The best this year.

Yesterday I listened to a radio pragram about books for 'young adults'. What I missed in the program was the voices of 'young adults' speaking for themselves. What are they reading? Not what books are people buying for them to read.

With Christmas coming up I had hoped that the program would give some ideas about new titles that are out but while the program did talk about how it seemed that books for young adults is a growing market ( partly because so many grown ups read them too) it went little further than that in half an hour.

So I decided to ask my children what their favorite books of the year were. The hope is that if we post ours then all those who read this can add theirs in the form of comments and with luck we can get something going that isn't just a bland article that follows a marketing trend, but a true word of mouth reflection of what people are reading and what they love. Ask your kids too, if you have them, both big and small. And flag up this blog posting to friends and fellow bloggers to get them to join in. The more the merrier.

Hannah ( aged 16).

1. Collection of poems by Seamus Heaney from school.

2. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Tom ( aged 18)

1. A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin and all of the books that come after that one.

We found this book when I asked our editor at Harper Collins who could replace Robin Hobb now that we had read all of her books.

Me ( aged 49)

1. The Hummingbird's Daughter by Loius Alberto Urrea.

2. Firebrand by Gillian Philip

3. The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff

4. There are No Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz. I heard her read this at the Starlit Festival in Hackney and she was great. Lovely book for  really young children because it is just fun.
5. The Arrival special edition by Shaun Tan.   Couldn't find it on Amazon, but it is an amazing box set with hardback book and a hardback sketchbook included, sort of like dvd extras. Beautiful set for anyone who loves illustrated books and likes to see the working out behind them.
6. The Firebird by Saviour Pirotta and Catherine Hyde. Beautiful. Also The Princess's Blankets by Catherine and Carol Ann Dufy, a love story. These are picture books for all ages. I have the hardback with the slip case which is a very beautiful object. Templar are just the best at the moment when it comes to book design.
7. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. I read this afterlistening to a radio program about the book with Meg Rosoff talking about it. You can see when you read it why its fame has been so long lived. A wonderful piece of gripping writing that is such an incredible observation of children, relationships.

And this year again my book has been included in Mr. B's roundup of books for Christmas. Their catalogue, available online, by post or from the shop in Bath, is a wonderful guide for the best books of the year, all chosen by the staff rather than a list paid for by publishers. So much in it and every time I look I see more that I want. If you follow the link to their page you can download their catalogue, and get 10% off anything on it. I love the look of Atlas of Remote Islands, which they claim is the 'most beautiful book of the year'.

Hours.

A day of wild weather and now the wind is lashing the side of the house, slamming itself in a fury at the walls. It is very dark, although stars shine. I am glad that I finished Dark Matter by Michelle Paver before the dark descended. ( This was my book from Mr B's this month and when I opened it I was a little worried as I did not read The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. But right from teh first I found it compulsive)

I tried to work in peace. A whole day strectch ahead full of hope this morning. Parcels dropped off where they should be, children at school then away for the evening. But fate had other ideas and anger and frustration set in and some work was done, but nowhere near enough. Nowhere near enough.

Tomorrow is another day. Will try again. And will also try to tackle the mess monster around what I hope this time will be serious hours of working steadily.

 

Green light

Early morning sunlight on vegetables made the garden beautiful. Later today I will turn the spinach into bhaji and the courgettes into a prawn and courgette Indian dish. For now they look glorious.

Much to do. In teh garden there is spinach and leeks, courgettes and beetroot, a few roses clinging to the memory of summer and some honeysuckle. Also passionflowers climbing and twisting up the wall and the drain pipe. And ginger cats. The flowers on Kiffer's grave are strong.

1. Sign books for The Mill.

2. Tidy up computer desk and work table. ( I keep buying things, and saying, I will put this on my desk. Soon there will be no room to work. But I have a beautiful Amanda Popham sculpture that needs to sit on a desk, so it needs space.)

3. Draw out and begin to paint KNRT calendar painting. ( Maybe squeeze in a ginger cat and a polar bear?)

4. Roughs for I Am Cat.

5. Blog post. ( Listening to the lovely Karine Polwart singing.)

6. Check that there is an Ice Bear Powerpoint, and dragons and Little Bear for trip away in October.

7. Make list.

8.Walk dogs.

