Lucy Mangan was very funny and her love of books, as well as many of the authors I enjoy, made the talk very entertaining and interesting. She loves Miss Read's novels and her favourite Bronte sister is Anne. She confesses to not much liking the other two, me neither.
The talk focussed on Mangain's new book Bookish. She explains that she suffers from "tsundoku", a Japanese term that may well have been coined simply to torment Marie Kondo: buying books at a rate that outstrips the speed at which you can read them, and keeping them all. This so describes us!
We thoroughly enjoyed the first talk and bought her book, of course. I even had it signed. I was really getting into the festival stride at this point.
After some lunch and a stroll into Keswick, the next speaker was Ann Cleeves. Now I must confess that, whilst I love the TV adaptations, I've not read many of Cleeves' novels. I think the TV series were just so good that I haven't felt the need to read the books. This is a very unusual situation for me. So I was delighted to discover that there are two series I haven't heard of: Two Rivers and Inspector Ramsay. I'm going to read these before I watch anything on television to taint my enjoyment.
I found Ann Cleeves a fascinating speaker, especially her descriptions of how she writes. It was also extremeley interesting to discover how much the TV adaptations differ from the novels. Jimmy Perez is dark and of Spanish descent in the novels, and she didn;t create Tosh. Maybe this explains why I have steered clear of reading the novels. I always struggle with reading after I've watched something on TV, if I watched it before reading it.
Cleeves' love for the places she creates shone through her talk especially Northumberland, Shetland and North Devon. I'm really looking forward to her next Jimmy Perez novel, set on Orkney, a place she clearly feels passionately about.
The National Trust commissioned the work as part of a long-term ambition to create an annual celebration of blossom and the arrival of spring. The collection was written to raise awareness around the role of nature in our lives.
Blossomise is a mix of poems and haiku, one of my favourites is:
The bees buy and sell.
It’s market day on Plum Street.
Pollen changes hands.
This was a fascinating hour full of beautiful poetry, anecdotes and lots of humour. I particularly enjoyed his story of how, in a previous talk, he'd spoken about the National Front rather than the National Trust. He said that he had no idea why he said this but that he'd wondered why there were gasps of horror, especially as he was commending the National (Front) Trust for their excellent and free car parks!
We had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days, immersed in all things bookish.