This is a huge week in publishing. In fact, between now and C*******s the schedule is relentless. There are hundreds of new releases jostling for our attention. Myriad more on the way. Many of them make compelling cases to be read urgently. Perhaps I can skip Rowdy Girl: Confessions of a Vegan Cattle Rancher and I may not try all the recipes from Marvel Studios: The Official Cookbook but how does one choose what to read first out of Stewart Lee’s Pea Green Boat, a diary of the owl from Edward Lear’s poem exposing just how ill-suited both Owl and Pussycat are for their adventure, Tom Cox’s new short story collection Curious Events Lately Occurring In This Neighbourhood and, what promises to be a masterpiece, Giant Parsnip Soup by Daniela Sosa?

Among the titles out this week, I am most excited about Marlon James’s The Disappearers. I wrote about it a few weeks ago in great anticipation and cannot wait to hear what you think. The voices of its many characters – a group of gay men rehearsing a play in Jamaica in the 80s, in grave danger – are still resounding in my head and my muscles are still taut, thanks both to the adrenaline rush of such intense writing and the effort of carrying around a book that weighs even more than the most giant of parsnips.

Faced with this marvellous abundance of shiny new titles, it makes perfect sense that I have spent most of the week in the excellent company of Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Woolf. The former for reasons I mentioned last week, the latter in preparation for the first of our Sunday Sessions on Virginia Woolf.

I hugely recommend Gellhorn’s The Trouble I’ve Seen, four stories which draw on her time reporting on the abject poverty in America during the Great Depression. Despite the devastation, the sense of dread at how much more the characters will have to endure, some reprehensible attitudes and horrific situations, it is a pleasure to read simply because Gellhorn is a fantastic writer. Her characters may be fictional but they are utterly real; Gellhorn clearly felt deeply for them and one cannot help doing so as well.  

I think I essentially planned Sunday’s discussion of Mrs Dalloway as an excuse to buy myself the exquisite annotated edition by Merve Emre. As well as her erudite notes, it is full of paintings, photographs and maps of the routes the characters take through London. It is heavenly, a delightful indulgence.  

Prompted by Emre’s comments on dogs in the novel, I have finally read Virginia Woolf’s Flush, her ‘biography’ of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel. This may be the perfect antidote to a brilliant but violent 640-page novel, fitting as it does in a pocket and bringing great joy.

May your weekend bring the same,
Lizzie