Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
Irene Vallejo (translated by Charlotte Whittle)
Hodder & Stoughton, £25, pp464
This prize-winning Spanish title has a classy jacket and impressive heft, which is only fitting really, since it celebrates the book as an object. More enticingly still, novelist and essayist Vallejo enlivens history with imagination and personal anecdote as she traces the book’s lineage from scrolls made of aquatic plant pith to codices and tablets, digressing to show how its development is interwoven with the development of western civilisation. Is Papyrus available as an ebook? Yes, but I’ll bet any reader drawn to it is going to want to save up for the hardcover.
The Weather Woman
Sally Gardner
Apollo, £20, pp496
Gardner’s seductive historical novel brings together some tantalising ingredients, among them frost fairs on the Thames, automatons and sophisticated disguises. It’s set in Regency England, where Neva Friezland is born with magical powers: she can predict the weather. At a time when any attempts at meteorological forecasting are regarded as downright sacrilegious, akin to second-guessing God, this is as much a liability as it is a gift. In order to capitalise on it, she must go undercover as a man, embarking on a journey filled with danger and romance.
My Life in France
Julia Child
Duckworth, £10.99, pp368 (paperback)
What is it about Julia Child? This new edition of her autobiography arrives (though it can’t have been anticipated) just a short while after the untimely death of Julie Powell, whose blog and its subsequent film adaptation won Child a fresh readership towards the end of her life. The book distils much of what propelled this most unlikely of superstars into the limelight – her warmth, her gusto, her refusal to compromise. As Olivia Potts notes in a new introduction, it’s above all a love story, one in which Child’s husband, Paul, shares the role of romantic lead with food, France and life itself.
To order Papyrus, The Weather Woman or My Life in France go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
