Hello booklovers,

We hope you are all coping with these strange and unsettling times of ours. Here at the Felixstowe Book Festival we have been looking at ways to keep our dear festival fans entertained during a time where a great deal of our favourite outlets are out of bounds for the foreseeable future.

Those of you who keep an eagle eye on our social media pages will have seen that the wonderful Ruth Dugdall has decided to continue to host our Cuppa book club meetings online! “But how will that work?”, I hear you cry! Simply ‘like’ Ruth’s Facebook page, Ruth Dugdall author and the fun will begin there.

On April 7th Ruth will start a thread on her Facebook page about ‘How to be Autistic’ by Charlotte Amelia Poe, our Cuppa book club choice for April. From 7pm, the usual time of our meetings, Ruth will be live on her Facebookpage to host an hour long discussion about ‘How to be Autistic’ – festival fans are welcome to add their comments to the thread at this time, or if you can’t make the hour then just add your comments afterwards. We hope this will prove to be an interesting substitute for our usual bookish gatherings!

Put the date in your diary booklovers and we will ‘see’ you then. Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages for more literary fun – we are currently asking our festival fans about their favourite festival books. What was yours?

Take care everyone and keep reading!

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

 

Hello booklovers,

We hope that you are all keeping well and looking after yourselves during these tricky times.

It is with great sadness that we have decided that our festival Quiz, which was to be held on the 27th of March, will sadly not be going ahead due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are also postponing the Friends of the Felixstowe Book Festival meeting which had been rearranged for the 30th of March. In addition, all further CUPPA book club meetings have also been cancelled. Do keep reading the brilliant books on the Cuppa reading list and tweet us with your thoughts! We are truly sorry to disappoint you all but given the current situation these events sadly cannot go ahead.

We will keep you up to date with news about the 2020 festival in the coming weeks and months, so keep your eye on the website – in the meantime, in true festival fashion, why not disappear into another world and get stuck into a good book?

If you need a bit of a distraction from the barrage of gloomy news dominating our lives at the moment, I came across this story this morning which really cheered me up – click on the link below to have a look!

Help through the letterbox: postcard campaign launched to tackle coronavirus isolation

Take care everyone!

Bookish best,

Imogen and the festival team x

Hello booklovers,

Here at the Felixstowe Book Festival we are extremely proud to have held host to many exceptional female writers and we are thrilled to welcome many more to our 2020 festival. March is Women’s History Month and today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day, an occasion to celebrate female achievement and continue to steer the journey towards equality. We thought today was a perfect day to celebrate some of our guests who will be joining us in June.

For those of you eagle-eyed Twitter and Facebook festival fans, you will have seen that we are welcoming Helen McCarthy to our festival on Sunday 28th of June. Helen will be chatting to us about her book, Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood. During the course of this astonishing and thorough book, Helen reveals to her readers the transformation of the lives of working mothers and society’s perception of working mothers over the past century. Notions of motherhood and family life matched with the desire for both financial and personal independence are shown to be the product of the past century as well as our own contemporary society. We can’t wait to welcome Helen, for what promises to be a fascinating event, perfect for those with an interest in social history.

We are also over the moon to be hosting festival favourite Liz Trenow, also on Sunday 28th June. Liz, a wonderful supporter of the Felixstowe Book Festival, is returning to our stage to talk about her latest novel Under a Wartime Sky. Set a stone’s throw away from our own sleepy seaside town, at the impressive Bawdsey Manor, Liz’s compelling novel depicts the real life events surrounding the work of the some of the country’s most intelligent minds to change the course of the Second World War, through the invention of radar. Amongst the tension and the severity of the situation, a tentative friendship develops between local Felixstowe girl Kathleen and Vic, a scientist based at the manor. Kathleen’s involvement may have repercussions that no one could have predicted…  We look forward very much to seeing Liz again soon.

Helen and Liz are just two of a remarkable line up of authors who are visiting Felixstowe in June. Keep your eyes on our blog, social media pages and our newsletter for exciting updates about our 2020 Festival.

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

Today, March the 5th, marks World Book Day, an annual celebration encouraging the joy that books and reading for pleasure can bring to our youngest readers, a message that feeds into the very heart of the Felixstowe Book Festival.

The benefits of reading for pleasure are innumerable and lifelong. Research suggests that reading regularly and out of choice as a child leads to strong academic capabilities and good mental health and general wellbeing; it also contributes to the emergence of compassionate, emotionally intelligent children, thanks to many journeys from a very young age into the lives and worlds of others.

We were lucky at our 2019 children’s festival to welcome some wonderful authors and many lovely, literary minded people, all committed to encouraging reading for pleasure to our young audience. We doodled with Alex Milway and his friends from the Hotel Flamingo and went back in time to the Second World War with Ally Sherrick, author of The Buried Crown. Hayley Long inspired the young poets of Felixstowe Academy to create their very own anthology of work and Sophie Green invited us into her mysterious world of Potkin and Stubbs (incidentally book 3 of the Potkin and Stubbs trilogy Ghostcatcher will be launched on March 5th!) Ruth Fitzgerald and James Campbell made us howl with laughter and Rapscallion Theatre Company sent us shooting off into Space to mark 50 years since man landed on the moon. We very much look forward to welcoming some equally fantastic authors and speakers to our 2020 festival.

