Lovely Stuff

On Wednesday I read at Bad Language at The Castle Hotel in Manchester. It's a great literature night. The performance space is lovely and the crowd is enthusiastic and friendly. I really enjoyed the open mic readings by Stephen James, Jasmine Chatfield, Alex Webb, Brandon Bissell, Bissell, Roger Fenton, Stephen Quinlan, Anna Percy, Ros Ballinger, John Lean and Dave Hartley.  If you fancy an open mic slot at Bad Language, check out their website (see link above). 

On Thursday I read at Urmston Bookshop. Frances and Peter who own the shop are absolutely fabulous. Not only was there a special, Issy Bradley window, they'd also asked the lovely Cath Martin to bake an Issy Bradley cake.

I got to meet Naomi Frisby, book blogger extraordinaire, for the second time (Naomi was one of the first people to read my novel). And afterwards, Peter drove me to a more distant station so I could get an earlier train home than planned. I waited on a bench on the platform surrounded by presents: a cake box, a lovely notebook and a copy of The Miniaturist - it felt like my birthday.

On the train home I finished Ali Smith's How to be Both. I don't know whether I've ever written about the first time I came across Ali Smith (if I have, I'm about to repeat myself) but it was while I was doing my BA. She was featured in an Open University DVD about Sunset Song and she was so genuine and enthusiastic that I went down to my local library (which was knocked down a couple of months ago - ugh) and borrowed her short story collections. She's such an extraordinary writer - playful, clever and original. How to be Both is all those things, but it also deals with bigger themes - grief, mortality, love - in a really thought-provoking way. The novel is divided into 2 sections. Some editions begin with one section and some begin with the other. My edition began with Francesco and concluded with George. I'm glad it did. I *think* it's the way I would have preferred it to be. But I'm not 100% certain - how could I be certain, having read Francesco and George's musings about the different ways of seeing and looking, and whether the first thing we see can really be described as 'first'? - I'll never really know for sure. And I like that.