With Jam on.

Glorious sunny weather, despite the forecast (meterological voices prophesying precipitation), and I've been ranging around the cookery shelves looking at jam recipes. Yesterday I picked pounds and pounds of redcurrants, and turned them into what looks like perfectly successful jam, but if I'd waited and looked at Preserves, by Pam Corbin I could have made jelly, or cordial!

I still might of course, but having looked at the book I now want to make (among other things) 'Compost Heap Jelly'. And Gooseberry Chutney, to eat with mackerel. Yum.

One to Ten and Two by Two

Some new entries in the Top Ten fiction paperbacks this week, although Hilary Mantel is obviously aiming to be the Bryan Adams de nos jours.....
At number one - The Lacuna. Barbara Kingsolver still selling well.
2 A new entry - New York by Edward Rutherfurd
3 Family Album, Penelope Lively
4 Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, hanging in there....
5 Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd (v. good book)
6 The Earth Hums in B flat, by Mari Strachan
7 One Moment, One Morning, by Sarah Rayner
8 Notwithstanding, by Louis de Bernieres -slipped out of the top ten, now back in again
9 Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith
10 The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Did you notice? NO Stieg Larsson. The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest has dropped off the chart, but as people are still coming in to buy the first two titles in the trilogy we may well see it again.
Of course what people are buying most of is pretty meaningless when it comes to choosing reading matter for your summer holidays, weekend afternoons or long train journeys, but it is interesting to see what is popular week by week.
Well, I think it is, anyway.

We're still pairing books, in case you're wondering what to read next. So our selection of similar or complementary titles at the moment has Border Songs next to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and Simon Schama's Citizens paired with Hilary Mantel's (there she is again!) A Place of Greater Safety, her novel of the French Revolution and the ensuing Terror. Then we've put Dudley Green's biography of Patrick Bronte:Father of Genius next to Jane Eyre, one of the products of that genius (though for those who have read J. Eyre and don't want to go back to it I urge you to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). We've also put Brideshead Revisited (a perfect summer read, or re-read) beside Madresfield, Jane Mulvagh's study of the house and family who so influenced Evelyn Waugh. Lastly, Antonia Fraser's Robin Hood, a fairly tradtional re-telling of the ballads is parked beside Adam Thorpe's Hodd who is shown as a venal and violent felon - a novel about the creation of myth and legend.

Let us know if there are any pairings, connections, or natural literary affinities that you can recommend.

Fifty - and Seventy - years on. Oh yes, and pictures.

Stayed up past my bedtime last night to watch the BBC4 documentary on 'To Kill a Mockingbird' , visting Montgomery, Alabama 50 years after the book was published. As Harper Lee has steadfastly refused to be interviewed about the book for years, there wasn't much that was new in the programme, although it did contain a terrifying interview with Ku Klux Klan member - terrifying because this Grand Wizard (or maybe just an Ordinary Wizard?) was entirely calm and open about how he doesn't hate 'niggers'. He doesn't hate dogs either, simply regarding both as inferior creatures who need to be controlled and if necessary killed. I did have to keep reminding myself that it's supposed to be 2010, although in this man's self-professedly 'closed mind' it is forever 1930 it would seem.

Lots of people appear to have read 'Mockingbird' as a set text at school so it is (deservedly) very well known. (I never got 'TKaM' as a set text, I had Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights, and Great Expectations and The Mill on the Floss. Also a book which is apparently very popular and much loved, 'Jock of the Bushveld' by Percy Fitzpatrick. Perhaps I should give it another go, because I keep reading glowing reviews and comments about it, but my only memory is of complete dreary tedium, and at the end when (spoiler alert) the dog dies, twenty-five 12-year-old girls all chorused 'Good!'. Which must mean something.)

Anyway, whether you read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' at school, or discovered it for yourself, it's always worth a re-read. As well as standard paperbacks, we have a hard-back copy printed for the 50th anniversary, which would make a great gift.
If you haven't read it - please do so at once!


Moving on, but actually, I now realise, staying on-topic, I've just started reading 'Alone in Berlin', by Hans Fallada, and am completely hooked and finding it hard to put down. It's described as 'utterly gripping' by Justin Cartwright (who he? I thought, so trotted along the fiction shelves and remembered - shortlisted for the Booker with 'In Every Face I Meet', winner of the Whitbread Award for 'Leading the Cheers' - that J Cartwright.....).

The novel is a crime story/thriller set in Berlin during WW2, lightly fictionalising (is that a word?) the story of a couple who quietly resisted the Nazi system by spreading anti-Party propaganda, and who were caught and executed. The rather tenuous 'link' to 'Mockingbird' is in the depiction of a society which accepts injustice and evil and how difficult it is to change when the majority, for whatever reason, are maintaining the status quo. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but would urge you to read it.

Finally, for now, if you come into the shop over the summer, to look for these, or something else for holiday reading, be sure to go upstairs to see the exhibitions of local artists' work.
Details on the website - www.whitehorsebooks.co.uk