Books

Here is the booty of books I received for Christmas this year - can you spot a theme?

Crafts and ghosts. 

I love that I can dip in and out of the craft books at leisure and think about all of the things I might do. Then there's the ghostly theme. Love it. Not that I believe in them. As a child I was fascinated by anything supernatural and pretty much devoured anything the Readers Digest and Doris Stokes could throw at me. Now I'm more interested in why other people believe in them. I recently heard an interview with Roger Clarke - author of 'A Natural History of Ghosts' - on Radio 4. He has gathered a series of ghostly tales and not only retold them but placed them in a historical context, allowing the reader to decide on their validity. As a link to this Amazon suggested 'Gossip from the Forest' by Sara Maitland. If you are at all interested in the evolution of traditional tales in to the more anodyne stories that we are more familiar with today this book is for you. Told against the backdrop of some of the UK's most beautiful woodland she transports us, as did Clarke, back to a time when our landscape and seasons dictated our way of thinking. It's fascinating stuff.

And just to squeeze a little more from that theme here's the first page of my 2013 calender:

It's part of a lithograph by Herbert Leupin to illustrate the Grimm's 'Mother Holle'. 

I look forward to sharing the rest as we go through the year x