The Twelve Days of Christmas - Susan Stokes-Chapman

I have been excited about this book since early this year when Susan Stokes-Chapman made an unexpected visit to the shop. I loved 'Pandora', and really liked 'The Shadow Key', so there was a bit of a fan girl moment on my part (I think I more or less retained my cool). When she mentioned she was working on a set of short stories which made homage to Georgette Heyer it;s fair to say I was enthusiastic. Well now they're here, I've read them, and I'm still enthusiastic.

The Twelve Days of Christmas are 12 interconnected short stories that mirror the carol. I think on the whole it's a novel rather than a short story collection - it wouldn't make as much sense if you started in a middle chapter, but equally each chapter finishes with a satisfactory resolution so theoretically you could take them indeoendantly of one another. 

As well as Heyer there are references to Austen and Thackery, and very likely more - but those were the ones I picked up on this time around. I see from the afterword there are some odd little bits of real history in here as well, and generally you get the sense that Stokes-Chapman had a ball writing this. I have a quibble about a Duke being referred to Sir Robert throughout, I'm not convinced that's an accurate title, but apparently I've enjoyed reading this so much I can't find my normal pedentary about this sort of thing. 

It's a fun book. An excellent bit of historical fiction full of affection for it;s inspirartions but with a very definite voice of it's own. We get characters from all up and down the social scale, the human cost of the Napolionic wars is much in evidence, there is discussion about slavery, the likely fate of illegitamate children, the precarious social position of women, and the dangers of being homosexual. There's also romance, lost loves refound, unconventional families, heartbreak, christmas cake, plum pudding, mincepies, friendship, and more. 

I love a book that I can read in real time, I have a bit of a passion for Christmas books, I can imagine reading this year after year just because it's delightful and comforting. The Partridge in a Pear tree moment is possibly the highlight of the book for me, being both funny and sweet, but it's one of many clever vignettes. Altogether a book that more than lived up to my high expectations. I look forward to whatever Susan S-C does next.  

Simon The Coldheart - Georgette Heyer #1925Club

I can't quite believe that Simon and Kaggsy's book club has been running for a decade now. I'm obviously getting old. 

1925 turns out to be the year Simon the Coldheart was written, and by chance, I was already reading it for a book group -  nothing but peer pressure would have persuaded me to pick it up otherwise but it comes with a point worth discussing. 

'Simon' is a fairly early work for Heyer, and one that she ended up suppressing in her own lifetime. In 1977, 3 years after her death, her son decided it was worth reprinting. The dedication is 'To the memory of my father', I assume Heyer's father, this one having been published not long before he died. It's possible that the dedication is written by her son and references her husband, 1925 was also the year they married and the physical descriptions of Simon suggest a degree of infatuation that might indicate they are a description of her husband to be. Or not.

Briefly, Simon is an illegitimate orphan who decides to make his way in the world by becoming squire to someone who reads like a pen portrait of Brian Blessed, decades before Brian Blessed was born. This goes well and he rises through the ranks, does well in battle and then foils a plot against Henry IV, which gets him a knighthood. Then he goes off to more war, becomes best friends with his half-brother and Henry V, behaves in heroic fashion whilst being the perfect soldier, finally falls in love with a French countess, kills some people, gets his girl, and we can hope lives happily ever after.

My friend, who chose this one for our reading group loves this book. I think it's terrible and can absolutely see why Heyer didn't want it to see the light of day again. Imagine breathless Shakespeare fan fiction laced with a good bit of hero worship, and the kind of descriptions of a man's body that even Jilly Cooper might have drawn the line at. It's not the worst thing I've ever read, and it has a couple of moments that indicate the writer she will become, but overall, Heyer was right. 

This then is the question, and an apt one in a week when another cache of Harper Lee's works have been released to a public that seems underwhelmed by the opportunity to read her juvenilia. Do we respect an author's decision and leave well alone, or do we let curiosity get the better of us?

I don't have a clear answer for myself on this, but on balance, I land on the side of leaving well alone. At least as far as my own reading is concerned. I think an author has the right to say this book embarrasses me now (as well this one might with its mangling of the English language) and to have that respected, but then my friend loves this with a passion, and who am I to argue with the pleasure it brings her? 

