The Places You Will Go

Confessions of a Book Addict

I love spying on people as they browse in bookstores. I pay attention to what the person in front of me at the cashier is buying. I always want to know what my friends and family are reading and what they have blown their allowance/pay packets on at their favourite bookshops.

That's why I love Nick Hornby's collection of articles on the books he's bought and the ones he's reading/read. If you are a book addict, you'll know that the two lists don't always overlap ...

Ab(bey) Fab

This week's Tots to Teens is about Elsie J. Oxenham's Abbey books. In the column I mention having transcripts of some of the books and invite interested parties to email me if they want to try an Abbey!

Here are the titles I own in transrcipt:

The Abbey Girls in Town

The Abbey Girls on Trial

Rosamund's Victory

Patch and a Pawn

The Abbey Girls

The Abbey Girls Again

Abbey Champion

Biddy's Secret

Damaris at Dorothy's

Joy's New Adventure

Maidlin Bears the Torch

Margery Meets the Roses

Peggy and the Brotherhood

Rosamind's Tuckshop

Potter's a No-Show in Malaysia

I read this review of Miss Potter (from The Horn Book website) after I'd written rather ignorantly about Beatrix Potter and the film, for Tots to Teens (21st Jan).

There is a very interesting "fact vs fiction" link in the article that you can also access here.

More Books to Help Keep the Blues Away

If you read when you're feeling depressed, what do you read?

I wrote about some of the my favourite comfort reads in this post and this one too. Some books help keep the demons away really well and I discovered another recently: Imagining Characters, which is conversations between author A. S. Byatt and psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre, on six novels by women. The books include Mansfield Park, Vilette, Beloved and Daniel Deronda.

This book helps now (yes, I am extremely depressed at the moment and have been for the last six months or so) because I have to concentrate very hard on the content (because it's all very clever and complex and it takes all my concentration to understand what's being said - I never claimed to be smart) and so there's no chance of my mind wandering, no chance of me thinking about the source of all my present woes. I'm reading it at the moment ... very, very slowly ... to make it last!

On the Receiving End Now

The four picture books I wrote are now available in MPH outlets and (hopefully) other good bookstores. In my column in Star Mag today I talk about my first (and probably not last) bad review!

Dead and Alive

I'm currently biting my nails over Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which is part-detective, part-horror fiction, about a group of scholars investigating the truth behind the legend of Vlad the Impaler, the cruel medieval ruler whose crimes formed the basis of the myth of Dracula.

Reading this book, prompted me to re-read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Coincidentally, two new versions of the classic tale arrived on my desk about a month ago: an illustrated edition, and a graphic novel.

Train Man Rides On …

TRAIN MAN: A Shojo Manga

Story: Hitori Nakano

Art: Machiko Ocha

Publisher: Ballantine Books;

179 pages

(ISBN: 0-345-49619-1)

For ages 13+

Costa Book Awards 2006: Category Winners

The Costa Awards category winners:

First Novel
Stef Penney THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES

Novel
William Boyd RESTLESS

Children's Book
Linda Newberry SET IN STONE

Poetry
John Haynes LETTER TO PATIENCE

Biography
Brian Thompson KEEPING MUM

The overall winner will be announced on 7th Feb 2007.

Read more at the official Costa book awards website.

Philippa Pearce 1920-2006

I've been so caught up with my own problems that I missed the fact that Philippa Pearce died, following a stroke, on Thursday, 28th December 2006.

Read her obituary in The Independent.