Home Economics

I hadn't realised that there are Universities still offering 'Home Economics' as a degree subject: you can take it at undergraduate and postgraduate level in Ireland. Of course I found this ages after publishing Candy Nevill, when it might have been very useful as a research tool, while searching for something else entirely. Ireland would be an awfully long way for someone like Candy Nevill to travel. Though I think she'd probably find a good course in America and emigrate. Those last sentences probably suggest I'm too close to my characters, but my books can take 18 months to 2 years to put together and they do feel like close friends at the end of that time. I've just spent a happy half hour on their website looking over the curriculum. I'd rather assumed that you had to choose a practical catering course like Cordon Bleu or similar if you wanted some sort of post-school qualification in food. That said, there doesn't seem to be as much practical cookery and I'd certainly appreciate that. I don't think I need another degree though, much as I like the look of it. I'd also need to relocate to Ireland and I'm happy where I am. This blog post skidded in so that I have time to tidy up before watching the Great British Bake Off that I missed earlier in the week. Twitter gave me the result and now I want to see the full episode. Roll on 7pm on BBC2.

The Lotus Cup - Jane Louise Curry

I enjoy a good page-turner, particularly if it involves crafting and The Lotus Cup was one of those random 'finds' in a secondhand bookshop that I've been waiting for enough time away from rights puzzles and emails to read - I ended up not wanting to put it down and read it late into the evening. That's always a good sign of an interesting book, but not good when you have an early start the following morning. It's a teenage novel from the 1980s which seems oddly more dated than some of the more vintage (c. 1950s) fiction I've been reading. Especially when a teacher taking students on a trip out uses two student cars plus her own car to transport the class and advises two students to share a seat-belt as they're slim.

Yes, there are lots of Hawaiian shirts, clashing colours and jangly plastic earrings, but this is a charming book about a very shy girl finding her talent for ceramics in a declining pottery town and negotiating the teenage difficulties of boyfriends and parental expectations. East Liverpool (Ohio) was once a thriving centre for pottery. Now, it's in decline and only a small local pottery museum and the odd supplier remain. The larger potteries have closed leaving unemployment and scars on the cityscape.

Corry is shy and skittish, struggling with maths and desperate to achieve the college entry requirements. The visit to the pottery museum inspires her to work with clay and overcome at least some of her shyness to try (and succeed) in creating and firing a delicate ceramic cup.

As much as I liked the story, I also liked the technical information on kilns, glazes and firing that are woven in. Lovely book that I'll be keeping on my shelves for a reread. The author does have a website and I'll be trying more of her books in the future.

Spineless classics

Somebody else is having fun creating beautiful book-related things and, I suspect, having just as wonderful and frustrating time as I am with publishing and rights just at the moment. I think I've seen Spineless Classics at a trade fair and would love them to be better-known as the finishing and designs are beautiful. I had another look at their range on the website today and am bookmarking for possible present-hunting later this year. My current favourite is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, though there are also Moomins and some very nice Jane Austens. I'm even more impressed that they've fitted The Count of Monte Cristo on to one page.

I especially like the fact that these are works of art in their own right and the sort of 'book-related' presents you could still buy a child or book collector without being greeted by a puzzled look. That said, a book collector may be wondering where they have room on the wall for a print.

Return of the Great British Bake Off

It's almost time for the return of the Great British Bake Off (20 August, BBC2, I think) and I'm not quite counting down the days as I'm far too busy with deadlines that finish just before the series starts. Sitting down with a mug of tea in front of Bake Off is something of a reward after a hectic few weeks. I'm looking forward to it though - new recipes, new people and Mary Berry being wonderful. I may yet pluck up the courage to try macarons and will see what chaos I can cause with a piping bag. I've been having fun cooking shortcakes and meringues and filling both with cream and berries. The strawberries are mostly over, but later varieties are ripening nicely. For the moment, I'm using up the raspberries and a Japanese wineberry that's more beautiful than any other berry. They're as small as a fingernail and the colour of garnets.

