Persephone Reading Weekend: Verity's Photo Competition

Hopefully my competition this time should be a little easier than some of my previous ones (though if you missed out on them last time and fancy some fun - do have a go, and I can supply the answers, just no prizes!).

I post here 5 pictures, each representing a different Persephone book. If you can identify which book they correspond to, then please email the titles to verityDOTormeATgmailDOTcom and I will draw a winner from everyone who gets the most correct.

Persephone Reading Weekend: Welcome

Welcome to the start of Persephone Reading Weekend. Claire and I are very excited to be hosting another blogging extravaganza celebrating our love of the dove-grey covered volumes published by Persephone books. This is the third time that we've run an event and hope that you will have fun joining in, whether it is your first time or third!

The format of the event is simple, in order to participate all you need to do is read a Persephone Book and tell us about it! If you have a blog, you can write a blog post, if you are on librarything, you can review it there, or you could write about it in the comments on this post or on Claire's welcome post. Claire and I will be writing round-up posts at various points over the weekend and to make it easy for us to share all of the posts, if you write a review on a blog, or on librarything, if you could put the link in the comments to either the welcome post on my blog or on Claire's blog. Please feel free to use the button above on your posts!

Nicola from Persephone Books has kindly provided us with a number of seconds to use as prizes over the weekend. There are 10 on offer - here are which ones and how to win them! This is a bit complicated, mainly because there are so many prizes, so bear with me - I thought it was best to have them all written down in one place.

1. First book giveaway: William; to kick off the giveaways, the first ever Persephone book. We will make a random draw from everyone who links to our blogs over the weekend
2 + 3. Roundabout giveaway: Two copies of Family Roundabout are up for grabs - one for people commenting on this welcome post and one for people commenting on Claire's welcome post.
4+5. Favourite post of the weekend. We will be awarding a duo of books to the person who writes our favourite post of the weekend - one of the most recent Persephones, The winds of heaven, along with There were no windows (which is apparently one of Nicola Beauman's favourites!)
6+7. Clare's temporarily missing competition: Claire's competition will be announced later today and there will be two copies of Still missing to be won.

8. Verity's photo competition. At lunchtime I'll be posting my photo quiz with a chance to win a copy of Mariana.

9. New Persephone Reader Giveaway #1. Persephone Classic edition of Miss Pettigrew lives for the day for anyone who doesn't own a Persephone book - details of how to enter coming up on Saturday morning on my blog.
10. New Persephone Reader Giveaway #2. Persephone Classic edition of Little boy lost giveaway, to be drawn from anyone who is reading their first Persephone this weekend (just mention that when you post)


*disclaimer* please note that the books we are giving away are remainder copies so may have some defects - the majority of these are un-noticeable but some are slightly grubby. But they are all in need of a loving home :) Competitions are open internationally, but we will be posting the prizes by the cheapest method available.

We'll also try to get round and visit your blogs - unfortunately I'm not going to be able to do this as much as I would like, as I have been suffering from RSI symptoms in my fingers and am having to limit my typing out of working hours at the moment. It won't stop me reading the posts, but it may stop me commenting - I'm very sorry! I always love how I discover new blogs as part of these events.

Forever friends cards

Back in December when I was busy preparing for Christmas, I also did some non-Christmassy card-making which I didn't get around to blogging about because it didn't fit into all of the Christmas posts that I was writing! I treated myself to a Papercraft magazine in the middle of November because it came with a kit to make some Forever Friends cards (you will by now know my love of the cute little bears). Previously when I have done decoupage, I have pressed shapes out of ready made kits, but these had to be cut out by hand (which was surprisingly relaxing). The kit also came with some coloured papers and suggestions for how to theme them (although I like crafting I am not terribly creative and prefer to do things which involve following instructions) so all I needed to do was supply some blank cards (which I had leftover from my Christmas card making) and some of those little decoupage pads. I was really happy with the results! (I also really enjoyed reading the magazine which had some good ideas for card-making which I may pursue in due course).

Now I need to remember that we have these cards to use rather than buy cards!

Persephone Reading Weekend: Pre-Weekend Excitement

So many people have been getting excited about the upcoming Persephone Reading Weekend, not just in the comments on Claire and my reminder posts on Sunday, but also posting on their own blogs, so I thought I'd do an advance roundup so that you can all have a look at people's plans as half of the fun of the weekend seems to be in the choosing of books and seeing what other people are reading.

Fleur Fisher has Decisions Decisions...
Cristina at Rochester Reader is Preparing for Persephone
Karen at Books and Chocolate is also making Decisions, decisions! (and is kindly planning a giveaway)
Claire at Captive Reader asks What to read?

And Girl Walks Into a Bookstore is kindly offering a prize copy of the latest Mrs Oliphant book to be published by Persephone books last Autumn; do pop over there and enter, as the competition closes on Saturday!

Baking from the cupboards 5

I have been baking from the cupboards for OVER A MONTH now - I am feeling quite impressed with myself (and also a little ashamed as how could I have built up such an enormous stash of things?). I gave myself a little reprieve to make sachertorte last week, but that wasn't so very excessive really, as I had apricot jam in the fridge leftover from sticking the marzipan onto my Christmas cake, I needed some double cream to make some more quiche so all that I actually bought was 400g of dark chocolate which came in at only £1.20. As it was a Valentine's Day treat, I think that is quite acceptable!

