Themed Read December 2022: a book that you haven’t been able to fit into a theme yet

Welcome to our December 2022 Themed Read.

This thread is going up a little early to give everyone who wants to join in the chance to have their books lined up and ready to read.

Our theme this month is READ A BOOK THAT YOU HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO FIT INTO A THEME YET.

This is a wonderfully loose theme which allows you to pick up literally any Virago Modern Classic which you happen to fancy reading at the moment - so there is no list for guidance, but do check out the Group Wiki which has a spreadsheet of all of the Virago Modern Classics.

Our monthly theme also embraces books from publishers such as Persephone and Dean Street Press who issue authors and titles which share the Virago ethos.

So this month we celebrate any Virago or Virago-inspired book you choose to spend time with - what will you be reading?

Ooh! Well, for a start, I'm running a challenge called Dean Street December where I'm reading all the books of theirs I have TBR and encouraging others to, too (if there's an interest in joining in, I can post the link to my main blog post when I have it up). And I was going to do DiverseDecember, too (as DSP books, lovely as they are, aren't the most hugely diverse) and have Golem Girl which is by someone living with a disability in Virago ...

Excellent Liz! Of course your event fits in brilliantly!!!

Reactivating social media things... Or trying to! So here is a Virago that I'm sure doesn't fit into any of the other monthly themes this year. Hearts Undefeated, Women's Writing of the Second World War, edited by Jenny Hartley. Lots of snippets from magazines, newspapers, radio broadcasts, letters, diaries novels, from women in all walks of line - from the then Queen down to ordinary housewives. Some of the pieces are from well known authors, others from women i've never heard of, but they are all brave and resilient. The writing is sad, funny and angry, and builds a picture of women whose lives were turned upside down by the turbulent times they lived in. Am I allowed to put a link to the blog please? It's so long since I posted here I can't remember! If not, cut it out. https://mybooktrunk.blogspot.com/2022/12/hearts-undefeated.html

>4 TheBookTrunk: Hello and what a great suggestion! And thank you for linking to your blog - I think that's quite acceptable as I do link to mine when relevant!😊

>4 TheBookTrunk: A lovely one, I read that a while ago. And I link to my blog on here!

I have Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner on the go, and have also set aside The microcosm by Maureen Duffy for this month.

I've read loads of Dean Street Press books for my challenge, and a British Library Women Writers volume: "Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season" which I'm about to review, nothing actually from Virago though.

I'm the same Liz, and I've even run out of time for the Dean Street December - sorry.... But I think we can count the BL short stories as being in the Virago ethos!!

I read The microcosm which took me a while to get into, but which I found fascinating in the end. It's a mosaic novel linked by the lesbian bar House of Shades, with long internal monologues by various characters across the spectrum of 1960s queer society. There's Marie who repressed her sexuality and is unhappily married; Cathy who has to move to London and discover that she's not "the only one" in order to be happy; Steve who is a games teaching, dreading that one of her pupils will develop a crush and throw suspicion onto her; and linking the characters, Matt, the bartender who lives as a man with his wife Rae. I think the afterword would have been better placed at the beginning of the book, for me. It explains that Duffy intended the book to be a non-fiction collection of narratives recorded from lesbian women, but she was persuaded that no-one would publish such a book. So she turned the experiences she had collected into the tales that form this novel. It's quite daring structurally as well as in it's content. It's not an easy read, but worth persevering with.