Book Chat Issue #64

A short report from Edinburgh

Hello reading friends

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I recently visited Edinburgh where I had a fabulous time going to shows at the Fringe Festival and attending some events at the International Book Festival. One of the sessions I went to was on book cover design and I mistakenly thought it would be a lecture, but it was actually a workshop where we worked through the process of creating our own book cover. I’m not very artistic, so this was a big challenge for me, but it was fun.

The workshop facilitator was Jon Gray, who design covers for authors such as Sally Rooney, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie and William Gibson. He was very nice and did not laugh at my efforts.

If you’ve ever wondered how designers come up with ideas for such amazing covers, you can read more about Jon’s creative process here.

What I’ve been reading

As many of you will know, the flight from Australia to Europe is very long. Twenty-four hours to be exact. I knew from previous long haul flights that I needed to choose my reading material with care. You need just the right book when you’re travelling.

I’d saved a Jo Jo Moyes book for the trip and it was perfect: light and fluffy with a happy ending, but also engaging and fun. Still Me is the third book in a series that starts with Me Before You, quite a sad book about a young woman who becomes a carer for a man who is severely incapacitated. I recommend reading all three books in order as there are some references to people and incidents that really don’t make sense unless you’ve read the previous books.

I left my copy of Still Me in a Glasgow hotel where I gleefully swapped it for an almost brand new copy of Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. I can’t wait to read it. Kuang was a speaker at the book festival but her session sold out almost immediately so I didn’t get to see her, but it was fun to know she was there.

I also attended a talk by Rob Delaney who has written a beautiful book about the death of his son. A Heart That Works is reportedly both funny and heartbreaking. I’ll post a proper review when I’ve read it, but he was very honest and down to earth in the interview, so I have high expectations for his book.

What I’ve been eating

I treated myself to lunch when I was at the National Museum of Scotland. I had a delicious salad which was a combination of grains, asparagus, broad beans, chickpeas and baby spinach, with a lemon dressing. I also had quite a few gelatos while I was tootling around town. You can never have too much ice cream!

Green grain salad and blueberry gelato

Book Club

I still haven’t laid my hands on a copy of Demon Copperhead (our next book club pick), so that means you still have time to read it and join our book club discussion in October. Book club is free and open to all subscribers. I’ll send out a link for the meeting closer to the date.

That’s all for this issue!

Keep well and look after yourselves,

Marg xxx