Reading

I have been very slow to read this dynamic, robust meditation on creativity of all kinds. It was first published in the UK in 2015 and I have trudged towards it, largely - I am ashamed to admit, because I was suspicious of the explosively joyful cover and the front and centre recommendation by the Mail on Sunday. But thank goodness I finally surmounted these superficial obstacles because this is the pep talk that all creative folk need in times of doldrum or imaginative paralysis.

By Catrina Davies (Riverrun, 2019)

I have read a great deal of non-fiction this year because, I think, the Covid-19 pandemic has felt such a shocking twist in our collective narrative that I have not wanted to absorb myself in make-believe.  Instead, I’ve wanted to anchor myself in real people and real events.

Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury, 2019)

I read this memoir-history during the hot May of lockdown but it occurs to me that Mudlarking would be a lovely companion for the long, cold evenings of November or February when reading in front of the fire is infinitely preferable to actually sloshing around in the freezing mud of the Thames. 

Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press, 2020)

I bought Hamnet having looked at a weather forecast that showed large raindrops for each day of the forthcoming week, and double raindrops on several days. I needed a really fine novel to carry me through the impending sogginess.