10. Find moments to read The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor. ( This is my book for September from Mr B's Emporium and it will have to be a good one to follow on from the wonderful Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. His book still haunts me. Such a wonderful story so well told.)

11. Work on website and links on blog to website, and hang new work in The House of Golden Dreams.

Hare and the moon.

A day of reading, walking, small painting, thinking. In the daytime sky a swelling moon. In the mind a dancing hare kicks at the drum of the full moon.

Loving the luxury of losing myself in a world of words. Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas could have been written for me and there is something very special about having an intimate conection with teh geographical landscape of the novel. It is set around Dartmouth and Torcross, a place where I thought I would live at one time in my life, and a place that I love. A couple of years ago I revisited old haunts and it was every bit as wonderful as I remembered.

The small painting of the hare is for sale, unframed via The House of Golden Dreams.

Mice, birds, books and sheets in the wind.

Days slip by. Outside a new moon is bright but slight in a blue, dark sky. Walking the evening away with new camera in a boggy place. There are rabbits in plenty in the dry places and the dogs love to run, and the daisies have gone to sleep and closed their eyes against the coming dark. The day has been spent in painting four and twenty white mice, getting a print from Jane, walking in bluebell woods at Abermawr.

And we found a new and beautiful path with a fast flowing narrow river and stepping stones and an ancient watercourse through an old stone wall.

At the beginning of the month I was sent another book from Mr B's in Bath. Always a mystery, this package was wonderfully filled with promise, a heavy weight. And sure enough when I opened it the cover was beautiful, the pages smooth and the blurb inviting. But I was still reading Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, not because it was dull and slow going, rather because I had been so busy with work. So I pushed aside work for short periods in the day and sank into Paul Murray's wonderful book and now am lost at sea with We The Drowned. I do love Mr B's. They just have such a great idea of what I will love.

Some things that I have done over the past few days.

1. Counted white mice from one to four and twenty.

2. Watched the azure swallows fly low across the fields.

3. Stood in the garden at five in the morning and listened to the cuckoo call across silver frosted fields.

4. Spoke to woman in US about new project and meetings and still, in a way, feel none the wiser, but quietly hoping to make the right choices. Exciting.

5. Sold a small painting and wrapped it and packed it and sent it out on a very long journey across to the other side of the wide wide wonderful world.

6. Lost myself in a vicious sea battle.

7. Walked, in bluebell woods down the path to the sea, in a bog filled with irises and king cups. And Hannah said she saw a dragon fly.

8. Bought a new camera, very much like the old one, but clean, a Nikon D3000, from my wonderful camera advisor, Ivan, at Celtic Vision. He is still thinking about what I should get to replace my small camera that I lost.

9. Talked to the weasels.

10. Made the bed with clean sheets that smell so good, though not as good as sheets that have danced with the wind on a washing line in sunshine.

11. Looked after my neighbour's horses which was a great pleasure, going out early and late into the field and wandering among them and checking the water and leaning against their dark heavy sides that smelled of horses and grass and summer while swallows flew between us. We shared an apple and they took the small pieces from my fingers with gentle velvet lips and crunched the sweetness.

Days off, birdsong and books.

This morning I woke early and listened as the birds sang the sun to rise and thought again about the symphony of birdsong that always, at some time in a day, is singing the sun to rise, somewhere in the world.

 

 

Yesterday Tom rowed out of Porthgain Harbour for an evening training session while Helen and I sat on the cliff top in the late evening sun and watched. The sky was patterned by cloud and swallows and swifts, air warm, a promise of summer. Soon he will be off to the Scilly Isles for the World Gig Racing Championships.

Today more sun and blue sky and a parcel waiting on the doorstep when we returned from dog walking and listening to a sky filled with larks. On the airfield the larks are battling for territory, their war songs so beautiful. 

The parcel was my latest instalment from Mr B's ( to find out more click on the link for Mr B's at the bottom of this post) Once again beautifully wrapped.

