Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Thursday!

We’ll be spending Thanksgiving with some of Andy's family in San Diego when this post goes live (if Blogger works according to plan), but I wanted to wish those in the U.S. a very happy, tasty, and hopefully nonpolitical holiday weekend, and those elsewhere in the world a very happy, er, Thursday, or happy late autumn, or perhaps happy last weekend in November?

I particularly have a lot to be thankful for this year. First and foremost, of course, Andy—duh. And our wonderful trip to England and Scotland which was so amazing, and on which we only had one day of proper rain in three weeks, which is little less than a miracle, plus all the friends, old and new, that made it special for us.

Then, of course I am tremendously thankful for all of you who take the time to read this blog, and care what I have to say, share your thoughts or, sometimes, your own researches, and share at least some of my peculiar literary interests and book fetishism. Thank you for giving me an excuse to keep on with my obsessive research, my reckless book buying, and my endless interlibrary loans!

And finally, along the same lines, I’m very, very thankful for the tremendous support you and others outside the blogging world have given to my happy, irritatingly gushing dabbling in the world of publishing. It has been terribly exciting for me (and speaking of exciting, I’m planning to do an announcement about our March 2017 titles around New Year’s—what better way to celebrate the New Year than with new book announcements?! well, perhaps some champagne too), and I have to share with you just a little of the love that’s been given to the venture recently.

First, I’m still a little stunned to be able to mention the article published last week—in no lesser spot than the Times Literary Supplement, for heaven’s sake—about the Rachel Ferguson novels we’ve reprinted. Gillian Tindall, who had previously reviewed Persephone’s reprint of Ferguson’s Alas, Poor Lady for the TLS, did an enthusiastic piece on our three titles. If you have a subscription, you can read the whole piece here, and if not, you can still read the first paragraph, which will give you an idea. The second line, which refers to Ferguson as “just a few years older than Elizabeth Bowen and Rosamond Lehmann and more original in her perceptions than either of them,” still makes me a bit giddy. An enthusiastic thanks to Gillian for her enthusiasm about Ferguson!

And speaking of enthusiasm, I have to give some warm thanks to my fellow bloggers who have shown the FM titles a lot of love in the past few weeks. I can’t mention every review individually (though if you’ve reviewed one or more of them, it’s probably a safe bet that I’ve read the reviews—possibly five or six times—and I'm grateful to you too).

In particular, just a couple of days ago, I glanced at my blog to double-check something (yes, I do occasionally have to consult my own lists), and I happened to notice that the first three posts on my blog roll were all brand new reviews of FM books—Lyn at I Prefer Reading had written enthusiastically about Winifred Peck’s Bewildering Cares, Elizabeth at Book Oxygen had given a thumbs-up to Frances Faviell’s A Chelsea Concerto, and, possibly most exciting of all, Barb at Leaves & Pages had given a rare 10 out of 10 rating to Rachel Ferguson’s A Harp in Lowndes Square! We could never have planned such a varied and lovely promo if we’d tried! I should note that all three of those bloggers have also reviewed other of our books recently, as have Ali at Heavenali, Barbara at Call Me Madam, and Liz at Librofulltime.

And last but not least, although I hesitated to dignify the original inspiration for the post with a mention, I would be remiss not to say how thankful I am to Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book for his recent post that’s not a review but a lovely, typically generous gesture—not to mention how thankful I am to the dozens of people who commented on that post. Judging from the results of Simon’s post, perhaps I should actually say I’m also thankful to Esmeralda, or Ermentrud, or Bertha, or whatever name the subject of the post is now going by. She seems to have done a remarkable job of promoting the imprint all by herself!

Have a wonderful holiday weekend/ordinary weekend, everyone!