Stockpiling

So, when we all began to suspect that we were going to be told to stay at home and people started buying up toilet rolls and flour, I gathered up books. It was not as though I had not already got piles of books 'to be read' or that I had not got shelves full of books which I would happily read again, it was just that I thought this year I will definitely read the whole of the Women's Prize Longest. So I managed to buy at various places, or order, the 16 books. And I have been working my way though them. On the left are the 6 still to go and on the right the 8 that I have read. I have enjoyed every one of them, although some I feel are better than others,  and it has been interesting to exchange views online with other readers, as well as with my daughter who is also reading them.

The one in front of the piles is the one I have just finished - Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I absolutely loved this and read it through in two days. It tells the story of Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway (known as Agnes in the book as this is what her father named her in his will) and their son Hamnet, who died, of the plague it is thought, in 1596. There are very few historical facts about Shakespeare and his family, so it is a work of fiction, based on those few facts. It is so clever the way Shakespeare is in the background, he is not even named in the book, just referred to as the Latin teacher, or father. The way that the scourge of plague is described has huge resonances to what we are living through at the moment. And it has the most beautiful golded-embossed cover. I do love a gorgeous hardback book. 

But of course there is the problem of the Hilary Mantel - you can just see it at the back, where Gordon had put it - he is reading and enjoying it, he seems to have made quite a headway into the huge book. Whether I will read it or not remains to be seen. The problem is that I do not have the excuse of lack of time!