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Oh yay. The great thing about him is that, if you find your like his books, he wrote about 90, very prolific. So you would have a lifetime of good books to read if he's your style. :-) Enjoy!

thank you, Pat. Yes, I know bits of Auden's poetry but am overdue a wider look. And would love to read the 2 volume bio by Mendelson. I love his description of himself when older as having a face which looks like "a wedding cake left out in the rain."

I vary between thinking "great way to afford books" and the more stark "I'm looking at other people's leavings - are they actually any good?"

deep apologies for.calling you "Raynor" and not "Debs" at start of the video! Forgetting not everybody sticks their first name in the title of their youtube channel - d'oh! (Very sensible of you). Glad you enjoy Wodehouse too. His books are getting harder to find (other than expensive full price new hardback editions) with the passage of time - almost never in libraries and rarely in secondhand books - so I've begun buying them secondhand and enjoying the "Merry Christmas, 1958" handwritten comments on the inside cover..

@ Heather please no apologies necessary. Lots of people call me Raynor and I’ve been called a lot worse 😂😂. I love inscriptions in books, they always cheer me up 😁

@@RaynorReadsStuff As I said in one of my videos, I have a book about needlecrafts, handsigned by the author "Better luck next time". The mind boggles.

at the same time, it is refreshing timewise - to do a usual tag expects thought, preparation and sorting out books to hand, so takes a morning, including editing.

Maybe I should have tagged you! Would be happy to see you do this tag and it only takes about 15 minutes because you don't prepare. The books I show about poetry - "The splash of words" is for poetry readers, beautifully written about how poetry speaks to us spiritually (written by an Anglican priest) - it's intriguing without being preachy. "How to be a poet" is for writers, deeply practical for someone who wants to be a working poet, revising and getting published. Both are intelligent and thought-provoking but not academic texts.

I'm reading poetry while writing it. Good luck with Seamus Heaney, I am slowly coming back to being interested in his writing after being put off him at school by having to read about his bog people. Good to have a fellow poet nerd. I will defo be reading more poetry books in 2025 - at least if I post about them, I now know I'll have one interested listener:-)

how lovely to hear from you. You can see examples of film poetry on TH-cam. Try youtube vid "Mr Sky Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett." Happy reading and listening and videomaking in 2025.

Hello! What a kind comment - yes, a brand new boiler so heating is better than ever!-) Just spoted your 12 days of Christmas tag - catching up with any missed Tags through the year, and sweeping them out of the way for the New Year. This is genius. Well done. I may get organised to do it next year, we'll see. Bravo!

Glad you're back in warmth too. Perhaps the best test for excellence in a nonfiction book is if it has you wanting to read another book in the same area?

@ Absolutely 🤩

What fascinating comments! Yes, I came across Josephine Hart through a library book "Catching Life by the Throat: how to read poetry and why." (2006) - irresistible book title! I was gripped by her pronouncement on the importance of poetry being read out loud, not just words on a page - which of course she went on to prove with public readings. I warmly recommend William Sieghart and the work of "Poetry Pharmacy" too. Thanks for the encouragement to engage with Tom's channel, a ringing endorsement.

likewise, back to you, Pat. Hope you get some really exciting books and videos.

it did get sorted. Christmas Day felt like we'd been transported to a tropical island!-)

Delighted to hear that comment - and that you're clearly working through Julia Cameron "The Artist's Way" (*suuuch a good book!). I must get back to recording out and about. Thank you for the prompt.

Latin is a bit like a puzzle - you keep an ear out for something which is familiar in English, in case an old word antecedent crops up. But there's something calming about a very old language which has been around so long in today's world of push and shove and constant change.

oh but there are infinite variations on a scarf, even just with an occasional change of wool colour. Do try knitting a cowl on circular needles - you just cast on, garter stitch, round and round, cast off after about 6-9 inches. And it comes out as a squashy gorgeous draught-excluder for the neck.

@ ohhh interesting, thank you 😊

It's like going back in time - so old it doesn't have a publication date inside, so I'll have to guess.

ha ha - love the hashtag!

just such a great read

Well, the british empire certainly spread families to the four winds and there were no phones.... I truly wonder what biographers and historians are going to use as source material for the 2020s as correspondence will have been through deleted emails and whatsapp etc. Completely different from sitting down to hold in your hands a handwritten letter with address headed notepaper for a home residence or hotel, scrawls and visible crossouts, doodled pictures in the margin.

I think you'll enjoy Mapp and Lucia - the Wordsworth Classics versions are unbelievably cheap but good - literally the price of a cup of tea for both books together. Since you enjoy humour, do do try your library for the Frank Muir book (or secondhand bookshops) - it's the mothership for humour. I think that's how I got to hear about Saki.