I'm even less sure of this now that the internet is full of fan fiction of variable quality which nonetheless people are getting the joy of creating and reading from. Maybe now a 23 year old Heyer would have honed her craft on AO3 and left her experimental stuff under a pen name, available to anyone prepared to snoop hard enough to dig them out. I like to think she would have, her early books are full of homages to all the things that must have influenced her as her own style developed. 

In conclusion - read at your own risk, and preferably with a group of like-minded friends who do not mind poking fun at a book whilst still respecting the dignity and taste of those who do genuinely have a love for it. 

Brigands and Breadknives - Travis Baldree

I got a proof copy of this through work, and there's some demand for it amongst my colleagues, so before I forget any details and whilst I have the book to hand, I'm posting it up even if it is a month early. I really like Travis Baldree's books. I read Bookshops and Bonedust first, which is fine because it's a prequel to the earlier Legends and Lattes. They both serve equally well as prequels to Brigands and Breadknives - you could read this without having heard of Bookshops and Bonedust where we first meet Fern, it wouldn't make a significant difference.

The necessary information is that Fern has come to the city to catch up with her old friend Viv and to start a new bookselling business next to her cafe. But Fern is having something of a midlife crisis and whilst Viv the battle-weary Ork was ready to step back, put down roots, and open a coffee shop, Fern has had a life of roots and obligations. She wants adventure and maybe a new direction. This is covered with elegant economy in the first few chapters, and then the action moves on as Fern lets fate gather her up and put an end to her carefully ordered life. 

She finds herself travelling with a thousand-year-old elf - Astryx the Oathmaiden and a goblin force of chaos called Zyll who has an eyewateringly large bounty on her head and an even more eyewatering list of enemies after her. The three travel the country together, make friends, get into fights, and at least two of the characters reavalute who they are and what's important. 

It's still a cosy high fantasy, though with arguably higher stakes than in Legends and Lattes, life is like that sometimes. Baldree has the knack of spinning storytelling gold. He doesn't let it get too heavy; he brings the laughs, but Fern's dissatisfaction with her life is a darker thing than Viv's decision to hang up her sword in favour of making coffee, and for anyone thinking of making the uncertain choice so the slight change in tone is appropriate. 

It's cheesy to say Autumn is the right time for a book like this - it would be good in any season, but there's a sense of mists, colder nights, damp socks, and aches about it that does feel particularly well suited to be cosy, indoors, dry footed, and having a hot drink to hand. I don't know if there's further for this series to go - maybe not with these characters, but I do know that I'd read anything that Baldree writes at this point. He's had a lot of imitators, but I haven't found anyone doing exactly what he does nearly as well as he does it. 

The Christmas Companion - Skye McAlpine

It's been a while, and whilst I didn't plan a blogging break, it's been good to pause for a bit, not least because it's given me time to remember I enjoy doing this, which after 17 years I needed. 

I have a bit of a backlog of books to get through, but will start with something brand new that I bought this evening. I love a good book about Christmas - traditions, short stories, history of, meaning of, cookbooks, gift wrapping tips, the whole lot. Even though I will almost certainly never cook a Christmas dinner for more than a handful of people, should I be called on to cater a literal banquet I have all the advice I'm ever likely to need to do so on my shelves. 

Which is a very long way of saying I did not need this book, but I instantly wanted it. I opened at Gilded miniature baked potatoes with Creme Fraiche and Caviar. I used to have a stash of gold leaf, I used it on a Christmas cake. I now realise that the really stylish thing to do would have been to gild a potato - what could better encapsulate excessive consumption? I probably won't be trying this at home - though not from any particular moral objection on my part, but rather that I don't think the effort or expense would be particularly appreciated. 

Persimmon and pork loin on the other hand - that looks and sounds a winner, and despite the number of unashamedly luxury options there's a lot of practical stuff in here too. My main plan is to make the candy cane hot chocolate and enjoy a combination of browsing and daydreaming, for what is the point of Christmas planning if it's not to indulge in a bit of fantasy? 

On a more down to earth note, this is as beautifully produced as the other Skye McAlpine books have been, and as well thought through. Any one of them would be a brilliant gift for a keen cook and probably something they wouldn't already have as she's not quite a household name. There are lots of alternatives to Christmas cake, some excellent cocktail and mocktail recipes, and clever but easy things to do with Panettone and its several cousins, which will elevate them into something extra special. There's some good lists of edible gifts and thoughts on stocking fillers which I liked too. 