I wasn't going to mention my disastrous cupboard bake this week, but I think I will as it emphasises the fact that you can't always make cunning substitutions in baking. I wanted to reprise the gluten free apple cake, but halfway through making it I realised that I had run out of baking powder. I did have some bicarbonate of soda, so thought that I would use that instead. Sadly, the two are not interchangeable. Bicarb is four times as strong, and my heavy handed use of it made it absolutely inedible. Even K couldn't eat it :(

Luckily, with my baking from the cupboards mindset on, I managed to salvage the situation so that K could still have some pudding when he got back from his cycling session and finally made my own recipe No-bake-Nutella-chocolate-cheesecakes (and finally, I took a picture that I can show off!). All I did was to bash up two little mini packets of chocolate animal biscuits (leftover from taking K's nieces to the ballet before Christmas) and stir the crumbs into half the amount of melted butter. I put that into the bottom of two Nutella glasses, and then beat some cream cheese with about 1/3 of a small pot of Nutella and spooned it on top (as you can see I didn't do a terribly tidy job). And then I got out my white chocolate stars to decorate it with.



The other cupboard bake that I produced this week were some slightly blobby jam flower biscuits, to use more of the apricot jam that I had rediscovered, and also as I discovered we had some strawberry jam lurking (oh the shame of all of the food that I have accumulated). They weren't quite as successful as the last time I made this recipe, but I put this down to the fact that I used more expensive strawberry jam which I should have sieved as the pieces of fruit made it a little difficult to pipe.

Next World Novella

I am excited to be writing today about the latest novel to be published by Peirene Press, Next World Novella, which came out at the very end of last week on the 18th February. Having been somewhat dilatory in posting about their last book, I was determined to give it a timely mention this time around, not least because I devoured the book almost immediately upon recieving it. But before I start, you should perhaps watch the book's trailer here, how exciting is that?

Last year was Peirene's Year of the woman, this year it is the year of the man. Next world novella, by the German Matthias Politycki, tells the story of a man, Hinrich, going through his wife, Dora's papers after her death. He thought he knew her well, but the more he reads, the more he finds out that actually she has held a very different perspective on their relationship. And so the papers chart the breakdown of their marriage.

If I'm honest, although I found the synopsis intriguing, the book took a little while to draw me in. As I said to Meike [Peirene's founder and director] : "I didn't think I was going to like it, but as I read on I was absolutely captivated and surprised by how it turned out."

It's difficult to say too much more without introducing spoilers, an inevitable difficulty of writing about a novella, but the blend of insights into life after death along with the intertwining of two lives which have been revealed to be more separate than they first appeared made this book Hinrich's discovery and insight into thought about life after death made this book enthralling.

Like last time, I want to draw attention not only to the book but to the team behind it; Peirene Press are the most friendly publishing company I have come across who are developing a real niche for themselves in the market. If you haven't seen their entertaining blog, detailing the adventures of the little nymph who calls the shots at Peirene Towers, then you should definitely check that out too. And they sell sets of their books, and beautiful bags to put them in as well which I think could make excellent presents.

PS: If you are on twitter, @PeireneVoices will be hosting a chat with the author on Tuesday 22nd February, 8-10pm

Persephone Reading Weekend Reminder

Claire and I have spent considerable time making plans for Persephone Reading Weekend today and we're both getting very excited about it! So this is a little reminder to have your Persephone books at the ready to join in the fun from Friday to next Sunday. Thanks to Nicola at Persephone books we have a total of 10 Persephone books to giveaway in various competitions over the weekend, details to be announced on Friday. No need to sign up :)

PS: As extra enticement for those of you who are new to Persephone, if you don't have any Persephone books yet or have never had the chance to read one, we have a special giveaway that might enable you to join in next time, and we will also be offering a giveaway for anyone who is reading their first Persephone book over the weekend.

How to get 1600+ books into one small flat

Have spent most of my day off tidying my books up - no more are they on their sides or crammed in - I even have growth space! The only books not in the shelves are the TBR, two piles in the third photo.

I did pick up this book at the library today (and am wondering if there'd be a market for K to write a companion volume - Living with a librarian)

Hope I'll get some tips...

Valentine's Day Sachertorte

I mentioned yesterday that I spent my morning off making a sachertorte for a belated Valentine's Day treat. Sachertorte is particularly apt as we will be getting married in Austria this August, and although we will not be going to Vienna, where the original Cafe Sacher is located, we will be spending two days in Salzburg en route to our wedding, and I have found out that there is a branch there!

The original recipe is a closely guarded secret so I had to try to decide what recipe I would use. There are many out there, from complex patisserie style recipes to Delia and Mary Berry versions. In the end, although I was planning to use Delia, I went with the recipe from the Fortnum and Mason afternoon tea book. If I'm honest, it was a lot more effort than the cakes I usually make are - I lost count of the number of mixing bowls I needed to use by the time I had separated eggs, melted chocolate and made the covering. But it was quite special, and my finishing touch was to surround it with some heart shaped fairy lights.

I won't dare to make it again after K has sampled the real thing!

Valentine's Day cross-stitch

Somehow I managed to complete this cross-stitch, in the evenings sat on the sofa next to K, without him ever looking at it! I gave it to him instead of a card.

The design is actually a wedding sampler, but instead of writing "Our wedding" at the top and putting our names and the date at the bottom, I turned it into a Valentine one (I have another one lined up to do for my wedding!)

I didn't have a chance to bake on Valentine's Day, but I've spent my morning off today making sachertorte - picture to follow!