It’s another waffle! It’s been all go at this end lately, so I’ve actually read a couple of books that I just haven’t had a chance to review, but a nice waffle is a pretty good way to wind down on a Wednesday night.

The next book on the list is… 564!

I picked up The Letters of Abelard and Heloise in a charity shop a while ago and it’s been sitting on my ‘to read’ pile. Abelard and Heloise had a relationship way back in the early 12th century. Abelard was a well-known teacher, theologian and philosopher in the Middle Ages and Heloise was initially his pupil, but notable for her own intelligence, and had a particular gift for languages.

As with all well-known love affairs, it was not to be, and when separated after their secret marriage they became a monk and a nun respectively (Heloise later became an abbess).

This is a collection of their letters from early in their relationship, continuing for many years. The interest really lies in the force of their personalities and intelligence. There’s something quite appealing about being able to follow through a series of letters between two people exploring ideas. And I confess that a big part of the interest for me is Heloise. Abelard is undoubtedly a fascinating character, but women’s intelligence and their contributions during that time are very much sidelined in historical writing, and Heloise’s life and sharp mind is particularly fascinating.

Incidentally, if anybody is interested in reading about women in the Middle Ages, I really enjoyed Henrietta Leyser’s book Medieval Women: Social History Of Women In England 450-1500: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500.

It’s actually a really interesting period of history and my reading around it is quite sketchy, particularly fiction: I can’t think of any fiction set in the medieval period! So I’m going to open the floor up and see if anybody has any good recommendations?

The Cake Wrecks’ blog has a regular Sunday Sweets feature whcih has outdone itself today, with some awesome cakes based on children’s books!

I don’t know about you, but I’d love to chow down on some of that tasty tasty Lord of the Rings cake action. I think my favourite has to be the downright awesome Where the Wild Things Are cake, though. I’d even settle for one of the cupcakes! There’s something about seeing a book in cake format that just makes it that bit more enticing.

Get on over there and make your own mouths water. Also, don’t forget that it’s my birthday in three months…

Ah, the twists and turns of the randomiser. It seems but moments ago that we were talking about Helen Dunmore, as Fliss has recently read Talking to the Dead (and the random choice this week was also discussed a little in the comments).

So perhaps the randomiser just likes there to be more discussion about Helen Dunmore in the world?

To stop tiptoeing around the book itself, welcome to the book I affectionately call… number 192! Which is A Spell of Winter by (you’ve guessed it) Helen Dunmore.

If I remember correctly, this was the fourth of her books that I read, way back in the day when I chewed through a series of them fairly rapidly before deciding that it probably wouldn’t hurt to pace myself. What I quite like remembering today is that I first cottoned onto Helen Dunmore through Fliss (amusing, as Fliss hadn’t read any of her books until last week): the writer herself was giving a reading of her latest book (Mourning Ruby, as it happens) and we decided to head over. I’d picked up a book in anticipation a week before, and a literary love affair was born.

A Spell of Winter has been one that’s stuck with me, too. Perhaps because it’s quite brutally gothic. Also, though, because it’s one of the books in which I think Dunmore really lets loose her skill with language, and it’s an intensely beautiful book to read. I don’t think the two memorable factors are at all unrelated.

There’s a short excerpt of the book up at Dunmore’s website, if you’re interested!

I missed the last couple of waffles because I was absent with no internet, which just doesn’t work terribly well for blogging.

However, getting back to this in style, by actually posting on the correct day: welcome to the 4th weekly wednesday waffle! Today the lucky number is… 427!

Well, first of all, apologies for the poor quality of image, I actually took this one myself a few years ago. Onto the more important things, though, this is actually quite a special book for me. Partly because it always has been, and partly because I connect it with an experience I had with my father, who died nearly a year ago.

