Reading for Pleasure 2007

A very warm welcome to Reading for Pleasure at Wenlock Books.

We host several reading groups in the bookshop, two that meet monthly to read a wide range of contemporary and classic fashion; two that meet quarterly to read our way through the excellent Persephone Books catalogue, and two groups for children aged 8 - 12, that also meets monthly. Our meetings are all held on the first floor of the bookshop, at our famous round table, surrounded by ancient beams and (almost as) ancient books, as this is our second-hand (used) books floor. It is this area of the bookshop that holds the soul of our shop; do visit if you can, you'll see what I mean!

All of the reading groups are at full capacity, with no sign of numbers dropping: it is this that has inspired us to launch an on-line reading group, and this post will, in the early part of 2007, transform (thanks to Dawn) into our on-line reading group site. We are very excited!

We are hoping that this on-line group of dedicated readers will read alongside the readers in the bookshop, and contribute to our discussions as we work our way through the programme. All the books we are planning to read are listed below, so that you can pick the ones you'd like to read with us and get started!

If you would like me to email you as soon as the group is active, just drop a line to info@wenlockbooks.co.uk marking the subject box "On Line". Otherwise, just check the web-site or the blog at http://wenlockbooks.blogspot.com

Either way, we are looking forward to you becoming part of our reading community!

Reading Dates for 2007











January 17th: 2pm & 7pm

The Reader by Ali Smith

A fascinating selection of the prose, poetry, songs and articles that have informed Ali Smith’s reading and writing life, from childhood through to adulthood.

You’ll meet well-loved favourites, make the acquaintance of new writers, and be reminded of long forgotten ones. Just like browsing someone else's book case ….

We're looking forward to meeting Ali to talk about her writing on December 8th 2006.

February 7th 2pm and 28th 7pm

Sex Wars by Marge Piercy

Always a treat to have a new Marge Piercy, this is the story of the pioneers of women’s rights in the America of the 1860s and 70’s. I've been reading Marge Piercy since the 1970's and have been challenged, moved, inspired ... never disappointed!

March 14th: 2pm and 28th: 7pm

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

I’m looking forward to reading this one, having heard so many different opinions about it! We are hoping to get Marina Lewycka to include Wenlock Books in her tour dates around now, as she promotes her new book.

April 25th 2pm and 7pm

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A quietly beautiful book, an old man looks back on his life and wonders what he will pass on to his very young son, and much-loved wife. We’ve waited a long time for this one! Marilynne Robinson's haunting Housekeeping is one of my top five books. I love the seriousness and poetry of her writing.

May 9th: 2pm and May 23rd: 7pm

Beloved by Toni Morrison

One of the great classics of black American literature, and indeed of great literature regardless of any kind of boundary limitations. This is a novel that makes you change the way you feel about your place in the world. A shocking, compelling and brilliant read.

June 6th: 2pm and 7pm

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter Downes

Re-reading The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes published by Persephone, in our reading group last year, reminded me of this lovely, understated little book. A quiet day, nothing much happening, but oh, what lovely writing!









July 4th: 2pm and July 18th: 7pm

How I live Now by Meg Rosoff

Supposedly for teenagers, this won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 2004. A gripping narrative set in a future war, this is “all about love” to quote the author. I was spellbound, (and immediately moved it from children's to adults!)

September 12th: 2pm and 26th: 7pm

A Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff

Another Persphone book, this is a novel by the author of Journey’s End and the Hopkins Manuscript. It's about a family on holiday in Bognor in 1931; a quiet masterpiece.

October 10th: 2pm and 31st: 7pm

Maps for Lost Lovers by Aslam Nadeem

A family at the crossroads of culture, community, nationality and religion. Nadeem addresses their joy and pain in a language arrestingly poetic.

November 14th: 2pm and 28th: 7pm

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

A moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection borne with fortitude: the story of a woman's right to love and be loved.

