Shapeshifting Green Style Statement

I don't blog about fashion very much, but I thought that I would post a photo of this wrist cuff which I made from reclaimed fabrics. It's currently in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop, but that may change, as I like it too much and am tempted to wear it myself. (So if you've seen it in the shop and liked it, now is the time to convert the liking into purchasing!).

I'm planning a whole series of fabric wrist cuffs to sell on Etsy, each of them will be unique style statements in a range of reclaimed fabrics, buttons and charms.

Although I often wear jeans and jumpers or even waterproof leggings and anorak as I go about my life as conservation volunteer and leader of guided walks, I actually also really like dressing up.

Fifty Shades of Feminism

I was delighted to win a copy of Fifty Shades of Feminism from Virago in a Twitter competition. It's an intriguing collection of essays about feminism from more than 50 women including lawyers, activists, writers, actors and community workers.

Some of the essays are very personal, some are more formal, though there's only one poem in the book and only Jeanette Winterson offers an essay written in an experimental format. The essays cover topics from pornography to the sexist assumptions behind the construction of five written characters in Mandarin Chinese. Some of the essays make direct reference to 50 Shades of Grey, which was after all the book that prompted the writing of this anthology, most of them are however a more general reaction to that genre of writing or are in fact purely statements of where the authors stand on feminism.

It's a thought provoking anthology, though perhaps with some omissions. As the New Statesman review says, there isn't an essay from a transgendered woman. I would also have been interested to read an essay from a femme lesbian about feminist perspectives on femininity. (If that's something you're interested in, I can definitely recommend Femmes of Power, which I reviewed here).

So for a quick overview of where feminism currently stands, this is a good place to start. 

Fifty Shades of Feminism edited by Lisa Appignanesi published by Virago Press.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

The Thread by Victoria Hislop

This is a wonderful love story set against the sweep of Greek history through the 20th century.

Katerina the main character is a very likeable character, and I really felt for her from her separation from her mother, her arrival in Thessalonika where she was taken in by a kindly family to her work as a seamstress and her love for Dimitri. Dimitri and Katerina are separated for many years as he fights with the resistance fighters in the mountains. Will they be reunited?

All set against the turbulent tide of history taking in the Second World War, civil war, fires and earthquakes.


Hislop does a wonderful job of weaving Katerina's story in with the history. She writes beautifully (though sometimes doesn't trust her reader enough, over-explaining some things, which can be annoying!).

This is a timely novel given the current chaos in Greece. it was also a timely read for me personally as the theme of refugees here mirrors that same theme which plays an important part in the novel I'm writing!

As a crafter, I was also struck by the detail of the sewing that Katerina did, the wonderful clothes that she made even during times of hardship.

The Thread by Victoria Hislop published by HeadlineBooks

A Year of Doing Good by Judith O'Reilly

Judith O'Reilly made a New Year's resolution to do a good deed every day and in this book she records the deeds she did, how she felt about them and muses on the meaning of doing good. Along the way she makes friends, meets philosophers, carers, lifeboat volunteers and others who spend their lives 'doing good' or in the case of philosophers thinking about doing good.

Some of the good deeds are small, like letting people in front of her in queues, some are large (and ongoing) like teaching a disabled child how to write stories (I love the fact that one of the stories they worked on was called Bunny's Bad Day!). In addition she set up a fund-raising scheme for her local hospice, the Jam Jar Army which is still raising funds for good causes.Oh and she picks litter too.

This is a very entertaining book, which really gets the reader thinking about doing good deeds and being a good citizen.

A Year of Doing Good by Judith O'Reilly published by Penguin

Disclaimer - I won this copy of this book from Penguin's Readarama project.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

When Mary Anne Schwalbe returned from a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan she was diagnosed with a rare type of hepatitis that actually turned out to be pancreatic cancer, a cancer that is usually fatal within six months.

Mary Anne was a truly remarkable woman and didn't let this diagnosis stop her from living a full, active life for another couple of years, including planning and organising a mobile library service for Afghanistan. Along the way she and her son, Will (the author) set up their own private book club. They read widely and voraciously, linking up what they're reading to their own life experiences. I was totally moved by the close relationship between Will and his mother and how they became even closer through their reading.


I found myself intrigued equally by what Mary Anne and Will thought of books I've read and fascinated by their choices that I've not read. There are definitely a few more books on my wish list now! 

One of the books Mary Anne and Will read is the Kite Runner, probably the most famous novel set in Afghanistan. They both enjoyed it more than I did and I have to admit, I wondered what they would have thought of the two more recent (and I think far superior) novels set in that country - Freshta and The Taliban Cricket Club. (Follow the links to read my reviews on this blog).

