In the last week, the postman has brought three classy books.
I won a copy of Maggie Gee's Virginia Woolf in Manhattan on Twitter (Saqi Books asked which woman writer we would most like to meet, I said Ismat Chughtai). Lovely to have this gorgeous hardback to add to my bookshelves. And I very much look forward to reading (though my TBR pile is simply scary).
My publisher, The Friday Project, sent me up Charles Lambert's wonderfully titled With a Zero at its Heart. It's getting great reviews. Though as I am in the fragile process of fictionalising childhood and fathers - at such a snail's place it feels like slow motion, but I will get there, fingers crossed - that I may hold off on reading it. This meticulously constructed book of fragmented, themed memories is very different to my novella-in-progress - but you don't necessarily want another writer's (brilliant) words to be in your head when you are writing. Though I won't be able to resist and will dip in. It's a beautiful book to touch too.
And I ordered the second edition of Dr Melvin Ramsay's 1986 book on ME: Postviral Fatigue Syndrome: The saga of Royal Free Disease from the ME Association. My original copy from the mid-80s is worn out so I wanted to update. This is such an important, informative and honest text - I just wish more doctors and health editors and journalists would read it and educate themselves. And the references to Professor Behan and Coxsackie virus in west of Scotland in 80s, obviously resonate for me.
And last but not least, I love this moth, it looks embroidered.
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