I love looking at the book supplements and colour mags at this time of the year with all the recommendations for Chrissy pressies. The great and the good and the litterati come up with their list of tomes and I am sure they are chosen for effect and to show high frightfully intellectual they all are. OK I admit that Does a Penguin Fart and Tales for the Toilet stocking filler type books are pretty naff, but there is a middle line to be taken.
Now middle line is me to a T. Actually, I freely admit to being a bit lower than the middle line and love to read trashy romances and happy after ever books that have No Literary Merit Whatsoever. So sue me....
Anyway, I have recieved so many gorgeous books in the last few weeks and catalogues and press releases and I simply have to tell you about them. Some I have read, some I have not but here we go:
I am starting this series of blogs with Slightly Foxed. I know that most of you who visit me here know all about this simply gorgeous publishing house. Started ten years ago with a quarterly full of delights and articles about books new and old, published and out of print, beautifully illustrated and written by excellent authors. Since that small start they have gone from strength to strength and I was lucky enough to attend their birthday party in the summer where it was clear that they were going to be around for a long long time.
The next step after the success of the Quarterly was established was to reprint selected books that the Foxes loved and would like to see back in the public domain. These titles are limited, numbered editions, only 2,000 printed at a time and are bound in cloth, no dustjacket to get tatty and torn, red, grey, blue covers stamped with gold. They now number 28 and if you have missed any of the earlier ones, these are now being reprinted in a smaller paperback format, also wonderfully collectible.
The latest is My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and I remember reading this for the first time about seven years ago, for some reason it had passed me by, and I ended up helpless with laughter and giggling weakly for hours after I had finished it. I am sure that many of you will know this book already, but this edition cries out to be bought. I think I may treat myself to this.....
I own quite a few of these titles in the hardback and paperback editions and love them all. Apart from anything else, they are just the right size to slip into a handbag.
And then we come to the Fox Cubs and the Ronald Welch Carey novels, written between 1954 and 1972 telling the fortunes of the same family from the Crusades up to World War one. I have already mentioned these on Random and have no hesitation in mentioning them again and urging you to check them out. I read all of these as a teenager and am enjoying them all over again after a gap of fifty years. I have three and will be buying the others as they are issued.
And then of course, there are Slightly Foxed calendars, postcards, bags, notebooks - I have to apply incredible self control when I visit their website.
Here are a few links to previous posts on Slightly Foxed on Random Jottings.
I am delighted to see that a quote from my review of the Dodie Smith Look Back with Love edition has been used in their catalogue. Fame at last!!