We're looking forward to seeing how our adult selves respond to this book, compared to the way we read it when we were teenagers. Our re-readings of Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier found us with very different feelings towards certain characters.

December 12th: 2pm and 7pm

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

Reminiscent of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith this is the engrossing story of Penny and her eccentric family in the post-WW2 1950’s just before the advent of rock and roll. A lovely, humorous and nostalgic read, I came upon it quite by chance when a damaged copy came in as a customer's special order. I don't usually choose pink covers, but this one was surprisingly charming.

Persephone Reading Group

January 24th 2pm and 7pm

Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller (no. 14)

Novel (by Jonathan Miller’s mother!) about a Jewish film director and the “discreet discrimination of the bourgeoisie” (Guardian). Preface: Jane Miller

April 18th 2pm and 7pm

Tell it to a Stranger by Elizabeth Berridge

1947: short stories which were twice in the Evening Standard best-seller list.; they are funny, observant and bleak. Preface: A N Wilson.

July 11th 2pm and 7pm

Saplings by Noel Streatfield

An adult novel by the well-known author of Ballet Shoes, about the destruction of a family during WWII; a Radio 4 10 part serial. Afterword; Jeremy Holmes. Havign just read Tennis Shoes in our children's reading group I am really looking forward to this one.

October 17th 2pm and 7pm

Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet

A deeply empathetic novel about the real life of the Scottish child prodigy who lived from 1803—11.




Reading Days at Brook Cottage

The reading days are held on Sundays, from 10.30am – 4.30pm, starting with coffee and home-made biscuits, finishing with tea and scones, shared lunch in the middle and, oh! we’ll discuss some books too! There will be more dates in the autumn, to follow.

January 7th

We’re going to be looking at two short-story writers: Alice Munro and Ali Smith. The Alice Munro is one to put on your Christmas list (or order from the library!) as it is just out in hardback to tremendous reviews. It’s called The View from Castle Rock. Ali Smith’s is The Whole Story. I hope that Christmas will be a good time to dip into these short stories, and I look forward to discussing them with you.

April 15th

This time I am asking for suggestions, on the theme of books published in the 70’s. This was a very exciting period for contemporary writing, especially “for and by women” and I hope we’ll have a good trip down memory lane!

Please nominate your chosen book(s) prior to our meeting on January 7th.


June 3rd

To continue the theme, this time we will look at “books that changed our lives”. Don’t be proud about this one! If it changed your life we want to know about it!

Please nominate your chosen book(s) prior to our meeting on April 15th.

July 15th

Today we are going to look at Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean alongside Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson. Background reading (for want of a better term!) is the wonderful Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

And that's as far as we go for now! there will be other Reading for Pleasure events coming up throughout the year, so do keep an eye on the web site. If you haven't yet read Daniel Pennac's wonderful The Rights of the Reader (Walker Books £6.99) do get hold of it and read it as soon as you can. It will inform everything we do and everything you read!

Readers' Trip to Venice

We are standing in a corner of the Campo San Stefano looking up at the Palazzo Barbaro. The building is tall and narrow. The worn flagstones beneath our feet are covered in a drift of red, pink and yellow leaves. Green grey water slaps gently against the prow of a gondola and an expensive motor launch moored in the side canal below us. The morning mist is slow to rise.

“Henry James was a real old gossip,” Anne is telling us. “He was obsessed with his bowels …”

And immediately Henry James springs to life, his shadow falling across the Campo as he walks plotting ‘The Aspern Papers’, the story inspired by a piece of gossip concerning an ex mistress of Lord Byron’s and some letters written by Shelley. Maybe he’d just been discussing this with his friends, the Curtis’s inside the Palazzo.