Inside this time, three books in one, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, published by Hamish Hamilton. Beautifully designed. So looking forward to making the time to read them. 

The days are busy, a few days off work only marred by constant headache. Back to work next week and will try and make some order and begin to move through the nursery rhyme book.

The Bone Man

In the butchers I asked if they had bones. Daughter wants roast pork and applesauce and a dvd evening. No bones they said, the bone man came and took them. He comes every Thursday. The Bone Man. Every Thursday he comes to St Davids to gather the bones. What does he look like, The Bone Man and where does he live? Perhaps with Baba Yaga in her small house that runs on legs of chickens, with an avenue of firelit skulls that lead to the door. What does he wear, The Bone Man? Perhaps a twilight cloak of stars, dark. And what does he do with the bones, The Bone Man? 

People ask me where I get my inspiration. Today I would answer, "at the butchers".

 

 

Later, while I moved too slowly through the painting for All the Pretty Horses, the postman came.

Tuesday

 

In my old journal I would always start each month with a picture of my desk. This morning, in the dark light of dawn, my desk is waiting. I need to put long hours into finishing this book now, move through to the next one. And then it will be time to tidy my studio and play a little with some of the image sthat begin to crash around inside my mind's eye demanding attention, if they do not wander off to find another artist to make them.

Apart from The House of Golden Dreams there is only one other gallery that carries my work. Reading this blog post by John, at The Imagine Gallery, makes me realise why.

Almost finished The Coral Thief, and today I hope to punctuate my working day by losing myself in the gardens in Paris where a leopard and a polar bear have been taken to the menagerie as wild animals are banned from the streets and the guillotine rules, Lucienne sleeps and Naopleon shares a painted plate decorated with an ibis with a small child called Betsy on St Helena. Mr B's promised history, mystery and the wonders of the natural world and have delivered all and more.

This is what it is

I love reading. I love that quiet time spent in another place, another country, another time, the place that books take you to. Ink and paper, the weight of a book, the smell of books, the texture of paper, beautiful. I love reading a book that has been given to me by Robin. It is almost like spending time with someone when you read their gift.

My parents gave me some money for Christmas, knowing that the year had been a hard one for me. For a while I just thought to let the everyday household budget eat the money up, but then I decided that there was something else I wanted to do with it. So I wrote to Mr B's.

Some weeks ago I had visited Mr B's and asked for a recommendation for a book that was beautiful both  to look at and to read. They handed me The Girl with Glass Feet, a heavy hardback with silver edges and an elegant cover. How well it fit the desire, beautiful to look at, hold, read. So I wrote and asked them, if I paid them a set amount of money ( I did try magic beans first but they were having none of it!), could they do this once a month for me. Could they send me an elegantly wrapped book of their choosing, beautiful to read, something to transport out of the everyday, off and away. Mr B's run an amazing 'book spa' where you can go and talk to them about books you have loved reading, things you enjoy and they recommend books for you. They already have a service where they will, for a small fee, wrap books and send them out as gifts for you, sort of like Amazon but with more style. At Christmas when I went there there were piles of books stacked high waiting to head off in the post, wrapped in brown paper and string with a seal of The Book Monkey in red.

Anyway, it seemed that Mr B's had been thinking along similar lines to the way that I was thinking, although still unsure of the mechanics of the scheme, so would I mind being a guinea pig. A book guinea pig. Bliss.

So, for the next 11 months they will carefully select something that they hope will delight my senses. This morning when the first package arrived I was hoping to leave it sitting by my work table for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. ( Too much living with cats). You can buy this service for yourself, if you feel like spoiling yourself,a feeling that I often have, or give it as a gift, sort of like a magazine subscription only books instead, and what an amazingly wonderful way to show someone that you love them with Valentine's Day coming up.  I think it would make the perfect present for a new born child, a picture book a month.

Beautiful. Now I must finish the Dragonflight which only has a few pages left, enter the world of The Coral Thief, meet the enigmatic philosopher-thief and wander the labyrinthine streets and gambling houses of Paris in 1815.
I need to make more time to read.