If You Read One Book this Year…

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English landscape, English Pastoral, Farming, James Rebanks, Lake District, wild countryside

I bought this book for my husband as one of his Christmas presents. He devoured it and suggested I do the same, even though it isn’t my usual choice of reading.

Reader, not only did I do so, but now urge you to do the same because this is an important book, for us, for our children and for our grandchildren.

English Pastoral is a beautifully written story about a family farm, the epic struggle of three generations to nurture their animals and land, and the urgent need for us all to find ways for farmed and wild countryside to coexist.

But James Rebanks is not only a farmer, he is a gifted writer and a visionary. His final two lines made me cry. I suggest you buy his book, and then pass it around your friends and family.

More coronatime reading

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18th century, Alaska, Corona virus, Cotswolds, Czechia, Lake District, London, South Wales, Sussex, Zatopek

So, corona virus restrictions are being reimposed.  Less socialising, less going out of the house, maybe worse to come.  But the upside of all that is, you can top up your lockdown reading …   Your Books To Be Read pile might have shrunk in the past six months, but why not add to it now?  Why not choose something new, maybe something you wouldn’t normally touch?

Taking some books at, er, random – you can enjoy historical fiction, thrillers, comedy, romance, novels exploring relationships and the human heart; revel in the settings of London (in the 18^th century and today), modern Czechia, Sussex, the Lake District, Alaska, South Wales, Devon and the Cotswolds.

Or you can read biography and moving memoir; and if you are a manager and your staff are all working from home, why not take advantage of their absence and bone up on management thinking?  And if you’re a parent or doting grandparent, get a lovely book for the little one.

Last, but not least, there’s poetry.  What better way to cope with today’s vicissitudes than settling down with some great poetry ‘the best words in the best order’, as I think someone said.

Happy reading!

 

 

 

“Enchanted Isle”

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'Catching the Wind', 'Family Fiction', Amusement parks, Christianity, Lake District, Melanie Dobson, Twitter

 

I wrote in an earlier posting about Catching the Wind by Melanie Dobson, a time-shift novel set largely in Kent and Sussex in WW2 and the present day (https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/catching-the-wind-2/). I’ve just seen, through the wonder that is Twitter, an interview with the author on the Family Fiction website (https://www.familyfiction.com/melanie-dobson-finding-beauty-unexpected-places/).  In it she talks about Catching the Wind and also her newly published novel Enchanted Isle. This is also set in the past, in the 1950s, and is set in the Lake District, an area she is clearly taken with, with its inspiring “labyrinth of lakes and rich history”.

She speaks of her love of history and her need to set a limit to the research she does for her novels, so much does she enjoy that research. She also tells of her Christian faith and how that informs her writing.

The focus of Enchanted Isle is an abandoned amusement park, and “an unforgettable romance and an unsolved murder” dating from a generation before.

My copy is on order. Thanks, Twitter.