Reviews and other ramblings
The Books on the Nightstand Summer Book Bingo lasts from the end of May to the start of September, so we’re just past the halfway point now. Here’s how I’m doing so far with my bingo card:
Continue reading “Summer Book Bingo: halfway (ish) point”
Okay, it’s more than a month since we got back from our US holiday and I still haven’t sorted through all the photos (partly because we’ve only had one free weekend, but it’s still remiss of me) so I’m just going to have to try to summarise our week there before I forget it all completely. It was an amazing trip, with far more activities on our to do list than we had time for, inevitably. It’s New York.
Continue reading “Holiday in USA: New York City”
I’ve got through a lot of books this year, but I haven’t had time to review them all properly. I may have to start looking at doing something a bit different on that front. Seeing as we’re enjoying a proper actual heatwave (by UK standards) I’m not going to promise to stay home more blogging, I’m going to get out there and enjoy it, but I want to keep the blog alive too. I’ll figure something out. Fellow bloggers: do you find it harder to keep up with it all in the summer months?
As this is the year’s halfway point, it’s a good time to take stock as regards my reading aims and challenges. I’ve read 21 books by men, 17 by women and 1 by both. Not too far off even. I’ve read a reasonable mix of genres and ages of books. However, the actual challenges I took on were the Classics Club – for which I have read four books – and more books in translation. I’ve read five books in translation and one about translation, which is reasonable, I think.
But right now I’m not trying too hard to meet challenges or read the right books. I just want to enjoy reading. Which seems a good summery aim to me.
Continue reading “Mid-year reading round-up”
I wouldn’t call myself a gamer by any stretch, but I’ve always played the occasional computer game. I was quite young when we had our first home computer (possibly an Amiga? I don’t really remember) and it was pretty much just for playing games on (a PC followed a few years later with its multifunctionality). I was never an obsessive gamer, tending to give up if I failed a few times.
Computer games have been enough a part of my life that I have never considered them a bad thing or in any way at odds with my love of reading. But it’s only in recent years that I’ve started to interrogate their value as a narrative artform. They certainly are an artform, that’s without question for me, but are they a form of storytelling? And if so, are they a good format for stories?
Continue reading “Sunday Salon: Narrative computer games”
As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t get through many books on holiday, but I did flex my bookishness in the places we went and the things I bought, because how could I not? I’ve yet to find a good bookshop in Charlotte NC – and I’ll be going back there so any recommendations would be welcome – but New York City of course does not suffer from that problem. However, we did have limited luggage space, so I tried to keep my book purchases as minimal as possible.
Continue reading “Holiday in USA: Books”
This is yet another belated post, as I was meant to publish this on Memorial Day weekend (that’s the spring bank holiday for my fellow Brits, the one a couple of weeks ago). Anyway, the fab folks at Books on the Nightstand have for a few years now been setting a Summer Book Bingo challenge. You go to the website, generate your own unique reading bingo card, and set about trying to read books to complete a row or column on the card by Labor Day, which is apparently 7 September. I love this idea and have decided to join in this year, so here is my card:
Continue reading “Summer Book Bingo”
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.
Continue reading “Holiday in USA: Charlotte”
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!
Continue reading “(Belated) Sunday Salon: Back to real life”
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.
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.
Continue reading “World Lupus Day 2015”