Thursday, January 28, 2010

Slightly Foxed


I love reading about books. Sometimes I think I spend more time reading about books in journals & on blogs, than actually reading the books. One journal I can’t do without though is Slightly Foxed. I’ve been a subscriber since the beginning, about five years ago. Slightly Foxed isn’t interested in the latest bestseller or celebrity biography. The books they review are rarely new & often not even in print. Slightly Foxed reviews books that may have slipped under the radar or fallen out of favour or fashion. Their reviewers are passionate about their choices. These are books they care about, they want to see them in print again or at least bought secondhand & read or read before they fall out of print. I always come across either an old favourite – recently 84 Charing Cross Rd by Helene Hanff & Sarah Caudwell’s detective novels – or something that sounds so enticing I have to read it – John Buchan’s Richard Hannay novels & James Hilton’s Lost Horizon – or usually both. They’ve also started reprinting beautiful little hardback Slightly Foxed Editions of memoirs by writers like Rosemary Sutcliff, Diana Holman-Hunt & V S Pritchett. Like Persephone Books, Slightly Foxed, the journal & the Editions, are beautiful objects as well as being absorbing reading. Thick, creamy paper (why don’t more publishers use it? So much easier on the eye than dead water flimsy paper) & the perfect size to slip into a handbag or pocket.

3 comments:

  1. I just ordered a subscription to "Slightly Foxed" and mentioned your blog on the smallish box-insert asking me where I had heard of the journal.

    I can't wait for my first issue to arrive--it will be the winter one.
    Thank you!

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  2. Thank you for mentioning my blog on your subscription form. The Winter issue is particularly good. Articles on 84 Charing Cross Rd, Pepys, Muriel Spark & Pride & Prejudice. Only a month to go until the Spring issue - I can't wait.

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  3. Today everything seems to be working and I can comment... I love Slightly foxed as well, and can thank it for all sorts of reading discoveries. I plan a pilgrimage to their bookshop next time I'm in london.

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