Happy New Year! And What the Book Fairy Brought...

First things first—we wish you all a happy New Year, and hope that 2024 brings only good and pleasant things your way.

Here at the Bibliothèque, we're reluctantly emerging from eating and sleeping mode and dragging unwilling feet back to the world of tasks, deadlines and all the rest of it. Many of these tasks and deadlines have, alas, little to do with writing: I find myself grumpily complaining, along with Larkin, "Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?" (I can almost hear the myriad retorts of "pity about you!")

Anyway, at least some of the festive comfort of the season will acccompany me into the year: we had Christmas and a birthday, so several lovely book-presents made their way onto the household shelves. Some for fun, some for more serious reading, all most welcome.

Cocker, Mark (2023) One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth. London: Jonathan Cape.

Gombrowicz, Witold (1939 [2023]) The Possessed. Translated by A. Lloyd-Jones. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Haynes, Natalie (2023) Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth. London: Picador.

Pardoe, Rosemary A. (2018) The Black Pilgrimage & Other Explorations: Essays on Supernatural Fiction. Birmingham: Shadow Publishing.

Vincent, Bruno (2020) Five go Absolutely Nowhere. London: Quercus (Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups).

Vincent, Bruno (2017) Five Lose Dad in the Garden Centre. London: Quercus (Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups).

Williamson, Colm (2023) Waterford Whispers News 2023. Dublin: Gill Books.

Bibliothèque des Refusés is the imprint of independent author and scholar Susan Maxwell.