This year, our friends at World Book Day are challenging the nation’s children and young people to, quite simply, share a story for ten minutes on the 5th of March. This could be with a friend, a relative, a teacher, a librarian or just to anyone with a pair of willing ears who happens to be nearby. Stories can be shared at school, on the beach, during a walk in the woods, in the garden, at the library, over dinner, on the way to a swimming lesson, when you’re taking the dog for a walk or whilst you feed the cat – anywhere!

So book lovers, we here at the Felixstowe Book Festival throw down this literary gauntlet and ask you to do the same. A love of books can start at birth and does not have to stop at childhood – we beseech you to head to your local independent book shop or stop off at your local library and choose yourself a new book to enjoy.

 

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install a lovely bookshelf on the wall.” – Roald Dahl

 

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

Once again we are blown away by your wonderful and enthusiastic support of the Felixstowe Book Festival Cuppa Book Club. We do hope you enjoyed the spooky theme of this week’s session with some literary treats in the form of Haverscroft by S.A. Harris and Ghostland by Edward Parnell. Another round of applause to the lovely Cuppa cafe for their great venue and delicious provisions.

Our next session will be held on April 7th at Cuppa and we will be reading How to be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe. Charlotte’s urgent, entertaining and sometimes shocking book is an enlightening account of what it is like to live with autism, alongside an insightful commentary on gender, mental illness and sexual identity. We look forward to seeing you all again for what will prove to be a fascinating evening.

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

We are steadily edging towards the end of February – I hope you are all surviving the absolute weatherly lashing we have been receiving over the past few weeks. Hopefully some exciting news of some upcoming festival events will stoke you up for better (and brighter!) things to come…

Firstly we are very much looking forward to the next Cuppa Book Club which will be held on Tuesday 3rd of March at the delightful Cuppa Cafe – we are still utterly over the moon at the support we have received from you lovely booklovers and we look forward to seeing you all again next week. This month’s theme is ghost stories and we will be looking at Haverscroft by S.A. Harris and Ghostland by Edward Parnell. Look to our lovely local bookshops, such as Stillwater Books, Poor Richard’s and the Treasure Chest, to get your mitts on some copies soon.

Time to warm up those brains as we are gearing up to host the 2020 Felixstowe Book Festival quizzes. Your are most cordially invited to join us on the 27th of March and the 19th of June at Broadway House, for an evening of quiz fun and a posh ploughman’s supper. Teams are made up of 6 people with a ticket cost of £8 per person. Be there or be square for a 7.30 start! To book your team, call 01394 549567 or email vivienne.aspinall@yahoo.co.uk.

Bookish best,

Imogen and the Festival Team x

 

Hello booklovers,

Wishing you all a very Happy Valentine’s Day! Why not show your love through sharing a good story with loved ones or trying out a tale that you haven’t encountered before?

If you are struggling for inspiration, look no further than the Felixstowe Book Festival blog: we asked you a few weeks ago for stories that you love and you gave us some rather wonderful examples. Read on to find out more…

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’

Whilst I certainly wouldn’t aspire to the disturbing extremes of the passion of Cathy and Heathcliff, their love cultivated on those wild Yorkshire moors is undoubtedly the stuff of romantic legend. A thrilling tale mixing intrigue and gothic overtones is well worth an atmospheric read.  

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien was not noted for interesting depictions of his female characters, however one of our lovely festival fans quite rightly pointed out the ‘understated love’ of one of the novel’s heroes, Aragorn, for the Elvish Lord Elrond’s daughter Arwen. Tolkien’s depiction of love in his adventurous trilogy lies also in the depiction of binding friendships and the importance of home to those who wander far from it.

The Unseen by Katherine Webb

This was suggested to us by one of our fans purely because she found the story ‘gripping, the characters are so interesting and it’s so beautifully written, as are all of Katherine Webb’s books’. What an excellent recommendation!

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 

‘You are, and always have been, my dream.’

This truly is an ultimate and sumptuous love story, packed with drama and romance, separation and grief, but ultimately fortitude and what it is for a couple to grow old together. Set from the Second World War to many years later, this truly is a novel to be swept away in.

We hope you have enjoyed our little guide to the books that our festival fans love – they just go to show that love can be found in all sorts of different forms. Maybe you have found some inspiration for your next read?

It seems appropriate to conclude our Valentine’s blog post with a quote from one of our best beloved authors, Jane Austen.

‘There is no charm equal to tenderness of the heart.’

Have a good weekend!

All our love,

the Felixstowe Book Festival team x