Another month passed, and it was momentous in lots of ways. It was our thirtieth wedding anniversary, and we had a trip over to Venice for the first time. Well worth going if you can. I did take a small pile of books with me to read whilst there too. I like reading about a place whilst there.
Anyway, onto the book.ish coming and goings for the month of April.
Books Read
Slow Trains To Venice – Tom Chesshyre – 4
A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance – Marlena de Blasi – 3
Venice: A Literary Guide for Travellers – Marie-Jose Gransard – 2.5
Collected Poems – Wendy Cope – Female – 3.5
Shape Of Light: 100 Years Of Photography And Abstract Art – Simon Baker & Emmanuelle de L’Ecotais – 3.5
A Year in the Life: Adventures in British Subcultures – Lucy Leonelli – 4
Samarkand: Recipes & Stories From Central Asia & the Caucasus – Caroline Eden & Eleanor Ford – 4
The North Pole: The Hhistory Of An Obsession – Erling Kagge – 3.5
The English Path – Kim Taplin – 4
Madagascar – Gian Paolo Barbieri (Photographer), Carola Lodari – 3.5
Weathering – Ruth Allen – 2.5
Seascape: Notes From A Changing Coastline – Matthew Yeomans – 4
Book(s) Of The Month
Venice – James Morris – Male – 5
Top Genres
Travel – 13
Natural History – 6
Fiction – 6
Photography – 5
Poetry – 4
Top Publishers
Faber & Faber – 3
Picador – 3
Eland – 3
Summersdale – 2
English Heritage – 2
Review Copies Received
Welcome To Paradise – Mahi Binebine & Lulu Norman (Tr)
To Have And To Hold – Sophie Pavelle
Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides – Tom Chesshyre
We Came By Sea – Horatio Clare
Lifelines: Finding a Home in the Mountains of Greece – Julian Hoffman
Library Books Checked Out
The North Pole: The History Of An Obsession – Erling Kagge
Eliot’s Book Of Bookish Lists – Henry Eliot
The Accidental Garden: Gardens, Wilderness And The Space In Between – Richard Mabey
The Corn Bride – Mark Stay+
Books Bought
As I have said elsewhere, I am trying to buy fewer books. So I will give totals of l the number of books that enter my house and those that leave permanently. These are the figures for April:
April Books in: 21
April Books out: 10 (The books leaving the house were sold, returned to the library or passed on to friends or charity. This number needs to be higher than the one above!!!). I kept these below:
Chesil Beach: A Peopled Solitude – Judith Stinton
A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East – Tiziano Terzani
Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time – Kapka Kassabova (Signed)
Anima: A Wild Pastoral – Kapka Kassabova (Signed)
A Training School for Elephants – Sophy Roberts (Signed)
Fenwomen – Mary Chamberlin (Signed)
Cinnamon City: Falling for the Magical City of Marrakech – Miranda Innes
Tripping the Flight Fantastic: Adventures in Search of the World’s Cheapest Air Fare – Andrew Fraser
The Cerne Giant: Landscape, Gods and the Stargate – Peter Knight (Signed)
The Making of a Marchioness – Frances Hodgson Burnett
So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.
Elixir has been on my shelf for a good while and keeps getting overlooked!
It is well worth reading.I had the pleasure of meeting her in April and she is truly lovely.
Happy Anniversary! Why did the Wendy Cope only get 3.5 stars? Was it that Eliot sequence? I always struggle with that in the individual volume. I ask because I have the big volume too!
I liked it but didn’t love it. It did seems to go on and on, but I think that was the perils of having to read it in a week to return it to the library. It is a book to be dipped into
That makes sense. I was going to read it through 20 Books of Summer but it didn’t make the Pile. But I’ll do it bit by bit.