Tantrum Over

Well apparently it DOES sometimes pay to throw a tantrum. Image result for adult tantrum images

After posting about my proposed book cover I lay down on the floor and held my breath until my publisher said, ‘okay, okay, calm down and take a look at the designs we rejected.’ There, in the See Me Later pile, was an image, kind of Forties women’s magazine-style, of three women arm-in-arm. It’s not perfect but it’s a million miles closer to perfection than the one they’d planned to use. Result! I’m up off the floor and breathing again.

Earlier this week I was asked to contribute to a feature on Classics Everyone Should Read and they wanted it pronto Tonto. I didn’t have a lot of time to choose. The first book I thought of was one that actually kept me awake after I’d read it and nothing, NOTHING keeps me from my sleep, not even the threat of a dumb book cover. That first thought was Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler and I do believe it belongs on a classics’ list, but despite some dark humour it’s not a cheery read and  perhaps not the kind of thing Sainsbury’s magazine had in mind. So then I picked Huck Finn as an alternative, though it could as well have been anything else by Mark Twain. I love that man. He has a shortcut to my funnybone.

Then of course as soon as I’d hit the Send button I thought of other equally worthy candidates. A Tale of Two Cities, Emma, Dead Souls, Madame Bovary, Brideshead…  Oh well.

As you know, I’m not a great reader of new fiction, principally because I don’t have the time. I’m still making up for my mispent youth and my threadbare education by reading non-fiction. Plus, two pages and I’m asleep. But once in a while I try something different and occasionally I hit gold. I commend to you Jessica Anya Blau whose Drinking Closer to Home I just finished. It’s a keeper.

1 Comment

  1. Avril Silk on January 17, 2017 at 6:25 pm

    I love Mark Twain as well, especially his inability to love Jane Austen. Why can’t I succumb to her spell? Believe me, I have tried. Two pages in, and I feel like screaming.

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