I’m joining in with The Year in Books, a great little project that encourages people to read more, started by Laura from Circle of Pine Trees. It’s a bit like a book club but not everyone is reading the same book, it’s purely about finding time in our busy lives to read! Each month a group of bloggers blog (or share on social media) about the book that they are intending to read and write a few thoughts about the previous month’s book. It’s a great way to discover lots of different kinds of books from other lovely, like-minded people in a much more personalised way than Amazon’s ‘you might like’ recommendations.
This month I’ve chosen Persephone Books The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray. As regular readers/Instagram followers will know, I have a bit of a thing for the dove grey books from my absolute favourite shop in London – whenever I’m feeling a little blue or under the weather, I scurry down to the shop on Lambs Conduit Street, breathe in the smell of fresh flowers and freshly printed books and leave, more often than not, with a new title under my arm feeling just that little bit refreshed. They each come with a beautiful bookmark using a fabric that was created around the same time the book was first published.
The Happy Tree, first published in 1926, tells the story of the effect of the First World War on Helen Woodruffe and her close circle of friends, including her two cousins (one of whom she’s in love with) who she grew up with on an idyllic countryside estate. Charlotte Mitchell writes in the preface: ‘The Happy Tree… records the impact of the war on a generation of women torn between an old world which had been destroyed and a new world whose rules they had not yet learned.’ It may not sound very jolly or entertaining but it’s a period of history I’m extremely drawn to, and I thought it was the ideal book to follow another exquisitely written, but slightly heavier, First World War account I just read – Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (I quite enjoyed the recent film too).
So, that’s what I’ll be curling up and reading this month, (below are a few others on my list) what have you got on your book shelf?
The aim of The Year in Books project is to read a book a month during 2015. It’s all about trying to ensure that we make space for reading in our busy lives and discover books in the process from like-minded bibliophiles.
You can join in on Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads or Pinterest using the hashtag #theyearinbooks and tagging @circleofpines on Instagram and on Twitter. Or you can participate via your blog if you have one.
There’s also a Goodreads group for this project and a Year in Books Pinterest board.
