A Suitcase Full of Books by Sheena Wilkinson

It's not an actual suitcase of books, but the next best thing, and rather easier to carry. 

Hooray! I'm off on holiday next week! Well, a sort of holiday -- two days in the Malverns with one of my very best and oldest friends, and then a weekend conference in Bristol, 'Twentieth Century Schoolgirls and their Books' (https://thebristolconference.org). The conference is usually biannual, but of course we missed out 2020 so there are people I haven't seen for four years that I'm looking forward to meeting again. And I'm excited about talking about my third historical novel Hope against Hope, to an adult audience that actually want me to focus on my favourite stuff -- how my reading of schoolgirl fiction influenced my own writing.

But there's going to be a lot of travelling, which for me starts with a plane journey -- never really fun, and likely to be even less so in this summer of discontent. I am prepared for delay, frustration and discomfort, and it's even more important than usual for me to be well stocked with comfort reads. So I thought I would share my holiday reading with you: I must confess that these are mainly on my kindle, for reasons of convenience. I rarely use the kindle at home, but it's a faithful companion when I'm on the road, or in the air, and it's all charged up with some old friends and new.  

Susan Scarlett -- an assortment

Susan Scarlett was the pen name under which Noel Streatfeild, one of my favourite writers, wrote a series of light romances. Great literature they may not be -- Streatfeild herself was rather snooty about them -- but they are lively and engaging, with all Streatfeild's concern for character and the rich detail of everyday life. The baddies are punished and the good triumph. And sometimes, especially now, that's what you want. Dean Street Press have just reissued the books, only two of which I have read before, and I have several of them to speed me on my way. 

Anne Booth -- Small Miracles

I first heard of this novel here on ABBA!(https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2021/11/small-miracles-by-anne-booth-traffic.html) Anne Booth is of this very parish! As soon as I read about this novel about nuns playing the lottery, I knew it would be my kind of book. I am obsessed with books about women's communities -- schools, colleges, convents, etc., and this one promises to be warm and witty. 

R. M. Ward -- Safe with You 

I was lucky enough to get a proof of this and I must admit I have already started it! Described as 'unputdownable psychological suspense', Safe with You is the story of Kath, an elderly woman who has lived all her life in the same estate. She has seen the area change for the worse, losing the sense of community, but when the little girl next door disappears, she is drawn into a dark and twisted mystery. I've loved the first few chapters of this book: I was attracted to it because I adored Ward's 'cosy crime' series, The Ant and Bea mysteries (published as Rachel Ward). This book is obviously much darker, but even in the first few chapters I have loved Ward's juxtaposition of warm and worrying. I do think it's going to be scarier than the books above, though! 

Eve Ainsworth -- Duckling 

I've actually already read this, but I'm going to bring my copy with me to pass on to my friend, who I know will love it as much as I did, so it counts among my holiday books. Lucy, the 'Duckling' of the title, is an awkward, lonely, compelling and deeply original heroine, living alone on a council estate, working in a bookshop. Her life is small and safe, until it isn't. There's a missing person here too, but this time it's the adult next door who's missing, leaving a small child in the care of an unwilling and out of her depth Lucy. As someone who has never had to look after a child for very long, I really identified with Lucy's situation when Rubi is forced upon her. This book was full of heart and I loved it.

And the last book is a bit of a secret one! It's the second historical novel by Emma Pass. I absolutely adored her heartbreaking and totally immersive WW2 novel Before the Dawn, and was thrilled and excited to have the chance to read an early draft of her next book. I can't say anything about it yet, but I have started it, and all I can say is, so far I'm loving it even more than the first one! And that's saying something! 

Did I say the last book? Maybe not the very last. There's always a book sale at the conference, so chances are I will be coming home with an actual suitcase of books...

Books that made me

Any author who visits schools will know that one of the perennial questions you are sure to be asked (after ‘where do you get your ideas from’) is - what’s your favourite book? I’ve given the same answer every time, it’s The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper.

To be fair it’s a trick answer, because it allows me to pick five books in one. It’s impossible for me to say which of the five books in the sequence is my favourite. But at this time of year it’s especially great to reread - or read for the first time -  The Dark is Rising itself. It opens on Midwinter’s Eve (20^th December to you and me) and runs chronologically through the Christmas period. Some love to read it day by day, marking time with their own Christmas preparations. I tend to splurge – like a box of Christmas After Eight mints, once opened I find it very hard to stop.

The Dark is Rising wasn’t the first book in the series I encountered. That was Over Sea and Under Stone. A teacher called Mrs Crow read it to the class one year when I was about 8. Something in the text resonated with me far more than all of the other books that I must have read or had read to me at that time. I found the rest of the books and painstakingly read them to myself over the following years.

I have very few books that I return to again and again, and the five in The Dark is Rising Sequence are the ones that mean the most.  It’s not sentimental either, I genuinely love the stories and find something comforting and surprising every time I return to them. If ever I see one of the books in a charity shop or second hand book shop I have to buy it. I give it to children - usually those who ask that question – when I go to author events, hopeful that it might give them as much joy as it continues to give me.

They are books I have numerous copies of. I have my ‘reading copy’ which I take with me in all its battered glory. Then I have the hard back versions, which are the same editions as the one Mrs Crow read to me all those years ago, and I have the folio versions for ‘best’. It may sound weird, but these books have been with me all my life, and I treasure them.

First I treasure them for their quality. In a time where everything has to be new, fresh and now, it’s a handy reminder for an author that a book of quality will transcend all that. We should be aspiring to that and nothing else. Second, I treasure them because they take me back to a time when my world was young and full of potential.

But lastly, and most importantly I treasure them because they were the first books I ever truly loved. They were the first books that gave me a passion for writing and an appreciation of the power of the written word.  It’s wasn’t my books that bought me to where I am and allowed me to call myself an author – it was these.  Without them I would never be doing what I do now.

So do yourself a favour and read them if you haven’t read them, reread them if you have, and if you don’t have a copy, next time you see me at an author event ask for one, I usually have one on me somewhere!