Blog | Nose in a book

Holiday in USA: Charlotte

June 13, 2015

Charlotte, North Carolina is not likely to be a place I would go on holiday if I didn’t have family there, but there is something to be said for going somewhere that isn’t a big tourist destination. The city centre is very new, clean and shiny, with public artworks (many related to reading, which obviously I like) and plenty of trees (which again has an obvious appeal to me). There’s also a light rail system that is excellent – as long as you’re trying to go somewhere in that one straight line.

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(Belated) Sunday Salon: Back to real life

June 8, 2015June 14, 2015 2 Comments

The Sunday Salon You may or may not have noticed a lack of updates on this blog lately. I have been on holiday for two weeks and only had time beforehand to schedule one post, so there’s been a big gap. But I have no regrets, as I had a fantastic time away.

We have been to visit my sister (and her family) in Charlotte, North Carolina and to the city of cities, New York. Both of which were awesome. We relaxed and did lots of stuff. We ate some great food, found hidden gems and were total tourists. One day back at work and I am ready to go back across the ocean already!

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Shiny New Books Spring Extra Shiny

May 14, 2015

Yes, you read that right. The team at Shiny New Books have published an interim newsletter, the Spring Extra Shiny! It features 19 new book reviews, an appreciation of Ruth Rendell plus a new giveaway. And there is a review by me in there. I wrote about The River by Rumer Godden, a lovely novel about childhood that has been reissued by Virago. I highly recommend the book, but if you want to know more, do check out my review, and of course the rest of the Spring Extra Shiny.

World Lupus Day 2015

May 10, 2015 2 Comments

It’s that time of year again when I reflect on having lupus, on both how it sucks and how lucky I am compared with many other sufferers. I am aware every day of having lupus, of the effect it has on my life, of the constraints and limits it places on me, but also of the many common lupus symptoms I don’t suffer.

I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus in 2007 after about a year and a half of tests and investigations into why I was so tired all the time. After diagnosis I realised that there had been other symptoms too that pointed to lupus, but it hadn’t occurred to me they were abnormal. By that I mean things like having cold hands and feet all the time (a sign of poor circulation), dry mouth and eyes, flu-like symptoms such as muscle aches. And there were things I didn’t put together until after diagnosis: exposure to sunlight makes me headachy, dizzy and nauseous far faster than sunstroke would, and strong sunlight brings me out in a rash before it burns me.

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Experiment with henna

May 4, 2015 4 Comments

I’ve been meaning to dye my hair for absolutely ages but really wanted to use natural dye, which I couldn’t find anywhere. Then when browsing in Lush, I spotted that they sell blocks of henna, which led to me spending my entire bank holiday Monday trying not to dye my entire house red. I thought it would be interesting to document the process. Apologies for the terrible cameraphone photos…

I started today with hair that was a sort of mousy light brown with blonde highlights and more grey than I’d like. I covered the bathroom in newspapers and old towels, dug out all the hair clips I never use and headed to the kitchen for the fun part.

I broke up the henna block into a bain marie (one of those kitchen items we own but never use, which made me feel better about the risk of totally ruining it for all future food uses) set over a pan of boiling water, and gradually added water until the henna had turned into a slightly crumbly hot paste. It’s a bit like melting chocolate but takes a lot longer and a lot more liquid. Also it has a weird green tinge, which I didn’t expect.

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April reading round-up

April 30, 2015 1 Comment

This month I’ve read a lot of books (nine! it’s usually four or five!) and not reviewed many. Is that good or bad? Yay for reading more, I suppose. Then again, a lot of these books were really short, so there’s a chance it adds up to a completely average number of pages read. I can’t decide if I mind that. And I will get to those reviews soon.

Out of interest, I looked at how I’m doing as regards reading widely. There’s a good mix of genres this month – literary fiction, poetry, essays, science fiction and I guess superhero comics are fantasy? There’s a decent range of author nationalities too if you base it on their place of birth – India (actually part of what’s now Bangladesh but when Godden was born it was India), UK, US, Nigeria, Afghanistan – but strictly Godden was British and spent more of her life here. One book is a translation and one is from my Classics Club list, so I’m just about keeping up with my aims there.

My main concern though is that the TBR stands at 146 books. That’s 146 books that I own and have not yet read. The trip to Hay-on-Wye didn’t help, I’ll concede! But I’d really feel happier if that number was under 100, so I think I need to impose a book-buying ban and I need to keep up this reading speed. Less TV, more books; that’s the lesson here. Am I worrying too much? How big is your TBR? Go on, make me feel better/worse and tell me in the comments!

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Sunday Salon: Glimpse of summer

April 26, 2015April 26, 2015 2 Comments

The Sunday Salon We’ve had a really lovely couple of weeks weather-wise and I’ve been trying my best to make the most of it, despite having that pesky work thing to go to. I’ve spent most lunchtimes outdoors and those bits of evening or weekend I’m not outdoors have found me sat near a window enjoying the long light hours.

Last weekend for a friend’s birthday we went to the seaside. We took the train to Weston-super-Mare, which for those who don’t know it is a properly cheesy seaside town. There’s a pier, fair rides, ice-cream stalls, donkey rides and about a zillion people crowded onto the beach. We ate fish and chips, built a sandcastle and admired the rather more impressive works in the annual Sand Sculpture Festival. It was a lot of fun.

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Literary day out: Hay-on-Wye

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015 5 Comments

When I was a teenager, I forget which year, for my birthday I asked for money and a trip to Hay-on-Wye. For those unfamiliar with it, Hay-on-Wye is a small town in Wales that’s very pretty, surrounded by lovely walking country, but most importantly it’s full of bookshops – about two dozen of them in fact. It’s pretty awesome and that was my favourite birthday treat ever. So this year when a friend invited me to spend Easter weekend in the Brecon Beacons, including Sunday in Hay-on-Wye, I obviously said yes.

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Shiny New Books is one year old!

April 7, 2015

A very quick post to congratulate the team behind Shiny New Books who have just published their fifth edition of book reviews, author interviews and essays, marking one year since the website launched. If you haven’t yet checked them out, I do recommend taking a look and subscribing to their excellent newsletter, which has the admirable aim of bringing great new books to people who don’t know what to read next.

I should add that I have contributed to the latest edition, by writing a review of White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen. If you’re interested in what I thought of this Finnish novella about a harsh winter in the 19th century, do check out my review. And while you’re there take a look at the rest of the content in the Spring 2015 edition.