Book(ish)

“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”- Henry James I write with an ice lolly in one hand and my feet on the windowsill, desperately seeking a breeze. This weather is less than ideal for work, but it is perfect for reading. In summer, time blurs in slow motion; days shimmer in the heat. The world is in repose. With it comes an interruption to the rules as the haze makes limbs and morals indolent.

Ready for aperitivi on the terrace - Lotta Camilla Teale Not to be too English, but heavens, June was hot, wasn’t it? I wanted to recline in the shade of a tree, preferably by a river I could dive into, with a book and a pitcher of homemade lemonade. (I have never made lemonade. Perhaps I ought to try?) I would also like to sit on this terrace and have an apertivo.

June has conspired to a. render me melting and b. remind me that women are, as a rule, excellent. I went to the Women’s Prize aka a strong candidate the best party of the year, even when the weather is unseasonably chilly (which feels a far cry from the temperature as a I type). It was glorious, an event characterised by an abundance of good will, and the raising up of other women. It’s also heavy on hope: “Books can change the world,” said founder director/goddess Kate Mosse.

Right, here we go my friends. A work of quite epic proportions, my summer 2026 books guide. The novels I’ve read this year which I think would make excellent holiday companions, handily delivered during a heatwave. This is the first instalment - I must divide it into parts or you will never receive it. I’ve been writing this off and on for weeks: my desk is surrounded by piles of books, like a paper fortress.

Claire Daverley is good at the business of love. She writes the kind of love stories which wrap their tendrils around your heart. They’re not mawkish and sentimental. There are no tropes or clichés: no enemies-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine, city girl falling for wholesome yet sexy small town boy, Cinderella stories. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with any of these things, but they are not the stories Claire writes.

I have a compulsion which afflicts many bookish types: I cannot pass a bookshop without wanting to go in. Especially if it’s an independent bookshop, each of which has its own distinctive character: is it a cosy tea with your eccentric aunt? An insouciant Parisienne with black-framed spectacles and a penchant for exhibitions of virtually unfathomable art? My Naughty Little Sister in bookshop form? (Do I also secretly want to run a bookshop, which incorporates a cafe of some sort?

The Good Stuff Everything I read on our mini holiday. Best novels lists. The return of Rivals. Memoirs that misremember? A dream house in France. Adieu May - my birthday month and the one in which we went away for all of three-and-a-bit days, but it very much counted as it coincided with the heatwave, so Dorset felt more like Greece - complete with violet jellyfish, floating ominously near the shoreline.

Interviews 17 years after The Help, Kathryn Stockett is back with The Calamity Club - and it was worth the wait And what a book it is. 656 pages absolutely fly by. You will wish it was longer. It is a big-hearted, rollicking adventure with characters which will take up residence in your head. A tour de force of storytelling about courageous, resourceful women, found family, prejudice, money and the lack thereof, and the primal longing of mother for child, and child for mother.

Off the Shelf Everything I read in a week and how to squeeze more books into the day A flurry of new subscribers - how lovely and thank you. Welcome! I cannot promise you posts on a set day (I work full time, so this Substack is squeezed into corners) but I do promise you regular bookish despatches from the not-so-coal face of reading. By way of (re)introduction: I’ve been a journalist for (mumbles) over twenty years.

Isn’t it refreshing and hopeful when an author breaks through and publishes their debut in mid-life? Who brings to their pages years of experience in all its many shades. Who writes a terrific novel which they say they couldn’t have written if they were younger. Who never gave up, despite over 100 rejections, and found an agent via by a process of persistence and psychic premonition - which has to be read to be believed.