OUR GRAND LITERARY TOUR (October 24th - 28th, 2006)

Before we left England, Anna asked me if I’d do a write up of our time in Venice; a sort of ‘aide-mémoire’ as she put it. fortunately our two expert guide/companions, Michael and Anne, are doing a much more focused, academic account. Not only did their history lessons surpass anything taught at school, but their ability to evoke the spirits of dead writers and turn them into living, breathing acquaintances meant that we spent a few enchanted days in the presence of Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Casanova, and A.E. Housman. And Henry James - to name but a few. And when we turn the pages of the next ‘Donna Leon’ we’ll be able to visualise Guido Brunetti hurrying along the Calle della Madoneta then up the stairs to his apartment where Paola is preparing supper bought at the Rialto market. Just as if we re-read ‘Miss Garnet’ we can imagine her in the Dorsoduro, gazing from her small balcony towards the church of the Archangel Raphael, thinking about the wonderful panels there: or maybe just about Carlo.

Venice was a visual feast. The contributions to this account from members of our group make up a picture book - not a diary. I haven’t recorded the day or the time when I stood on the Accademia Bridge looking way down the curve of the Grand Canal and seeing a vast billow of rose-hued clouds set against the blue sky, like a painting by Canaletto. Without any reference to notes the time sequence collapses into this feast of colour and images. Of mist, then sunlight. Of coffee drunk mid-morning in the open air at different bars, the labyrinth of alley ways, canals, the crowded vaporetti, the secret gardens where you least expect them. And first and last, simply - the friendship that grew over the next few days.

Anna, Hilary, Michael and Anne had talked about a trip to Venice months ago, based on some of the literature that had grown out of that city. So with eternally grateful thanks to their idea, then all the careful detail and hard work that went into it, ten of us flew by EasyJet to Marco Polo airport, arriving in warm sunshine on a Tuesday afternoon. Barbara, Julie and Wendy stayed in the Hotel Alla Salute. Anna, Hilary, Dreda and Susan, Phoebe, Merle and I stayed at the Locanda Antica Venezia whose atmosphere went back down the centuries. We were about five minutes away from St. Mark’s Square and five minutes from the Teatro La Fenice.

Merle, Phoebe and I had our own ‘suite’ - four flights up - ; it felt like eight. My bedroom can be viewed on the internet. It had a vaulted ceiling cross-hatched with old beams. My double bed and another double bed in an alcove. It smacked of intrigue; of mystery. Casanova probably made love in that room, bitten by mosquitoes. Certainly, Guido Brunetti could have been summonsed up there to solve a murder. Each morning I saw the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square, leaning insistently through a grey mist, and when the mist cleared another world of sloping terracotta tiles, church and bell towers, roof gardens full of red geraniums, revealed itself.

The two hotels were separated by several vaporetti stops, or a walk over the Accademia Bridge reached by way of the labyrinthine alley ways and canals. After a day or two the geography fell into place. When Anne and Michael weren’t in the lead, Hilary was the expert. The Campo San Stefano was a central meeting point. There were landmarks directing the way back to the Locanda Antica. One was the shop where the beautiful dark, dark navy jacket with silvery geometric patterns beckoned from the window. It became known as Susan’s jacket. But she didn’t buy it! ; There were several nights when we’d cross the small bridge and see on our right above the water the casa with the big long window, the drapes inside pulled back to show the room dimly lit by a Murano glass chandelier. A soft glow filling the window. It would have been no surprise to see a masked figure appear there, then fade into the glow like a spectre from another century.

On our first morning we visited the imposing Ca’rezzonica, once the home of the poet Robert Browning who died there in 1889, and whose lines: ‘Open my heart and you will see/Graved upon it Italy’ are now fixed in my head forever.

We drank coffee in the Campo San Barnaba.
“That’s where Brunetti’s father-in-law lives,” somebody said, pointing out an apartment above the water, close by. Purple cyclamen and white petunias spilled from window boxes. In the Campo, Venetians were going about their daily business, newspapers tucked under an arm, or carrying shopping bags and bunches of fresh flowers home. The usual dogs greeted each another and were at once pulled away by their owners. A dog beneath one of the tables snarled at all of them.

