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.

It’s nearly time for the Costa awards, which are a brilliant competition, dedicated to books you would insist on pressing on someone else rather than some hi-faluting idea of boring art (my views on the Booker are here). I am utterly delighted that Maggie O’Farrell is finally being noticed for the wonderful novelist she is- The Hand That First Held Mine has won its fiction category. It’s a marvellous book, about childhood, though my favourite remains The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which is startlingly brilliant.

There’s More! Click to read on…