This is a beautiful book about family relationships, illness, grief and death and the magic of books.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe published by Two Roads

Thanks to Curious Book Fans, I won my copy of this book!

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other pages where you can find out more.

Mistletoe Madness

Hope everyone is enjoying the festive season! Properly speaking the Christmas season continues until Epiphany (6 January) so that gives you plenty of time to read 'Mistletoe Madness' a new anthology of writing about Christmas just out from Kind of a Hurricane Press. You can find it in their book-store (as I write this blog-post, it's the top item in their book-store, but they publish quite a lot of anthologies, so it may be that you need to scroll down to find it!).

I'm delighted to have a poem in there, alongside 34 other writers!

Best wishes for the rest of the Christmas season!

Freshta by Petra Prochazkova

I was delighted to win a copy of Freshta in a Twitter competition run by Stork Press  an independent publishing house based in London that focusses on new writing from Central and Eastern Europe.

Herra, a Russian-Tadjik woman, met Nazir in Russia where they had both been studying. She fell in love with him and married him, moving to post Taliban Afghanistan to live with his family. The Freshta of the title is Herra's sister in law, who is desperate to leave her abusive husband.

This novel explores the culture Herra married into, offering insights into the way of life for women in modern Afghanistan with the constant restrictions on their freedom- for example all the women of Nazir's family have to hide in a closet whenever anyone visits who isn't family. The characters are vivid and the reader really feels for them all caught up in their family dilemmas and the cultural misunderstandings that arise with well meaning, but culturally unaware foreign aid workers.

Mostly this novel is brilliant, insightful and entertaining, though occasionally it becomes quite farcical, which I found a bit irritating. 

This is an ideal book to read soon after The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N Murari which is set in Taliban controlled Afghanistan and which I reviewed here.

Freshta by Petra Prochazkova, translated by Julia Sherwood and published by Stork Press

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Thinking in Numbers by Daniel Tammet

This is a brilliant book of essays that I won in a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway.

Each essay looks at a different aspect of maths in an accessible and engaging way. Many of the essays are in fact as much about linguistics as about maths. Hence we learn how to count to four in Icelandic (and other languages), find parallels between proverbs and the times tables and connections between calculus and the work of Tolstoy. Other essays muse on the nature of the ideal city, the connections between maths and art and whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe.

Every essay, though very short, will get you thinking deeply about all sorts of things without ever feeling like hard maths.

A fascinating book, which I would totally recommend to anyone interested in maths or linguistics and literature.

Thinking in Numbers by Daniel Tammet published by Hodder and Staughton.

Un lapin francaise visite a Edimbourg!

We're delighted to be hosting Sylvain, the French travelling Moulin Roty bunny from Cottontails Baby! He is equally delighted to have found a shelf of French books in our flat!

You can read more over on Crafty Green Poet here.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more!

The Blue Suitcase by Marianne Wheelaghan

Lots of novels have been written about the Second World War. Very few of them though are told from the point of view of ordinary German people.

The Blue Suitcase is Marianne Wheelaghan's first novel, based on her mother's diaries, the family's letters and additional historical research.

Told in the format of a diary, the novel follows Antonia from 1932 when she was 12, growing up in Silesia, a part of Germany that is now in Poland and ending in 1946, when she leaves Germany to start training as a nurse in the UK.

The diary format works brilliantly, you can sense Antonia's growing maturity, from her self centred attitude to her 12th birthday meal being disrupted through her unsuitable friendship with Liesl and Rolf who are the only children to befriend her when she first moves away from the town of Breslau (now Wroclaw) to a small village to her later forced labour helping to build the city defences during the siege of Breslau.

It is interesting to see the different reactions that her family have towards Hitler as he comes to power and takes over in Germany then their different responses to the war. One of her brothers joins the Communist party and is imprisoned in a series of concentration camps, another enthusiastically becomes a member of the Hitler Youth.Her mother, a doctor, vociferously opposes Hitler, and is pushed out of her job by his edicts against women working in the professions. She later becomes very ill.

This compelling and moving novel is essential reading for anyone who wants to see how the Second World War affected ordinary German families.

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Having recently being totally taken in by Binjamin Wilkormski's Fragments (which I review here) I was pleased to read on Marianne's website a full explanation of  how she wrote the book and where her information came from! (Scroll down on this page).


The Blue Suitcase by Marianne Wheelaghan, published by Pilrig Press. 

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Although this novel is unusual in being told from the viewpoint of an ordinary German during 2nd World War, it isn't unique. I recently reviewed Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrick Christian Delius.

As ever, all coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.