We finish our coffee and move on at speed following each other down a maze of alley ways. Suddenly all the tourists have gone. I’m in a place where there are no full washing lines strung up high between opposite apartments. I’ve lost sight of our group and am aware of a subtle change in the atmosphere, a silence - as if something is about to happen. Then Donald Sutherland’s back disappears at the top of a flight of steps and into a building, in pursuit of a figure dressed in a red mac.
Venice does this to you!

Then we find ourselves within a stone’s throw of the Grand Canal in the Parish of San Samuele, birthplace of the illustrious Giacomo Casanova, near to Ca’Mocenigo, Byron’s home.

“When things got too hot for him in England, Byron legged it,” Anne tells us. “He had an affair with the local baker’s wife.” Among others, that is. We can imagine the dough rising, smell the yeast, see the Poet flicking a smidgeon of flour from the lady’s cheek, and wonder how he had the energy to swim the length of the Grand Canal, club foot and all …

Anne led us down the narrowest calle to a small jetty. The choppy waters of the Grand Canal were busy with packed vaporetti, freight barges and the gondolieri, some serenading their tourist fare, and across the water the Palazzo where Wagner composed Tristan and Isolde. The architecture on both sides of the Canal is simply breathtaking, diverse and splendid. We stood on the jetty, inches above the depth of the water.

“George Eliot stayed in a hotel with her partner just round that corner,” said Anne. “He jumped from a window into the canal … on their honeymoon …”
It was the way she told it!

“Venice is a dream,” writes Dreda. “Michael and Anne made you wake up to the hidden wonders of that dream …”

Their favourite restaurant, Ai’Cugnai was a dream. Family run, handsome grandsons front of house, mother, father, grandmother: great aunt - the one most in love with Michael - all looking after each other, and us. We had a fantastic meal there on our last evening. Lots of wine and Prosecco. And plenty of wine, Prosecco, and agua, at Osteira alla Bothegha, on our second evening. We weren’t driving, after all.

All this was in front of us when we sat eating pizzas at the Bar San Vidale on Tuesday night, our first night in Venice. I can almost see time running past as I write this and remember.

“Although I have enjoyed all aspects of the tour, my favourite bits have actually been when we’ve been sitting around sharing food and wine together as friends - that has been really special.”

Anna has written that. How true. Our meals together were memorable - at the Arteblu restaurant in the Campo San Stefano for the deliciously thin shavings of Parma ham, and the juicy mozzarella cheese covering the plate; so much you thought you’d never get through it, but it just melted away in the mouth. And memorable because we sat outside in hazy sunshine watching Venetian life in the Campo, seeing, as Susan has written, supreme elegance and tat side by side. Venetian ladies with fine thin noses and ankles walking their imperious dogs. The North African bag sellers ever mindful of the polizia. The very old and the very young with their Philipino minders. And of course the sloppily dressed tourists with their cameras.
Because we learnt so much outside the guide books, we were not ‘tourists’

Michael made Venetian history feel as if it had only just happened. Through him we felt the anguish of the heroic Manin when we stood by his statue in the Campo Manin. When we learnt about the plague victims we felt the strange atmosphere surrounding their burial ground - as if their souls hovered there, never to leave.

There’s just too much that is beautiful, or splendid, or awesome to record. The haunted palace so adored by Henry James, Ca’Dario - whether cursed or not, sailing past it on the vaporetto down the Grand Canal, seeing more opulence, more palazzos and knowing some of their history was a privilege.

“What news on the Rialto?” Antonio may well have asked. Now what would he make of the great surge of foreign tourists on that famous bridge? Paola Brunetti remarked on them. She blamed them for making her late cooking Guido’s supper.

The Rialto was bustling, thronging with people elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, market stalls on both sides, leather, scarves, bags, lemons, pomegranates, toys, aubergines …

I bought a brown leather bag in two minutes and haven’t regretted it since.
Michael told us all about the Bridge of Sighs. Then a late lunch.