@@heathergregg9975 I will do that. I do love numerous books 😂

I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Hope you get time to do the tag too.

@@heathergregg9975 Maybe, but no promises. Thanks for tagging me 🥰

@@lindysmagpiereads oh yes, definitely only do if you have spare time and feel inspired to do it. And you may not - you make so much good content in your videos already that keeps you busy.

Both Richmal Crompton (a woman) and 'Saki' (a pen-name) wrote short stories, so easy to find out if you like their style. The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose introduced me to Saki via a story about Tobermory the Cat - who has been trained to talk. The Edwardian weekend party guests deeply patronise him as an animal until he starts repeating the private conversations he has overheard and who he has noticed with whom.... Richmal Crompton's William was written ages ago - about the 1950s so is also dated. But both have fine sense of the absurd.

@@heathergregg9975 It looks like some of Crompton stories read by Jarvis and a few Saki stories read by Stephen Fry are available through my library!

@@HannahsBooks oh go for it! Jarvis is super at doing the voices, both the vague, polite mother and the gruff little son who thirsts to be an Outlaw (in fact that's what his group of friends are called). Fry and Saki sounds like a perfect match, I shall make my own enquiries here - thanks for the tip!

I've just gone over the 500 subscribers mark so if you contributed to that - many thanks. This was a fun tag, I was going to suggest you might like to do it too - then saw your channel and that you did a similarly subject Tag last week "Booktube makes me happy". Coincidence!

@@heathergregg9975 Yes! I did subscribe to your channel and see that you are now over 500! Congratulations! I may do that tag, it is a good one!

Do you mean the psychedelic band? knowledgeably asks the woman who just looked this up online 5 seconds ago.

@@heathergregg9975 The beginning of Lewis Carrolls's 'Jabberwocky': 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsey were the borogroves And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjubb bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

@@book-ramble Ah, so the band was named after the poem. I saw the film of Jabberwocky and it was suitably surreal.

@@heathergregg9975 Yes! That movie was out there for sure! Michael Palin, if I recall. Thanks.

Well, it's certainly a curiosity. I now have a pattern for knitting a knee warmer in winter. Just let me know if you want that one (!). It's not terribly glamorous but the joy of knitting is you get to pick the wool so I guess people could go for sequins or sparkly wool in case disco dancing with skates comes back into fashion.

@@heathergregg9975 what a riot! They’ll be all the rage in no time! 😂

apologies for not saying your channel name right!

@@heathergregg9975 oh no worries! People say it all kinds of different ways! I knew you meant me! 😉

@@BookChatWithPat8668 That is very generous of you to say. You did make it easy to remember by having a rhyme in it - I should have remembered. I will just claim microphone brain - when the microphone goes live, the brain electricity dims - at least for me!

he's so little known or talked about, delighted that someone else gets his humour.

Hooray for the Saki fans 😁

very good question. I actually got it as a general reference for how to shape garments and make up your own patterns, but written in a really approachable way. The garments in this are very of their time and I think you would have to already have a vintage wardrobe of the right shoes, skirts etc and aesthetic to carry it off. But there are some lovely little knitted flourishes to add to an outfit. Perhaps I should do a review of it and show pictures of the illustrations as people who do dress in vintage might be interested.

@@heathergregg9975 That's a great idea. I would really like to see that video. I think lots of people would-those interested in that period, fashion and of course, books!

some patterns and stitching can be partly used now. Some knitting today uses very expensive wools - this book is resolutely practical. Good for reference.

it's lovely to remember a bit of summer sunshine in autumn

Thanks for taking time to comment. As a friend of mine says, "Art asks the more beautiful question", I think you're asking one.

loved this question!

your comment brightened my day too:-) thank you

Yes, the Silver Unicorn of Booktube (me) has been busy! It's so good to have this art readathon and find other like-minded art appreciators. I hope you enjoy the watch.

oh enjoy, enjoy! I hope you'll find some events and exhibitions in Scotland that you would have loved to see if you'd been here.

@@heathergregg9975 thanks!

life's too short to edit much. The downside about cutting out a mistake is that there's usually a small 'jump' as a person's head has moved between the end of one cut and the start of the next. It immediately ruins the illusion that this is a live, continuous conversation. And when done too much, looks like a person is wildly waving their head about for no reason. Yes, when we realise communication is fragmented anyhow, then we edit less, trust the viewer. After all, apparently body language is a huge amount of the message, so editing cuts is damaging that. Anyhow - I should, like yourself and myself, be editing this for cuts!

relaxing and taking-the-scare out of writing was what I was aiming for, so that's good to hear!

it is only a first draft, so obviously needs a lot of work, but I hope it encourages other people to have a go.