Escape! Relax! Read!

Here I lie in my deckchair, my toes gently nuzzling the warm sand as I bask in the shade of a palm tree. A scantily clad waitress, drinks tray in hand, approaches me with the magic words, "Wake up, you lazy blighter and do some work!"

If you are planning your own escape from toil, here’s help with finding something to read on the beach.

South Island suggestions

If you like… has rightly kept its place on the Gateway for as long as I can remember. What it does is simple and useful. As you reach the end of a particularly good read, you may wish to keep the mood going by reading something similar. Pick a genre or pick an author: the website has some intelligent suggestions, including reads which are not quite the same but near enough to be a good progression.

They are particularly good on New Zealand books, which is not surprising. The whole thing is put together by the public library service in Christchurch, New Zealand. But most of the suggestions are far from parochial – this is a world of books with friendly experts to guide you.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books & literature". If you like… is under "Choosing books".)

Paper backs

The links to Newspapers’ book sections were added to the Gateway as an acknowledgment that newspapers’ online content in this area has improved enormously. Book news, reviews, features and gossip – everything you would expect to find in the printed book sections of the broadsheets can now be accessed online.

We have included links to four UK broadsheets, plus the Mail, the Washington Post, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. If you can’t find something to read from that lot, you’d better just pop down to the library and do a bit of serious browsing!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books & literature". Newspapers’ book sections is under "Choosing books".)

Pic: DO

If wet, in the shed

Look, whatever I say about the weather will prove to be good for a laugh by the time you read this. So let me just say that now, as I sit here and look out through the window, it’s sunny and warm. If necessary, just use your imagination.

Water gardens

As I contemplate the hard midday shadows on the stucco wall opposite (how poetic!), I think how nice it would be to visit a garden, one where someone else does all the work and I can saunter and admire (or make catty remarks about the planting if I’m in the mood). What I need is the National Gardens Scheme garden finder. Let’s give it a go.

My gaff is in W1 (don’t get the wrong idea – it’s a bedsit), and I am looking for gardens to visit between the coming weekend and the next one. I’m prepared to travel up to five miles, so I enter this information and press the button. Surprisingly, 13 gardens are open during this period, including seven inter-connected floating barge gardens and a lakeside garden in Regents Park.

These are all private gardens (or private barges, as the case may be), opened on one or more days a year for our delight. Each entry has a description of the sort of garden I will find, with a link to bags of detail on opening hours, charges, and how to get there.

And it’s all for charity. Perfect!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Home & garden". The National Gardens Scheme is under "Gardening".)

Miscellany of gardens

The Royal Horticultural Society garden finder is rather different: what it finds for me is not anybody’s back garden or barge. Rather it finds public gardens, parks, even the odd garden centre. Actually, it’s a bit difficult to see what links the places listed, apart from the fact that they’re all garden-related and tempting.

I could probably track down the criteria for inclusion, but I think I’ll visit a garden instead. I wonder whether I’ll need my water wings for the barges…

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Home & Garden". The Royal Horticultural Society is under "Gardening", and the garden finder is under "What’s On" at the foot of the page.)

Picture credit: penywise/morguefile.com

Exclusive advice


If you are a writer or an artist, and have ever needed a publisher or an agent or copyright advice or a kick-start in writing travel books, you have probably consulted the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.

Almost every library has a print copy, but usually this is a reference copy which you can’t pour over in the discomfort of your own garret. Look no further than the electronic version, which comes to you courtesy of KnowUK, one of the Westminster Libraries Exclusive Resources (you will need your library card to log on at your desk or easel).

The KnowUK version of the Yearbook is not such a good browse as the paper copy, but the "directory" layout does have distinct advantages. The table of contents offers choices of writing genre, together with art and illustration, photography, copyright and libel, and several other categories (not forgetting a vital one, finance for writers and artists).

Expand any category to see the sub-headings and get to the meat of the text, which is densely packed with good advice and - a vital ingredient - encouragement. The practitioners giving hints and tips are people you’ve actually heard of (ie successful writers/artists), and the stuff on copyright, finance and resources is written by genuine experts who work in this particular field.

As for my own romantic work, A Shiver in the Shrubbery, I think it will be much improved now that I have read Jane Green’s advice. Or maybe I’ll rename it A Tryst in the Trossachs and turn it into a travel book…

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books". The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is a Key Link.)

Mission Control

As I mention above, the Gateway to websites has a direct link to the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, but of course we also link to the "mother ship", KnowUK itself. This is a vast, huge, gi-normous mega-resource (you get the picture - it’s rather large).

There are directories and yearbooks and guidebooks and gazetteers and encyclopaedias and topic guides and advice finders on arts, biography, courses and careers, education, events, general knowledge… pause for breath… actually this is silly - have a look for yourself. Your time will not be wasted.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Quick reference". KnowUK is under "Directories".)