It does make it easier when baking's in fashion to sell books like Candy Nevill that's stuffed full of cakes, family meals and strawberries. Food enthusiasms aren't new - just how many recipe books and food shows are published and commissioned each year? It's good, too, I think to bring out a young adult title with vintage charm where cooking and learning about how to improve as a cook are at the heart of the novel. Yes, you make mistakes in cooking, but you learn from them. Mostly in the struggle to clear up the mess. I don't recommend letting your jam boil over either as it can take days to clean the cooker.

Adventures in Yarn Farming (Roost Books)

I've been unsettled, reading-wise, this week. I started a number of books and wasn't drawn in and just put them down again. I'm sure I'll come back to them later. It's like that sometimes. You're either in the right frame of mind for a certain book or you're not. Instead, I settled down to sift through the stack of papers, flyers, notes and business cards that I'd brought home from BEA and recycled a fair bit of it. The freebie sweets I'd eaten while wandering around the conference centre - I was getting plenty of exercise walking round and the queues for the many coffee shops were just huge. Anyway, I did get a lovely flyer from Roost Books and thought that Adventures in Yarn Farming sounds fascinating from a craftsman's perspective. Does it sound overblown if I say that I wanted to be a publisher so that I could create beautiful things? Anyway, the flyer on its own is a four-page work of art and I have the book's release date of November carefully noted in my diary so that I can buy a copy. Well, I'd probably buy more than one as it would be a good Christmas present (sorry, I know it's August) for the knitters in my life.

Barbara Parry's written her story of life on a sheep farm and included knitting patterns, ideas for carding and weaving and a life that I know very little about. I was drawn to the centre picture of complicated cables. I'm too much of a beginner knitter and hope that my cables actually work to even contemplate quite so may turns. I'm also keen to find out more about farm life and how you look after herds of sheep, goats and llamas. For those of us who are interested in non-city life, colour and texture, this book seems ideal and I'll update when I've bought a copy later in the year.   

Clover Cottage - Frances Cowen

I think it's time for a post about summer holidays and I miss being at the stage when a six-week summer holiday stretched ahead into the distance and it was a an awfully long time until September. I suppose it still is, though summer holidays lose their magic when you're still in the office.

However, a good vintage example of a summer holiday novel is Clover Cottage by Frances Cowen. My copy has plain green boards and no-one's really interested in a photo of those, especially as the corners are bumped. The Amazon listing has a Peal Press DW which doesn't really show itself to advantage. 

The book seems to have been written immediately after the Second World War as mentions of shortages of housing, wood, furniture and a general feeling of 'making do' with very little. The father's a sailor in the Merchant Navy, so away for much of the time. Mother's trying to survive in a tiny flat with a brood of children from responsible eldest daughter, a few scrappy siblings and an attention-absorbing baby. The family can't afford a longed-for summer holiday in the country and are thrilled when they inherit a country cottage from the mother's great-aunt. The country, of course, is a far better place for children to grow up. They can run wild there, just coping with petrol shortages, no car and limited public transport, but they'd get all the fresh air denied to them in a smoggy city. Friendly local farm-folk also provide a puppy and some (non-rationed) good food.    

Cowen's novel runs much in the same vein as Gwendoline Courtney's Sally's Family, though Courtney is much the better writer. Finding and refurbishing a thatched cottage is a very good story: the local craftsmen pitch in to help a village family and, even if the family don't find an attic full of antiques, they do find that doing up the house brings them together.

Sunday reading

Peaceful day's reading today - not reading novels or contracts or hunting down family histories - just reading the weekend papers for pleasure. I'm ashamed to say that I don't often finish the weekend papers until midweek the following week in a bit of a rush because the recycling's due. It's still 'summer filler' season so we have the 'where the famous are going on holiday' and what said famous readers (or so they claim) will be reading when they get there. You generally see more popular page turners than worthy tomes by the pool and the beach anyway. That grumbled, I do like the paragraph summaries of books that I've probably missed. I'm still working my way through my BEA haul and will try Sarah Dessen's latest as well as Dirty Wars as soon as I feel strong. The latter is a very heavy hardback and I'll need to find a bookrest of some description.