Old and new together. Phoebe writes that the second time she visited the Basilica, she joined ‘the thousands’ shuffling through. The first time she went, in the half light of the very early morning, St. Mark’s Square was almost empty. She entered through a side door and during the next half hour watched while tasks were performed by a few ‘solitary men’. Lights turned on, candles lit, the reading selected. Microphones tested. Then at eight o’clock the service began. Two priests with a congregation of two. Finally the numbers swelled to eight.


On Thursday the Chiesa San Vidal was packed. The Interpreti Veneziani were performing Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, followed by Bach, then Mendelssohn. Wendy, Julie, Barbara, Phoebe, Merle and I sat in our seats waiting for the concert to begin. The man in front of me, next to Merle and Phoebe, was reading a book: one of Donna Leon’s. It seemed like the beginning of a movie. Finally, the ensemble, all wearing black, took their positions on the stage. Donna Leon presented the perfect opportunity to chat.

The gentleman and his wife were staying in an apartment near to St. Mark’s Square. He invited the six of us to go back with him and meet her after the concert. She had read nearly all Donna Leon’s books. He was working his way through them. But it was 10.30 p.m. We declined: for his wife’s sake as well as our own.
“Tell her to read ‘Miss Garnet’s Angel’,” we said, as we all parted in the Campo Stefano.

One of the attractions in the Campo and near to St. Mark’s was the man ‘playing’ the upturned wine glasses to an admiring crowd. ‘Autumn’ from Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ echoing Thursday night’s concert. Everything old linked to the new. Venice is timeless.

The sun didn’t shine at all on Friday, the day Anne took us to the Ghetto; the saddest part of that beautiful city, though a part nevertheless. Its awful history seemed to come out at us through its dark walls and really did catch us unprepared, for the depth of feeling it evoked. This was tempered by a lot of teenagers fooling around within its walls, and not giving a damn for their surroundings: its mood had escaped them. We looked at the Holocaust memorial, depicted by seven plaques set into a wall, and then we came away. The change in the atmosphere was palpable. In a sense I know we’ll never ‘come away’.

The atmosphere changed in Venice with every step we took. The shops were wonderful, their window displays like nowhere else I can remember. Hand made marbled paper, shining glass, every sort of cake from chocolate to pistachio, and rows of ornately decorated bottles of different liqueurs.

Then there was the shop with every colour of artist pigments laid out in trays in their window, their luminosity reflected in the City’s buildings and their beautiful marble and mosaic floors: ochre, sienna, Naples yellow, rose madder, gold.

There was every kind of colour on the canal boat vegetable stall in the Campo San Barnaba, from scarlet pimentos to bright green bunches of parsley. That was on our way to visit Miss Garnet in the Parish of the Archangel Raphael in the Dorsoduro.

We’d all read the book by Salley Vickers. This occasion was a treat for us all. Because of Julia Garnet the Church had an atmosphere all of its own which is impossible to describe. I felt as if I was seeing columns, marble, the wooden statue of the Angel with Tobias, through someone else’s eyes - Miss Garnet’s. On entering this Church, we were met by a ‘madman’, the Guardian, who did a lot of gesticulating whilst letting out streams of indecipherable Italian. Why? ; None of us knew. Even Anne was perplexed. However, he calmed down and we were able to steep ourselves in Julia Garnet’s world. Then afterwards (or was it before?) we tried to guess which one of the apartments by the Church was hers. On which balcony had she entertained Tobias and Sarah? We thought we could tell …

Still no sunshine, that Friday. In the afternoon we stood in the Piazza San Marco with Michael. He talked about A.E. Housman, about L.P. Hartley and their gondolier lovers. The four horses on the Loggia dei Cavalii on the Basilica looked across and over our heads. Above us soared the Campanile. In front, the oddly structured Doge’s Palace. And everywhere the pigeons. Tourists stood ankle deep in them, feeding them, being photographed; a bird on each hand and one on the head. Meanwhile tea was being served over at Florian’s. ; Everything was here. The Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance, Byzantine.

