I hate it when books rush past. Sometimes now it feels like the publishing cycle is so fast that things can come and go in the blink of an eye, then they’re impossible to find again. Which means I do a lot of impulse buying. I know, I know, hypothetically with the internet you can find everything forever, but I almost never remember what caught my eye first time around.

Anyway, here is one you might have missed whooshing past, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s by Ben Hatch, and it’s called Are We Nearly There Yet? 8000 miles in a Vauxhall Astra . At first glance you might think it’s one of those Bill Bryson light comic monologues (no disrespect to Bill Bryson by the way, I think he’s a genius who has taught more people more interesting stuff in a fun way than just about anyone since Richard Attenborough), but it’s not like that at all. It’s about a family who take off to write a guidebook for Fromer’s with their two toddlers. Whilst they do, Ben’s father gets ill (it’s non-fiction), and, due to eight hours in a car together every day for months on end, the whole family learn a lot about each other.

I think why I liked it so very much is that so many books look at bad marriages or relationships; or they focus on finding a person, then ignoring after the happy ever after, whereas this is about a living, loving, occasionally quarrelsome but clearly very happy marriage and it felt curiously life-affirming to read about it. It’s very warts and all, extremely funny, very human and very sad. If you liked One Day (ha, I have yet to meet anyone who did NOT like One Day, or who was just saying they didn’t to show off and be different), or just like good books in general, don’t let this one pass you by. OOH and for disclosure, yes, he is a friend of mine, but he has written loads of books and I have never felt moved to blog about them before :)

Other things on my pile:

A Storm of Swords (Still, Jen? Jings, yes, and I have about three more to go as well. But WHAT a storyteller.)

The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England -such a cool idea.

Little House on the Prairie I was reading this on holiday- it was one of those old things people leave behind in slightly shabby holiday cottages like the one we were in- and the baby threw it in the swimming pool. As it rained every single day on holiday I rather grumpily didn’t replace it. But it is even better than I remember and I am going to get a copy and start reading it to the boys asap.

I have been in a whirl with Cupcake being out, it is,  I cannot tell you, very exciting to watch a book come out and have lots of people buy it and like it (HMM obviously only the people who do like it bother to let you know, I guess the others just throw it over a wall, but nonetheless it’s still very nice).

Being a contrary character, after saying I am hardly ever on facebook, I have totally started parking out on my publisher’s page on facebook, which is at www.facebook.com/jennycolganbooks BECAUSE loads of people have, to my total surprise, started baking the recipes from the book and posting them up there. It’s amazing, I feel like I am responsible for cake popping up all over the place. Anyway, if you want to get in touch, or post your recipe pics (I am trying to figure out a way to turn it into a competition without being able to taste any of them, it’s really tricky), feel free to pop over there and say hi.

As for reading, like half the rest of the country I have been sucked- PLOUF- headlong into A Game of Thrones of which there are at least another billion and a half pages to read. It’s entirely possible I’ll never read anything ever again, although I am anxious awaiting the new Jon Ronson. Jon is one of those writers whom I will read on literally anything, I seriously think he’s a genius. I would never tell him this though, it makes him anxious that kind of thing. OOH and I am reading the six year old this. It is making us both very happy, possibly me the most. It took us a couple of goes to get into it as he was very scared of the white witch at first, but now we’re hooked. I envy him, hearing it for the very first time. “What’s Aslan?” he keeps asking, as C.S. Lewis foreshadows him brilliantly.

Here I am with Mariella Frostrup, on whom I have the most enormous girl crush and have done now for about ten years. She is just SOOOO cool- talking a bit about chick lit. The book is nearly out! Very exciting. Haven’t been blogging much about reading because I am FINALLY reading Anna Karenenina. It is brill (apart from the bits about farming) and is taking a while. Also thoroughly enjoyed Sophie Hannah’s Lasting Damage, although even though it made perfect sense at the time, I couldn’t explain the end now, and Dan Rhodes’ fantastic new one, This is Life which I think is his funniest one ever.

Hope you’re enjoying some sunshine wherever you are! Spring is here in the South of France, which means the children are constantly covered in mud and bounce about a lot I approve of both of those things.

The Book Show

Awful thing, I haven’t been here for ages because when they changed the site layout I hated the photo and couldn’t bear typing whilst being looked down on by my big horse face. I know being vain about that kind of stuff is completely ridiculous. However having met lots of writers in the flesh after perusing their jacket photos, it is, let us be clear here, in NO WAY RARE :)

OOh, what’s been good? The great thing about kindle is that you can always see what you’ve been reading. My editor told me to read The Good Soldier which was really puzzling and upsetting and incredibly powerful. I never read introductions first, I hate spoilers, so it wasn’t till I got till the end and read the introduction that I realised it was actually meant to be puzzling and upsetting. Phew. I thought I just hadn’t got it. This is why I wasn’t a very good English Lit student.

Millions of people have also been telling me to read The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs and I was going to wait till I got back to London and nick my friend’s copy, but I cracked in the end and downloaded it for a trip to Barcelona, and yes, it really is that good. Hilariously funny, a very touching love story and very very very sharp on the vagaries of modern middle-class living. I couldn’t put it down and kept putting my head on my husband’s shouder and giving deep sighs of relief until he told me I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore whilst he was driving the car in case we had an accident.