I picked it up in a tiny tiny art gallery in Cornwall. Dad and I had gone in and were looking around at all the paintings, which I recall being quite interesting. As always, though, my eyes fell on the table of books and among them there was this very slim plain black book. I opened it up and flicked through a couple of the poems. They were just really nicely done, quite abstract, quite subtle. I asked the gallery chap about it and it turned out that it was actually his own poetry, and he sold the book in his gallery. So Dad and I (mostly Dad) had a chat to him about his art and his poetry (mostly his poetry, as Dad was quite the poetry conoisseur), and I was still wistfully clutching the book. At which Dad, being the good father and poetry-lover that he was, bought it for me, and Padraig signed it. What a nice chap.

A lot of my time was spent reading through this poems on a beach in Cornwall for the rest of that holiday. So, yes; good memories, good times!

Yeah okay, so I got kind of thrown off my the long weekend. It is the third day of the working week, though, so I stand by doing the waffle today!

Courtesy of the randomiser, I have number… 340!

O… oh dear.

I have a bit of a problem with this. The thing is, I like Ted Hughes. Really, I do! I do I do! But you may never believe me after I say that I have actually never even looked inside this book. Which is partly because I got it not long before I moved off to university, but it’s no excuse really.

The real reason is that with certain things – poetry and music albums, primarily – I’m a bit monomaniacal about it all. Once I’ve found a book of poetry by a particular poet, or an album by a new band/singer, and decide I really like it, I get a bit obsessive. I’ll read or listen to the relevant item over and over, but will I branch out to other things that the creative type in question is responsible for? Will I heck.

It’s not really deliberate, which is why, for instance, I buy things like these really rather attractive volume, only to never touch it. When I realise what I’m doing, there’s the guilt and the discomfort; all of which is eased so readily by turning to a nice familiar book of poetry. Like… Birthday Letters, or Crow. Ah, it is indeed a vicious cycle.

This Waffling feature is really not highlighting the best aspects of my reading.

So okay, I’m going to make this pact, right here, right now. I will read volumes of poetry by poets I like that I haven’t yet read. I may even start with Carol Ann Duffy, because I have three handy volumes of her poetry right here. It’s on!

After the comments on my last post about just how stunning the cover of The Children’s Book is – which is undeniably so – I’ve been looking at the rest of the book covers in my collection. While I agree that it’s no guide to content, a well-groomed book cover can be a delight to behold.

So without further ado, here are what I judge to be the nicest of book covers in my collection. I excluded art books and cookery books because, quite frankly, that’s cheating. We all know that cake and Chagall are dashed sexy.

1. The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt: Well, obviously. I think that there are many beautiful book covers in this world, and this just is one of them.












2. The Siege by Helen Dunmore: Given the subject matter – the siege of Leningrad – I think this cover works beautifully. It’s sparse and cold and a little unreal; and I find it a nicely balanced cover.












3. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan: Love it or hate it (and I love it), McEwan’s cover before he went all Solar on us is a nicely understated piece, which again is something that I think works well with the novel itself. I love that big big sky with its subtle variations, and the contrast between that and the beach below. The teeny tiny figure gives a good sense of perspective, too, without being boringly wistful and pensive (because, hey, she’s too far away).




4. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (The Arden Shakespeare edition): The play is pretty yucky and bloodthirsty, if I’m permitted to call a Shakespeare play ‘yucky’, but the cover is stunning. A wise choice also to not necessarily show the visuals of all the brutality right there on the front. A little imagination goes a long way! Although incidentally, there have been some really interesting stagings of this play over the years, and the violence in it, which I’d quite like to see. Anyway, the cover. I like the blank, chiselled face which draws your gaze right in, and the lovely rich red and orange-tones.




5. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell: I love this book, and have seen lots of covers of it. This one, which I own, is definitely my favourite of the bunch. Nothing amazingly fancy, and perhaps it seems a bit anomalous alongside my other choices, but there’s just something I really like about this cover. The bold colours, the lines of the figure, and the splodgy splodgy paint, just all combines quite nicely, I think.




While we’re on the subject of covers, has anybody else seen any of the new Harry Potter covers? They’ve all been repackaged. Personally, I’m still a fan of the tried and tested, colourful, ‘children’s’ covers, but I guess I’m just kicking it old school.

Anybody else got thoughts on good book covers past, present and future?