Please welcome Cathryn Constable to Books for Company.
She has written a great guest post for us on some books on her bookshelf. I love this post, I always love seeing what books are on others bookshelves.
My Bookshelf
By Cathryn Constable, Author of Wolf Princess
Just a selection and ‘in no
particular order’... Some of the books I love or re-read or insist on buying
for friends...
The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit
I
think this is my favourite of all of E. Nesbit’s writings, although I know most
people would probably go for Harding’s
Luck. I think E. Nesbit is the most fabulous of the fabulists...
The Little Fur Family, Margaret Wise
Brown
It’s
little and it’s furry and it’s about a family of miniature bears... I adore
this book!
Theatre de la Mode,
David Seidner
I
really do have a thing for David Seidner’s work. He photographed a lot for art
magazines in New York in the 80s and died too young... His book, The Artist’s Studio is possibly my
favourite photography book ever... But I’ve put this book on the list because I
loved the whole ‘Theatre de la Mode’ project and had many pictures from this
book on my pinboard over the years.
After
World War II, the French government asked all the most exclusive fashion
designers to make scaled down versions of a piece from their collection –
complete with furs and jewels – with sets designed by Jean Cocteau and
Christian Berard. I think it’s something to do with Rumer Godden’s doll books
that I love.
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, Rumer
Godden
Light
Breathing and Other Stories, Ivan Bunin
I’ve
got many copies of many versions of many stories by Ivan Bunin. There’s one
short story, called Ida, which I
could read every day and never tire of it. It’s the perfect short story
(although it’s not included in the selection in Light Breathing and Other Stories).
Technically,
he’s a genius. And he is the reason I started learning Russian because I wanted
to read Ida in the original.
Making Progress in Russian, Patricia
Anne Davis
I’m
learning Russian, extremely slowly. It is so hard! But this book makes me feel
happy! For a start, the typeface is gorgeous and I love the metallic blue
against the chocolate brown. I feel, when I look at this book, that at some
point I will get the hang of the Genitive case and will be able to say more
than ‘Tell me, please, could you tell me the way to Red Square?’
The Duel, Alexander Kuprin
Kuprin
has been a revelation: I remember reading The
Garnet Bracelet one night in a very hot hotel room in Austria in the dead
of winter when I couldn’t sleep. The Russians are very good when you can’t
sleep.
Little Katia, E.M. Almedingen
It’s
not quite the first book that made me adore Russia, because I had a large
floppy paperback of beautifully illustrated Pushkin fairy stories when I was
bit younger. Although an autobiography of a child might not have been the sort
of book I would have chosen for myself (I’m sure I got it for Christmas) I read
it with such pleasure and it really has stayed with me.
A Hero of
Our Time, Mikhail
Lermontov
Two
words. Read it.
Three
words. Read it again.
I
unashamedly ‘borrowed’ the bullet holes in this portrait of Lermontov for the
painting in The Wolf Princess.
This
was his only novel. It’s perfection. He died a year after it was published in
almost identical circumstances to his protagonist, Pechorin. Eerie!
Find Cathryn
Buy Wolf Princess
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