Transita

A box of books arrived from Transita this week in readiness for my Endsleigh Reader's evening.I shall be thanking everyone soon and reporting back on what turned out to be one of the best bookish evenings I have been to in ages and we have set up something just a bit special down here in the Valley.I challenge the world and its mother-father-auntie-uncle and cousin to come up with a better venue for a reading group, this is going to be a group with a difference.
My connections with Transita, who were launched as an antidote for those of us of a certain age who might be getting fed up with Chick-Lit, are now legendary but here's a quick resume for those who missed it.
BBC Radio 4 Open Book feature on Transita early last year, very snooty, two writers (won't name but one is currently in the ascendant again with historical novels) and Mariella all very dismissive. Nikki Read editor rather unfairly marmalized.
Me,disgruntled e mail to programme, that was hardly fair unbiased coverage, why not let readers decide?
Open Book send 6 books to review and invite me onto programme following week.
Me,spend every waking and sleeping minute reading.
Me,practice lowering voice an octave so as not to sound like a squeaky mouse next to Mariella Frostrup.
Me, travel to London to record programme.Practice discussing with self on train.Feeling too sick to take advantage of endless free food trolley runs that go with First Class Apex ticket.
Two other "readers" also invited, one a very angry bookseller who hasn't read books but senses by looking she won't like them, hates the concept, beats me up in corridor outside studio.
So I might be exaggerating, she looks at me like she wants to and lands the verbal equivalent.
Programme recorded, many silences followed by verbal excess, book seller's blood pressure  approaching 220 systolic, my cardiac output nearing upper limits for compatibility with life.
Best arguments on cutting room floor, failed in voice modulation, sound like parrot with hernia.
Retreat back to backwoods of Devonshire where I belong.
Next day, message from now Oxford-based Transita editor, Nikki Read "are you the same person who was my health visitor 27 years ago?" OMG, pick self up from floor, yes that newly-qualified rookie who practised on you was me!
The world is indeed very tiny or I have been doing this job far too long.
I have resisted reviewing Transita books on here because since then I have written a column for them and it would all seem a bit incestuous, however there are a few books coming up that I'm going to be hard pushed not to place before you.
One is The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh.I read this in manuscript form which I do for Transita occasionally if they want a reader's opinion and this one was a real certainty for me. I can't wait to see it in print, it's a really good read and Mary is a great writer.One of those who can take her story off in all directions of time and place and still keep you completely in the loop.I read another unfinished manuscript of hers and I hope to goodness she's finishing it because I have to know the rest of the story. We are not talking literary fiction just good, well-written, page-turning enjoyable reading and I need a surfeit of that after the Booker-thon.
There's a new Adrienne Dines in there too, Soft Voices Whispering and I loved The Jigsaw Maker.

The other one, I spyed as a proof and I've nabbed it because I can't wait for a real copy to arrive, I've read a great review of it elsewhere, Redemption by Kay Langdale.
I'll report back when I've indulged because for me these are the calorie-laden choco-fest books that Susan Hill mentioned earlier this week, after my diet of celery and carrot Booker I deserve a binge.