I said that I would call this ‘Gather loves: books’, but actually, that feels quite restrictive. Who gets to choose what is published, what with publishing being a commercially driven enterprise as it is? What I really love is language and language can be found in many many places. Sometimes compelling, sometimes glorious, sometimes life-changingly powerful. Sometimes, just, comforting.

For non-book writing, can I gently guide you to Saipua’s journal, and my ultimate escape when even Jilly Cooper won’t soothe, Miss Pickering’s blog? The latter is sadly no longer updated but I still go back to it regularly and I live in fear of it disappearing.

I write this on the late May Bank Holiday. After what feels like a month of rain, the sunshine is perfect. Irritatingly too hot for a full day’s weeding, I feel like it is imploring me to potter. Although my intentions for today might have been to finish something (to finish the weeding, the planting out of the kitchen garden, the sowing of tender annuals, the biennals, clearing out the attic, the Big Sort that is now around a year overdue) the sunshine has given me a permission slip to just not. (Do you follow Tamu Thomas? I strongly recommend. She keeps reminding me that I very every-so-slightly possibly am over-working and under-living.)

So many of you recommended books that you love. They are listed below and I am going to be reading one a month for the foreseeable. It would be wonderful if you read them along with me, but there is no pressure to do so. I never ever want anyone in Gather to feel that they are behind with anything. There is more than enough homework and keeping up in the rest of life.

Dip in if you like. I’ll tell you the best bits if you don’t.

In the spirit on keeping some control over my bookshelves, I will be giving away some books as well. This may not happen and if your recommendations are anything like as good as you make them out to be. I might just have to buy two copies of everything…

I am starting with The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift because someone else raved about it years ago and so I bought both Hours and The Morville Years, and then read neither. (Thank you to The Unhurried Reader for these recommendations.) However, I am also buying some in preparation for the next few months. Rachel Atkinson, one of our very own Gather members, stocks some wonderful books on her website, Daughter of a Shepherd, and she has incredibly generously given us all 15% off until June 13th with the code GATHER15. These are:

• Four Hedges by Clare Leighton is a beautifully illustrated book about the garden she created at her home in the Chiltern Hills.

• The Lost Orchard by Raymond Blanc is his magnificent love letter to British and French fruit trees complete with recipes.

• The Tree by John Fowles is an absolute classic.

• In the Garden: Essay on Nature & Growing anthology published by Daunt Books.

Yes, I have bought them all…

From Kathy Edwards, with some rather lovely mini-reviews:

In and Out of the Garden by Sara Midda. If ever there was a book that I would class as ‘visually pleasing journal goals’ this is it for me. It is bursting with the most beautiful and charming illustrations.

A Garden From a Hundred Packets of Seeds - James Fenton. Only just started this. And although it is a mere 74 pages long I’ll struggle to find time to finish it. I was taken in by the title and on opening at a random page and reading (which is what I do to get a feel for a book) I thought this is going to be both interesting and entertaining.

Sara Davison’s list of three absolutely go to gardening books, all of which follow my own favourite journal format:

Beth Chatto’s ‘Garden Notebook’

Helen Dillon’s ‘On Gardening’

Monty Don ‘The Ivington Diaries’

From Babs, Braiding Sweetgrass. Of course, a wonderful reminder by Georgie Guernsey about Sue Stuart-Smith’s book, The Well Gardened Mind. From the wonderful Patsie Costello, Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer.

That is more than enough to keep me going for a while. If you fancy starting with The Morville Hours along with me, I will sharing my thoughts on instagram over the next week or so.

Race you to the hammock….