{"id":711,"date":"2006-12-05T13:24:58","date_gmt":"2006-12-05T17:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/05\/mark-crick-gift-idea\/"},"modified":"2010-07-25T13:29:25","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T17:29:25","slug":"mark-crick-gift-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/05\/mark-crick-gift-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Crick’s Holiday Gift Suggestion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Crick, the author of Kafka’s Soup<\/i><\/a>, couldn’t confine his recommendations to just one title. He doesn’t quite reach the number of authors covered in his literary pastiche of a cookbook, which reimagines classic recipes through the prism of 14 famous authors, but he comes awfully close!<\/p>\n

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\"mark-crick.jpg\"Buying books for friends is not always easy and it’s disappointing to see a book we gave for Christmas looking pristine on a friend’s bookshelf in June. I wouldn’t recommend giving a book you haven’t read yourself since it puts the receiver in the role of proofreader and anything too heavy is likely to require more commitment than a gift has a right to ask; a bit like giving someone a dog that needs two long walks and three meals a day. After years of book giving and receiving, with the exception of friends with special interests, I often fall back on two or three tried and tested titles. <\/p>\n

Whilst The End of the Affair<\/i> would certainly not be appropriate for a partner, the less well-known Travels With My Aunt<\/i> is perhaps my favourite work by Graham Greene. You won’t be dishing up a large helping of Catholic guilt and the story is wonderfully funny and life affirming. I’ve also given and received Le Petit Prince<\/i> by the French writer and aviator Antoine de St Exupery, a strange little tale with charming illustrations by the author and some touching wisdom on the subject of friendship and loss.<\/p>\n

John Julius Norwich’s Christmas Cracker<\/i> is a collection of literary oddities that made me laugh so much I wanted to share it with friends straightaway, and the version illustrated by Quentin Blake is as tempting as a box of chocolates. For young children I often give Roald Dahl’s The Twits<\/i> or Fantastic Mr Fox<\/i>, both also beautifully illustrated by Blake and fun to read aloud. Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man<\/i> is wonderful and heroic; I loved it as a child but love it better now. Better still, buy it for yourself, learn the story by heart and tell it aloud on a car journey by night. Your travelling companions will love it and the oncoming headlights will look like the eyes of the great iron man himself, peering in on your storytelling.<\/p>\n

It will be no surprise that I love to cook nor that there are many cookery books on my shelf that I have hardly read; one exception will be The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened<\/i>. Sir Kenelm lived in 17th-century England, was a great collecter of recipes, and was rumoured to have poisoned his wife with a broth of vipers. A certain excitement accompanies the prospect of working from the recipes of a suspected poisoner and the language of the period adds to the atmosphere as I look forward to preparing Lady Vernon’s White Metheglin for holiday guests. With the more practical cook in mind, I’ve just spent a week in Devon cooking from Raymond Blanc’s Foolproof French Cookery<\/i> and every dish has been a delight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Crick, the author of Kafka’s Soup, couldn’t confine his recommendations to just one title. He doesn’t quite reach the number of authors covered in his literary pastiche of a cookbook, which reimagines classic recipes through the prism of 14 famous authors, but he comes awfully close! Buying books for friends is not always easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}