Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy weekend, everyone!  Mine will be a little less fun than yours, at least to start off with, since I'll be at work.  But then I'm off to London to see a film that's so bad it's become a cult hit - you can read more about it here.

It's been a while since I last did a Weekend Miscellany, so I'm going to be casting my mind back a bit for some of these...

1.) Claire (Captive Reader) continues to delight me with her reading choices, mostly because they're books I love too.  I have longed for the day when a fellow blogger would fall in love with AA Milne's writing (my AAM obsession began pre-blog, where I read nearly everything he wrote, so SiaB has been less AAM-tastic than it would have been, had I begun blogging in 2001.)  Anyway, Claire has done just that - click here for her review of Milne's Autobiography.  But it doesn't end there - she's also written a stonker of a review of my favourite non-fiction read from last year, William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner's letters, The Element of Lavishness.  Go check 'em out.

2.) Lovely Merenia sent me the link to a Guardian article on 'Top 10 Literary Believers'.  As I emailed Merenia, I am appalled that John Ames (from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead) didn't make the cut.  Which believers would you add to the mix?


3.) World Book Day for Book Aid International is back on 1st March!  I'm just going to quote the blurb they sent me, as they can best tell you about their great works:

Book Aid International increases access to books and supports literacy, education and development in sub-Saharan Africa. We send over 500,000 brand new books annually to 2,000 libraries, benefiting 2.4 million people every single year. Overall, we’ve sent more than 20 million books to partner libraries since 1954. Take a look at our website for further information: www.bookaid.org

4.) Thomas has succumbed and joined A Century of Books!  Hurrah!  That makes at least six of us doing it, over the course of a year or more.

5.) Thesis restraints (not to mention A Century of Books) meant that I shan't be able to read Roz Morris's My Memories of a Future Life, but the blurb she sent me did sound intriguing:

If you were somebody’s past life…
What echoes would you leave in their soul?
Could they be the answers you need now?

It’s a question Carol never expected to face. She’s a gifted musician who needs nothing more than her piano and certainly doesn’t believe she’s lived before. But forced by injury to stop playing, she fears her life may be over. Enter her soulmate Andreq: healer, liar, fraud and loyal friend. Is he her future incarnation or a psychological figment? And can his story help her discover how to live now?

My Memories of a Future Life is much more than a twist on the traditional reincarnation tale. It is a multi-layered story of souls on conjoined journeys – in real time and across the centuries. It’s a provocative study of the shadows we don’t know are driving our lives, from our own pasts and from the people with us right now. It asks questions about what we believe, what we create and how we scare and heal each other.

Above all, it’s the story of how one lost soul searches for where she now belongs.
 
If you're a fan of audio, you can listen to the first 4 chapters here, on download or by streaming.
 

6.) I don't entirely know what an online trend book of the visual arts is, but apparently The Red List is one.  It looks interesting - have a gander here.

That'll do for now.  I'm sure there were other links I was going to include, but... they can wait until next week!