Bookish ramblings

I thought I'd highlight a few bookish links & some news about one of my favourite series. The British Library Crime Classics have been one of the publishing successes of the last couple of years. I love them. I've always enjoyed Golden Age mysteries & these books are so beautifully produced & attractively presented. It's a real treat to be discovering new authors from this period. After all, what do we do when we've read all of Christie, Sayers, Tey, Marsh & Allingham? I've bought nearly all of the Crime Classics & have reviewed several of them here, here & here. Martin Edwards has become the consultant for the series which means that future titles will be interesting, sometimes surprising & always well worth reprinting. I've just started reading Capital Crimes, a collection of short stories set in London & I was very excited to read on Martin's blog that there are another half dozen books in the series to be published before the end of the year. The British Library also have another series of Spy Classics which I haven't investigated as yet.

The latest edition of Shiny New Books is available to read here. I've just finished reading a gorgeous book about the artists Rex Whistler so I was very interested to read the review of A Curious Friendship by Anna Thomasson, about the friendship between Whistler & Edith Olivier. There's also an article by Anna Thomasson about her research for the book, which I always find fascinating. I was also interested to read Desperate Reader's review of George Gissing's The Whirlpool, just reprinted by Penguin. I love Gissing & I've only read a couple of his books. There are lots of other reviews & interviews, including a review of Capital Crimes & an interview with Robert Davies, the publisher of the British Library Crime Classics. There's another interview with Davies here, on a blog I've just discovered, Past Offences.

Margin Notes Books have just reprinted one of my favourite books, Mara Kay's The Youngest Lady In Waiting. This is the book that first interested me in Russian history. It's about a young girl who becomes lady in waiting to Grand Duchess Alexandra, wife of the future Nicholas I. It's set at the time of the Decembrist revolt in 1825. I borrowed it from my school library so often that they should have just let me keep it. I'd never seen a copy since (the cover above is the edition I read) so I was beside myself when I read than it was to be reprinted. I've bought the first book, Masha (also just reprinted by Margin Notes Books) which, funnily enough, I only read once all those years ago

& The Youngest Lady In Waiting arrived yesterday! I've been dipping in & reading bits & pieces & I can't believe it's 35 years since I last read it, it's all so familiar. I have a feeling I'll be dropping everything to read this next.

Bill Bryson is one of the funniest writers in the world. I know that's quite a bold statement but he makes me laugh so I'm prepared to go out on a limb. One of my favourite Bryson books was Notes from a Small Island, about the UK. Well, after many years & a diversion into books on science & his childhood, Bill Bryson has written another travel book about Britain, The Road to Little Dribbling which will be published later this year. If I'd been keeping up with reading The Bookseller at work, I'd have known about this weeks ago. I'd also have known that Bryson has sold 8,648,774 books in the UK (exactly). As it is, I read about it on Elaine's blog & this article in The Guardian.

Also in The Guardian was an article celebrating the 200th anniversary of Anthony Trollope's birth. Writers nominated their favourite Trollope novel. I'm currently rereading Miss Mackenzie with my 19th century book group & I started reading Cousin Henry at the weekend after reading about it here as it was the only Trollope in the list I hadn't yet read. Books and Chocolate is celebrating Trollope's anniversary with giveaways & reviews here.

Has anyone read The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu? I enjoyed reading about Japanese history so much in Judith Gautier's The Usurper that I've just ordered this lovely Penguin Deluxe edition on a whim. All 1,216 pages of it... I could have dipped my toe in with the abridged edition but I couldn't resist a Penguin Deluxe. However, I feel completely justified in buying yet another book because I've read this article where Umberto Eco tells us why unread books are more valuable in our lives than read ones. Thank you Rose for sending me the link. Eco calls these books the antilibrary & describes them as the repository of all the knowledge that we don't yet have. So buying a huge novel about 11th century Japan is completely justified because I know absolutely nothing about the subject. This theory may not justify the purchase of my 100th book about Richard III (The Bones of a King by the Greyfriars Research Team, ordered this week) or the 3rd or 4th copy of a favourite book because I love the cover (Testament of Youth, Cold Comfort Farm, The Return of the Soldier...) or it's a Folio Society edition (Possession, Lord Peter Wimsey novels, The Daughter of Time, Excellent Women), but it justifies a lot of my other book buying decisions & I'm adopting it immediately!