Cold Kitchen - Caroline Eden

Life has somewhat got in the way again with an exciting array of crises and much complaining about the damned humidity here in Leicestershire. I cannot cope with heat and humidity. I would very much like to be in a kitchen that's actually cold right now - I made Damson jelly in mine last week, which turned it into something like a sauna.

It's taken me a long time to get around to reading Cold Kitchens, probably because I bought it in hardback which means I don't carry it around with me, and then feel like I can;t buy the paperback which I would read because I already have the book, and this time I gave in and bought the paperback. 

I'm glad I did, I love Caroline Eden's writing and I really loved this book. Both for the sense of her Edinburgh basement kitchen and for her presence in the book which feels more personal than the trio of traveling food books she's done. Cold Kitchen still mixes genres; there's a recipe at the end of every chapter to evoke the place that she's been talking about.

The paperback edition of Cold Kitchens is an unassuming thing that it's easy to keep by a bed, in a bag, on a kitchen shelf, anywhere you might want a thoughtful essay that ties food, place, and memory together and a book that feels like a friend - Cold Kitchen's also serves as a sort of elegy for Eden's beloved dog who first enlivens the pages and then haunts them. I liked this too, though even prepared for his loss I still got ridiculously choked up when it happened. 

Altogether a book I highly recommend for the way it covers a life of adventure, travel, food and socialising, thought and memory. Caroline uses her Kitchen to revisit the memories of her travels, I haven't travelled as she does but the desire to remember and to explore drives my cooking just as much, and in lockdown, it offered much the same escape from the narrow confines of life in a small city centre flat. Reading recipes and wondering if I could source the ingredients in the prescribed outside time, cooking - this was something that gave my days structure and purpose. It's sometimes hard to grasp that we're five years down the line already and still coming to terms with the legacy of that strange year of limbo. 

Sour Cherries and Sunflowers - Anastasia Zolotarev

I bought this cookbook when I was in Edinburgh back in May, it looks beautiful and it passed the flick test (where the first few recipes you see are instantly appealing). Despite that I haven't cooked from it much yet - I haven't really been cooking very much at all this summer, husband has taken much of that side of our domestic lives over, and whilst he's away sailing, it's been too hot to view anything beyond chips and dips with much enthusiasm. 

Sour Cherries and Sunflowers has turned out to be mildly life changing in an unexpected way though, in an attempt to source some sour cherries for a Chocolate Buckwheat cake with sour cherry sauce, I asked my workmate with Polish family if they had any ideas where I could find some. She suggested an excellent Polish deli/supermarket conveniently close to work. They don't sell sour cherries fresh or frozen, though they did have heads of sunflowers full of seeds ready to eat when I popped in there on Saturday.

This shop (excellent air conditioning) has become something of an obsession in the last few weeks. Amazing filled rolls, excellent bread and pastries, beetroot in every iteration you could imagine, plus a few that I hadn't, and a ton of other tempting things. I keep trying to get the ladies to tell me what all the poppyseed cookies are called in Polish; they keep telling me poppyseed cookie, but I will learn. 

Despite the lack of sour cherries to make a sauce I made the chocolate part of the cake - the buckwheat makes it a very useful gluten free option to have. I tried using a jam instead which lead me to the conclusion that the cake works better without a topping.Certainly without a mix of sour cherry jam and sour cream, or yoghurt and sour cherry jam. Whipped cream with tart fresh fruit would be my preference for a topping if I wanted to make this something really special. 

Anastasia suggests this cake serves 6 to 8 - those would be extremely generous portions (I like her style), it will definitely go further, has the rich, damp loveliness of a good brownie whilst definitely being lighter, gluten free is a bonus, and there's all sorts of ways to dress it up so an all round winner in my opinion. 

You need 200g  of unslated butter, 200g of dark chocolate chopped into small chunks, 2 tbsp of espresso, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt. Melt these together in a heavy based saucepan or in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally.

Meanwhile take 5 eggs and 250g of brown sugar and whisk together (ideally in a stand mixer on a medium speed) for around 7 minutes until light and fluffy. Line and grease a 23 cm spring form tin. preheat a fan oven to 180 degrees. 

Now sieve 100g of buckwheat flour into the melted chocolate mixture, whisk in until thoroughly combined, and then stir in 125ml of soured cream. Blitz a 100g of walnuts in a food processor (or finely chop them).

