Persephone Festival in Bath next week

[highlandcoo]

I'm looking forward to this - I'm going on a group walk where we talk about Saplings plus a discussion about High Wages, among other events.

I know our tickets give us access to the tea-room at the Assembly Rooms, but any other recommendations of where to go would be very welcome 😊

Is anyone else going?

I'd love to see a sales graph of the books. Some are clear favourites, some weren't mentioned at all, I feel like hunting down the quieter ones. I thought the question 'what book is memorable but not a comfort read' was interesting.

Plenty more material for another gathering.

Slightly regretting not buying a Persephone mug and a floral tablecloth I saw in your basket @highlandcoo , Every decade has it's mech, once it was Lego, then band t-shirts now I seem to be captured by small publishing houses and exquisite fabric.

I would love to know more about how the walking book club works. I'm co-hosting a book club for the first time this year and am intrigued!

@Instantcustard I was also pretty puzzled in advance .. and when I turned up at the shop to find approximately forty other women there I didn't see how it could possibly work, but it was excellent.

We walked in a large park. Emily led the group, and she asked us to find one or two other people to talk to - if you'd come with a friend you needed to find someone you didn't already know - and for the first part of the walk we were to run through all the characters we could remember (we'd all read Saplings in advance) from the main characters to the minor ones. It was a good way of reminding us who we'd be discussing.
After about ten minutes we all gathered round and she asked a few questions to prompt a short discussion, then she read a few pages from the start of the novel and gave us another topic - I think it was "Is this the perfect family it seems to be? Or are there any indications that life may change?" and we had to find a new person or two to walk with, then we gathered again and shared ideas and walked on .. and we did this five or six times. We talked about themes to do with children not feeling understood, the importance of the various adults in their life, etc.
We also had one man there; the psychiatrist who'd written the afterword. He gave us a short talk at the end about how well he felt NS had portrayed the children. So that was interesting.

It took a fair bit of preparation on Emily's part; she was lively and engaging so it worked well. She also handed out delicious biscuits half-way round! And it was a really nice way of meeting several different women.

I'm in a much more conventional book group with friends, however you've made me think that maybe we could give a simpler version of the walking book group a go in the summer ..if summer ever arrives up here..

Is it acceptable to post Whipple on other threads, - was reading Random Commentary and thought this was perfect for AIBU to hate house guests.

'our guests went today. Much as I love them, how glad I am to be alone again! I need to be able to walk in the country, to read the paper and sit by myself. I can't live anyone else's life for more than a few days. I feel my own personality pushing violently inside me, making me positively ache. But it is a lovely morning now. The sun is warm on my shoulder as I write. I have had a good letter from St John Ervine about my book, a letter that really shows he really likes the book, and has considered me who wrote it. He is generous, able to consider others. Some people can't.'

I nearly didn't write out the full quote or the italics but the whole thing builds to violently then calms down, tying things up, that's why it works. Very clever and that's just her lovely random jottings...

Talks Available online for the month.