But what I hear when I remember that afternoon is Michael reciting a poem by A.E. Housman, which ends with the lines: ‘It shall not last for ever,/ No more than earth and skies;/But he that drinks in season/Shall live before he dies.’

At night the pigeons went home to roost, leaving the Piazza relatively deserted. I walked there one late evening. An orchestra played outside Quadri’s. Three or four couples danced together in perfect time to the music. They had the freedom of that whole square. Sometimes they would move out of the light, just becoming shadows.

That is one of the countless pictures I have. For Phoebe it might be her moments spent alone in the Basilica, or the purple bag she saw in a shop window on her first evening, then couldn’t find the calle where it was, the next day.

For Anna and Dreda, the splendid interior of La Fenice which they queued to see on Saturday morning, our last, and a glorious sunny day.

Susan will probably remember the cup of solid chocolate after an evening visit to San Marco. And the shop that reminded her of Miss Garnet buying a silk dress and underwear.

“Did I really see Whoopie Goldberg coming out from the Piazza San Marco?” Susan has written.

Well, probably, since everyone who is someone appears to have been to this City: it draws like a magnet.

Wendy will certainly remember her hotel proprietor whose jaw dropped open with alarm when she, Wendy, politely asked if she could have a cup of tea.

So many recollections from us all would need many more pages. I’ve left out too much. We’ll have to go again and catch up with Proust, Hemingway, Goethe and Thomas Mann. Not to mention the Old Masters, or all the lovely scarves we didn’t buy.

We left that enchanted city in the early afternoon of October 28th, in lovely weather. Our airport bound boat, loaded with similar passengers and their luggage swept us away from St. Mark’s basin, away from the sunlit sugar coated façade of the Doge’s palace and the serene view of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, and thence to Marco Polo airport in one hour.

It’s difficult to know how to end because there is no end to Venice, so we’ll let Miss Garnet do it for us ‘when she sees for the first time the Santa Maria della Salute, the church which breasts the entrance to Venice’s Grand Canal’

‘ “Oh!” cried Miss Garnet. She caught at her throat and then at Harriet’s veil, scrabbling it back from her eyes to see more clearly. And oh, the light!
“Lord, Lord,” sighed Julia Garnet.’

Lysbeth Pead,
November 2006

A readerly weekend; what bliss...

Friday night was Venice and Salley Vickers; what a wonderful combination. Salley was charming, learned, erudite and gorgeous; I think most of us (regardless of gender) fell in love with her on the spot! The evening also served as a reunion for those of us who had been on the Readers' Trip to Venice (see earlier post), and although it had only been a couple of weeks since we returned from Venice, it really felt like a reunion of old friends.

Saturday was more local: we launched Di Bryan's new book "Ditton Prior's - a settlement of the Brown Clee". It was a fabulous launch, with non-stop tea and cake at our famous round table and queues to the door for most of the afternoon.

And Sunday? Well, on Sunday I recovered from all the hyper-activity of the previous two days by (of course!) settling down on the sofa with a book to read. And what a book it was ~ The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac. At £6.99, published by Walker Books, I had picked it up in a vaguely interested way when one of my customers ordered it from me a week or two ago. Then in the mayhem of Saturday, I briefly picked it up at lunch time and was immediately hooked. For anyone to whom reading is important, this is a must read. Especially for parents, grand-parents, teachers, booksellers, librarians, teenagers, readers, ok! ok! you get the picture; everyone should read this book!

Its a book about the magic of reading, and especially the magic of being read to. It gets away from all the hype about books (books as conversation fillers at dinner parties, books as sacred cows, books as badges of intelligence and culture) and gets right into the idea of a book as er, something to read? Something that tells a story; a gateway that takes us to another world and in doing so brings us back to ourselves.

Beautifully translated from the French by Sarah Adams this book made me cry, made me smile, reminded me of books I had forgotten, reminded me why I am passionate about reading, and made me determined to tell everyone I know about it. Do not deny yourselves this treat: and when you've read it, pass it on.