Now fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture trying to keep as much air as possible into it, and finally add the walnuts and fold those through too. Then into the oven for 30-40 minutes or until cooked all the way through. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out to cool. This cake keeps well for several days. 

Forgotten Churches - Luke Sherlock and Holy Trinity Church Rothwell, Northamptonshire

I have a bit of a mystery on my hands tonight. I got Forgotten Churches a month or two back, it's a charming book (with one really annoying typo in a small index that suggests Hexham is in Northamtonshire rather than Northumberland). I was certain it was where I read about Holy Trinity in Rothwell, but now I find it's not in there, although it seems to me it should be.

Forgotten Churches is a beautifully illustrated guide to Britains architectural history through a small collection of not particularly well known churches - though I have been to a handful of them in the past. A perk of having a partner who's an architectural historian is that we both really enjoy a good church and will stop at any we see even if access is impossible. There are a few in this book that aren't too far away that we'll make a point of going to.

So where did I read about Holy Trinity? It was reasonably recently, and then I saw a picture on either Blue Sky or Instagram that reminded me again about it. Rothwell is roughly 25 miles from Leicester, a charming town not far from Rushton Trianguler lodge - the whole area is associated with the Tresham family. Rothwell has a curious building adjacent to Holy Trinity called the Market House which was begun by Thomas Tresham and is as codedly catholic as Rushton, his son, Francis, was involved in the gunpowder plot.

Tresham seems to have run out of funds and left the market house without a roof - it was finally finished in the 1890s. Holy Trinity is one of only two churches that I can find in the UK that have ossuaries - the other is St Leanoard's in Hythe. You can book to go and see it on a Sunday afternoon through the summer months - admission is limited to around 6 people at a time and there are only 4 sessions per Sunday so booking is advised. I booked.

We weren't sure what to expect - I did wonder if it would be morbid, there are apparently the remains of over two thousand people in that small crypt, but whilst no, I wouldn't want to go down there on my own particularly, it was neither morbid nor especially creepy. It was surprisingly emotional, but the predominant emotion was one of calm in the face of so much mortality. It's likely it was a stopping point for pilgrims and may always have been intended to have visitors. 

The rest of the church is stunning with some fine 15th century misericords to look at along with the medieval stonework and later additions. It was an interesting day out, I'll go back to Rothwell to see more first opportunity I get, though perhaps not back to the crypt, a second visit might be morbid now I've seen it. 

Raising Hare - Chloe Dalton

When I first saw this in Hardback last year my initial reaction was that they'd made a lot of book out of relatively few words. I'd wait for the paperback. Well, better late than never, and the paperback has the advantage of being easier to carry around. 

Raising Hare is a beautiful book, Canongate have done it proud on the production front, it deserves every award and plaudit it's had, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. 

Chloe Dalton has an impressive CV and a job as a foreign policy advisor which pre lockdown kept her on the move and frequently out of the country. Covid took her to her home deep in the countryside, and there she comes across a probably more or less newborn leveret on a winter's day. It's sitting in the middle of a track, and is still there when she returns 4 hours later. The choices seem to be to leave it to die or take it in and see if it might not die. Hares aren't domesticated and are apparently notoriously difficult to hand raise. 

Long story short this one survives, possibly because it was so very newborn when she found it. Dalton doesn't name the leveret, her end goal is for it to thrive as a wild creature, and she tries to be as hands off as possible. There were two things that had made me wary of this book - one was that it would be sentimental, and the other was that the hare would die. Happily, the hare is still alive as she closes her narrative, and though she clearly deeply loves the creature she nurtured this isn't a sentimental story either. 

The experience does change Dalton, or at least it makes her more aware of the countryside around her and encourages her to re-evaluate her relationship with place, but lockdown did that for a lot of us anyway, and so does ageing in my experience. I don't doubt the hare changed Dalton but I think the point is you don't need the privilege of her particular position to be able to look around and think how can I make a little bit more space for nature, or to see what's in front of you.

I've thought a bit about Ring of Bright Water whilst I read this and how Gavin Maxwell took exactly the opposite approach in his efforts to make pets out of his otters, and also about the really beautiful film Billy and Molly where Molly the Otter becomes an almost surrogate child to the man who finds her - and maybe that happened to Dalton too, more than she lets on. Both stories are also deeply hopeful at a time when hope itself can feel like a luxury and a privilege.

