I’m spending Easter in Sweden with Mr. Bibliomouse, and so haven’t been able to post for a while. However, we did find an amazingly lovely English bookshop in Stockholm, down a little alleyway, and this was in the window. The image quality isn’t brilliant, since the photo was taken through glass, but it’s so sweet that I had to post it. More about Sweden and the lovely bookshop later. Meanwhile, enjoy Easter and read a book (and eat chocolate, obviously…)!
Wendy Cope is one of my favourite modern poets. Her work is both poignant and funny, often in the same poem, and totally relatable. This anthology is subtitled ‘Selected poems 1979- 2006′, and includes work from Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Serious Concerns, and If I Don’t Know, as well as some previously unpublished poems.
The thing that makes this collection particularly interesting is that it has notes on all of the poems at the end. In the introduction Cope notes that, when Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis was set as an A-level text, several years ago, many of the pupils (and indeed teachers) did not always recognise the in-jokes, references and parodies that her work involves. The notes aim to address this, and give further insight into her poetry, and sense of humour.
Two Cures for Love includes some of my favourite Cope poems, such as ‘Defining the Problem’, ‘From June to December’, ‘The Orange’ and ‘Names’, and is a wonderful introduction to Cope’s deceptively clever poetry.
The Literary Gift Company is a fab website that sells a huge range of literary-themed gifts (I guess the clue’s in the name with this one). I’ve picked some of my favourites, but there’s so many wonderful things to browse that it’s easy to waste hours on the site.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a bit of a crush on anything owl-themed, so this necklace combines two of my favourite things- books and owls. They’re lovely little wols, with great character, and I can see this being a bit of a permanent fixture around my neck. It’s £20, including the chain, and the range also includes earrings and a brooch.
These little beauties are the Ollie Owl bookends. There are lots of different animal bookends on the site, including cats, monkeys and elephants, but obviously my choice would be the owls. Although I have three double-lined bookcases in my (rather tiny) flat, I still have masses of books piled on two little shelves in my room. These are always threatening to collapse and scare the life out of me in the middle of the night, and I like to think that Ollie the Owl bookends would keep them under control (or at least on the shelves. I don’t think the bookends can be trained to stack books more neatly). They’re £16.95 and are made of linen and faux leather.
I was given this mug for Christmas, and it sums up how happy I am when I get distracted or disturbed when I’m immersed in a good book (although it might be slightly more polite than I tend to be…). Apart from being really quite lovely in terms of simplicity, colour and font (I’m a geek), it’s also made of bone china so it’s very thin at the top, which would please Mother Mouse greatly. It’s £9.99, and well worth it.
This quotation from Louisa M. Alcott is one of the site’s most popular designs, and comes on a tote bag, a tea towel and a mug, as well as this notebook. Little Women is one of those books that I used to read at least twice a year, and I was a lot like Jo March, the tomboy who was most often found in a tree-house with her nose in a book. My brain has well and truly been turned by too many books, and would proudly show off that fact by waving this notebook around. It’s £7.95 and has a lovely red ribbon bookmark.
This book made my week when we received a copy at work, and it’s now our ‘Book of the Month’. It’s a very simple and very relevant picture book about how technology is making books redundant (to some). A donkey pesters his friend, a hat-wearing ape, about what features his book has, not understanding that it doesn’t need to be able to send tweets or texts or emails, because ‘IT’S A BOOK!’. Eventually the donkey gets caught up in reading and forgets about his previous insistence on technology. It’s a lovely book, with great illustrations and wit. Although it seems to be aimed at children, this would make a fab gift for anyone who loves books, and laments the rise of the e-book etc. (It’s not available as for the kindle, or other e-readers. Which makes me happy).
