love books about books, this is for you.

Last week, I finally completed You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet

Maggie Smith

’s stunning memoir chronicling the end of her marriage. It moved me deeply. I have read it in small heart-sized pieces—savouring the beauty, simultaneously grateful for and pierced by the relatability. On numerous occasions, I had to set it down for a while. I love everything about this book. The lyrical language (would you expect anything less?), the delicate structure of vignettes (small heart-sized pieces), the unflinching honesty, reflection, vulnerability and boundary drawing. There are things that Maggie describes in her story of disintegration and rebuilding, of writing and mothering (which links back to Sunday’s bonus newsletter, how often this particular interconnection comes up), that I have felt and experienced but never shared or said out loud. The book is a beautiful gasp of recognition and I am so grateful for it.

I fully appreciate I’m late to the party on David Nicholls’ latest, You Are Here. The library reservation list was lengthy. I had heard only positive things about this book and obviously it was published into the afterglow of Netflix’s adaptation of One Day, a time when Nicholls and his very human style of storytelling was at the forefront of our minds once more.

But that was a year ago and I did my usual trick with Nicholls’ writing of being initially deceived by its apparent simplicity. I get lulled into thinking I’ve got an easy read ahead. A boy meets girl story (Michael, Marnie, and a Wainwright-honouring coast-to-coast hike) and we all know how it will end. What I forget is that we don’t know quite how we will get there (and actually that with Nicholls, HEA is never a guaranteed destination). What I also forget is that as well as laughing out loud and becoming so very hooked on the story I have to wolf it down in a couple of sittings, Nicholls will repeatedly hit me about the head with waves of emotion. Just as with The Lost Bookshop, while You Are Here is ultimately uplifting and an undoubtedly warm and tender story, it is at its heart a story of loneliness, and uncovering the reasons why Marnie and (in particular) Michael have retreated into their parallel solo existences is actually incredibly sad. Wonderful book, which I heartily recommend.

Suffragette: The Battle For Equality by David Roberts. Check out those stunning endpapers. And I'm all for the thematic bookmark choice.

Perusing my bookshelves one afternoon, I took the decision that 2025 will be the year that I delve into the many beautiful ‘big’ books that reside there—coffee table books (sadly in want of a low table on which to display their glory). March was apparently the month to set this new plan into action and prompted by International Women’s Day, I picked up this beautiful book, Suffragette: The Battle For Equality, which I bought for my daughter a few years ago. Written and illustrated by the brilliant David Roberts (who has worked with Andrea Beaty for many years, particularly famed for the much-loved Questioneers series), this is a beautiful and comprehensive history of the suffragette movement. It’s aimed at older children, but it’s certainly not overly simplified. It’s full of detailed and interesting stories of the key players in the fight for women’s voting rights, and also introduces some brilliant histories I’d never heard before.

I followed this up by watching the 2015 Suffragette and definitely got a lot more out of it with the details of this wonderful book fresh in my mind. The film has an incredible cast and (of course) many interconnections back to previous newsletters—Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Abi Morgan and of course (sound the klaxon) Sam West! I had no idea he was in it, and laughed out loud when he popped up playing a po-faced Edwardian gentleman (is there any other kind?). I know I’ve shamefully veered into movie talk in a book recommendations newsletter, but I’d heartily recommend this pair in tandem.

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So there we are, a selection of excellent books in a pleasing balance of fiction and non-fiction for your reading pleasure.

Let me know what you’ve been reading lately and would recommend I add to the tbr.

Happy school holidays to all who celebrate—may the next couple of weeks be restful and relaxing with a liberal application of chocolate (you say delusional, I say hopeful—well, at least the last part).

And thanks, as ever, for reading.

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