So read this for its quiet charm, for the wealth of information about hares you will learn, and to really think about what each one f us can do to make a little more space for nature around us - because we will reap the benefits of that in a thousand small ways. 

Problematic Summer Romance - Ali Hazelwood

It's coming up for the second anniversary since I lost a very dear friend to cancer, she's a constant gap in my life and since she's gone I've found it hard to read anything particularly challenging or that would provoke any kind of complex emotions. Having spent quite a long time picking up and putting down 'Problematic Summer Romance' I feel that phase might be at an end.

Or it might just be that I'm not a fan of where Ali Hazelwood seems to be going with her writing, or it could be both things. I still think most of Hazelwood's books are a solid choice if you're looking for a fairly fun romance, but I didn't finish 'Deep End' - the kink element wasn't for me, it went to a charity shop, and Bride wasn't my think either (werewolves really not my thing either it turns out).

'Problematic Summer Romance' has a 23 year old main female character very much in love with the 38 year old best friend and super wealthy business partner of her older brother. The main problem seems to be the age difference between them and potential power imbalance that imples. The reason it's taken me a couple of weeks to actually finish this is that it never at any point felt like a massive problem, partly because the older brother and entire friendship group are all extremely supportive.

Plenty of romance writers keep on churning out essentially the same thing so kudos to Hazelwood for trying different things, but this book feels overworked to me - too much thought has gone into making things just problematic enough, but not so much as the reader might really take issue with any of it. Perhaps unfortunately Maya is a convincing 23 year old and a little bit annoying with it. The academic setting which bought the earlier books to life is missing as well, along with the close female friendships - and altogether it fell a little flat for me.

It's still a solid book - a definite three and a half stars, easy summer reading for lazy afternoons kind of thing. There are engaging characters, characters from earlier books that it's fun to catch up with, and the descriptions of Sicily are lush but whatever I pick up next is going to be very different. 

A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher

The current phase of moving things around and making space is coming to an end - there will be another big push later this summer, but right now it's hot and I'm bothered by the heat so all the hard work of shifting things can pause for a bit. When it does start again, the main job will be to make some sense of the books that haven't gone into storage. Right now, they've been shoved into gaps as they've become available, and there's no sense to it all (but having floor space again is nice, so...).

There's also a certain amount of pressure to read some of the books that are hanging around and pass them on. When I started blogging a very long time ago books were an escape from work, or the lack of work, depending on circumstances. Now my work is books, it's very much not that and consequently a harder to motivate myself to sometimes. I also find that for work purposes, it's enough to read a bit of a lot of books that I wouldn't normally pick up to get a general sense of them - enough, at least, to know what people want when they're asking for more of the same. 

For someone who's never really had much love for contemporary fiction this is an odd place to be in, but sometimes a book surprises me, and so it was with A Sorceress Comes to Call. T Kingfisher's (a pen name for Ursual Vernon) back catalogue is popping up all over the place now in the UK, she's been on my radar for a while as a horror/fantasy writer that I'd heard good things about, I've even managed to collect a few of the more specifically fantasy titles - but this is the first one I've read.

I loved it, and those other books have moved right up the pile to be read. A Sorceress Comes To Call is inspired by the Brothers Grimm Goose Girl tale, the main protaganists are Cordelia, a 14 year old girl, and Hester, a woman in her early 50s with a bad knee. Cordelia's mother is the thoroughly wicked sorceress who sets out to marry a rich man so that she can trap an even richer man for her daughter. Hester as the rich man's sister is set on foiling her plans and rescuing the child. 

The genius of the book is that it manages to be simultaneously dark with a sense of real danger and a creeping bit of horror, and also really funny. Hester and Cordelia are perfectly flawed, human heroines, frightened and unsure as well as determined and capable of showing incredible fortitude and bravery. The Sorceresses powers fully underscore the banility of evil. All the characters are well drawn and convincing, but most of all I really appreciated the middle aged nature of so many of them. 

It was also thoroughly refreshing to read a fantasy that doesn't place romance at its centre. I'm not knocking romantasy, but it feels so ubiquitous right now that not encountering it here was something of a relief. T Kingfisher is not particularly like Terry Pratchett, but there's a comparison to be had in in the way they both lace together humour and an anger at injustice and abuse. The vibe is different, but I think if you were a Pratchett fan you would find much to enjoy here.