A new year in reading

The end of a year and the beginning of the next one is a reflective and nostalgic time. I find myself gravitating towards re-reads at this time of year. It was Terry Pratchett last year, this year it's going to be Jane Austen. We've just received a shipment of Penguin cloth-bound classics, and they are all so beautiful.

This edition of Sense and Sensibility is the prettiest that I've yet come across. I grabbed a copy the minute I saw it. This is going to be one of  my first books of the year. It's been over ten years since I last read it, and I can't wait to dip into it again.

Other books that I'm looking at reading this month are 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, and  Borges and Me by Jay Parini which the blurb describes as "An intimate and magical memoir about embarking on a road trip with Borges through Scotland and the famed writer's thoughts on literature, love and poetry."

Then there's The Larkin family Series by H E Bates - a five book series written and set in the 1950's. The Larkin family, Pop, Ma and their six children live on a farm in Kent. Pop Larkin is a junk dealer who likes to think of himself as a gentleman farmer, and ma is the large-hearted matriarch with a sense of fun. They're a happy couple who don't take anything too seriously. They enjoy the many pleasures of country life, as do their children. Their family life is a picture of delightful anarchy. I've dipped into the first book in this series, The Darling Buds of May - I'm around four chapters in, and I'm loving it so far.

Here's to another good year of reading.