Happy 'add more books to the shelf' day!

A week full of cold saved by birthday books

It’s the school holidays.

My writer mode is recalibrating very slowly to the shift in timetable. Still buffering.

Standard mothering requirements are further amped up by the impressive amount of snot my daughter is generating. Everything (including us) is a little forlorn and a lot sticky.

In moments alone this week, I’ve prioritised consuming words over writing them (that and falling asleep in front of films).

So as Friday, newsletter day, started looming ever larger on the horizon, I panicked. I had neither the time nor energy to dive deep into one of the larger essay ideas I’ve been researching around.

However, as luck would have it this week also came pre-loaded with my birthday, which happily/thankfully/of course came with an influx of reading matter.

So that’s where we’re heading today—a speedy trip through my birthday book stash.

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Most eagerly anticipated:

Monsters by Claire Dederer

I have been looking forward to reading this one for so long. The notion of separating art and artist and the mental negotiation that entails is something that comes up with disappointing regularity. I’ve been so keen to read Dederer’s exploration of this tricky subject and over halfway through already I’m very much agreeing with her nuanced approach. There can’t be a one-size-fits-all response (in the majority of cases) because our own biographies are just as integral a part of the equation as that of the artist in question. The writing is clever and funny and asks a lot of relevant and relatable questions. Absolutely worth the wait.

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Self-influenced shelf copy (with bonus interconnections):

The Genius of Jane Austen by Paula Byrne

Earlier in the year, when I was settling myself into the realisation that I was going ‘full Austen’ for the 250th anniversary of her birth, I started pulling some interesting articles and videos together, one of which I thought was truly fascinating—a discussion between Sam West, Laura Wade and Professor Kathryn Sutherland entitled What Makes a Good Austen Adaptation? In this conversation they reference and highly recommend Paula Byrne’s The Genius of Jane Austen. I immediately put it on my library list and after getting my hands on my reserved copy, knew I needed my own for the shelf.

It’s fascinating, looking at the influence of Austen’s love of theatre on her own writing—something that has certainly been noticed and discussed as we read the novels together in

Plain Jane

’s Austen readalong. Currently on Sense and Sensibility, we have repeatedly been gifted scenes that would translate perfectly to stage direction. In and out of drawing room doors. Man on horse exits, another enters.

The book then moves on to look at screen adaptations of Austen’s novels. This is my dream territory. And I was overjoyed to discover a new adaptation that I was previously blissfully unaware of: Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which is apparently rooted very much in Mansfield Park. A nesting doll of delights, the video led to the book led to the film, which sounds excellent and I’ve also read is a Christmas classic—ticking a lot of boxes here!

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Gifts from an attentive and enabling friend:

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley

The intersection of motherhood and creativity is endlessly fascinating to so many of us and in marking Mother's Day at the end of March, I shared a few favourite poems and articles that explore this relationship in different ways. This included

Kate Jones

’ excellent article on Joan Didion’s Blue Nights and lo and behold, I now have my own copy!

The wonderful

Helen Redfern

has also gifted me a trowel in literary form to keep digging deeper into the bookshop-related rabbit hole that is dear to both our hearts. She lent me The Lost Bookshop (which I loved and discussed in more detail last week), sent me a copy of 84 Charing Cross Road (which feels a little shameful to have managed to get to 47 without having read) and now has found this gem for me to dive into, A Bookshop of One’s Own. Tantalising blurb as follows:

A Bookshop of One’s Own is a love letter to the Silver Moon Bookshop, the champion of women writers and feminist literature on London’s Charing Cross Road. Opened by Jane Cholmeley in Thatcher’s Britain against a backdrop of misogyny and homophobia, this underdog business would defy the odds and grown to become the biggest women’s bookshop in Europe.

Just down the road at number 68 from Helene Hanff’s pals at Marks and Co. I’m definitely sold.

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The perfect surprise:

The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz

Oh my! I’m completely over the moon with this beautiful tome. I’m a huge Wes Anderson fan and have recently made a commitment to start actually reading my collection of coffee table books, so this is an absolute winner. Illustrations, interviews and inspiration for all his films from Bottle Rocket to Moonrise Kingdom, this is quite simply joy in book form.

If there was any doubt in the minds of the gifters as to whether their off-list gamble was a good one, I excitedly shared a link to the new trailer of The Phoenician Scheme with them the night before my birthday in unknowing reassurance.

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So there we go.

Thank you to all kind and wonderful gifters of books (and film!), for the birthday joy and for saving this week’s newsletter.

Thank you to the surprise influx of new subscribers joining this week—my daughter and I have quietly marvelled at the number steadily growing as my newsletter on The art of comfort reading had a renaissance moment.

An extra special thank you to my poor kiddo, for spending a holiday week in a whirl of toilet roll (we long since ran out of tissues) with such good humour, for bearing with me while I tap out this newsletter, and for making my birthday wonderful, as you always do.

And thanks, as ever, for reading.

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