Reviews and other ramblings
It’s back! Once again, Judith of Leeswammes’ Blog is hosting the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop. Quite simply, 50+ book bloggers will be giving away literary books between 23rd and 27th June. Brilliant, right?
If you want to join in the giveaway, you can sign up here. If you just want a chance to win stuff then check back in on 23 June to see what’s on offer!
It’s been a busy busy week. Amazing how much more you can do when you don’t go to work! Okay, so I’m on holiday for a week and a half, which we are filling with three short breaks in a row. We seem to have managed once again to coincide our plans with glorious sunshine, which is not strictly good for me but I love how happy it makes everyone.
Part 1: London
In London, we went to museums with Tim’s parents, watched fox cubs playing from a friend’s balcony and sat reading in royal parks.
Part 2: Bristol
Then we came back to Bristol and enjoyed our city at a slower pace, took in a film at the excellent Watershed and went on a day trip to see the amazing sand sculptures in Weston-super-Mare.
Part 3: Melton Mowbray
Finally, we hopped on a train to Leicestershire to chill with friends in the countryside, which is where we are now.
I am relaxed, I have done lots of reading (you can read my reviews of Enduring Love and Mr Fox, posted earlier this week) and I didn’t have to dip into my savings. Who needs fancy foreign holidays? (I’m not saying I never want one again. Just to be clear, I still want to see the world. But this has been a good holiday. That is all.)
I’m still getting back into the swing of reading after a bad couple of weeks so in the meantime here is a lovely chilled song for a summer’s day: “When your mind’s made up” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend the film this comes from, Once.
Happy Thursday!
For no special reason and after a bit of a rubbish week, today I am feeling good. Really truly happy. Which is nice.
I have barely read 100 pages this week and life is pretty busy so reviews might be a bit sparse for a while. But we have some holiday coming soon so hopefully I’ll be able to play catch-up then. If we can manage not to plan ourselves too many other activities!
I have found time/brain power to post reviews of The Library Book and The Big Sleep, both of which I recommend. And my tired brain was glad that I now have a system for headlines so I didn’t have to pluck something out of thin air. I pick a quote from the book. Do you have a system for writing headlines? Do you use the title of the book you review?
I’m off out now to explore the Southbank Bristol Art Trail (I love my city). In the meantime, to spread my mysteriously good mood, here is a picture of gorillas having fun at our local zoo.
I’m back! I didn’t post last weekend because I was in London visiting friends. We did karaoke, watched films and chilled together, plus I bought too many books. And now I can ask you all which of the two Joss Whedon films currently out do you prefer? I vote Cabin in the Woods but they are both excellent, of course.
This week it was World Lupus Day, which I didn’t do anything special for, unusually. But I will take this opportunity to encourage you to learn more about lupus, a good start being Lupus UK or the Lupus Foundation of America.
This week also saw the rain finally stop and the sun come out, so I am going to stop waffling and enjoy my summery Sunday. Is it summery where you are today?
I don’t usually do incoming books posts because most weeks it would be a bit dull. I have been trying for a long while now to buy fewer books than I read, in the vain hope that my TBR will start to look a bit more manageable. However, these past few weeks I seem to have new (to me) books coming out of my ears. Which is nice.
First I went to the lovely Foyles and bought two collections of essays by various authors – The Library Book and Stop What You’re Doing and Read This! – both of which I think I had heard about on Savidge Reads.
Next up I was sent a couple of books for review by publishers – The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman (which I reviewed here) and The Seamstress by María Dueñas (which I have just finished reading and am mulling over before I post my review…watch this space!).
Then this weekend we visited friends in London who on Saturday took us to North Greenwich for brunch and bookshopping. They know me so well! Between West End Lane Books and a long row of charity shops I picked up:
Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
The Small Hand by Susan Hill
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
And finally, because the TBR wasn’t groaning enough already, I borrowed some books from the friends we stayed with! But I had good reason. When Tim and I recently watched I, Robot he decided that I was sorely lacking in background knowledge of Asimov so he asked Twitter for recommendations of where to start educating me. Handily, the response was books that Tim doesn’t actually own but I now have on loan The Bicentennial Man and The Gods Themselves.
Now what order to tackle this little lot in?
I love coffee. I mean: that smell, that taste, that buzz, even the appearance of it steaming away in a cup. And the effort that a good barista puts into getting it just right – it’s a joyous thing. Did I mention I love coffee?
Until this week I had not drunk coffee for about six weeks, since I had a flare-up of irritable bowel syndrome. Having to eat and drink more cautiously for a while is fine (in fact, when my lupus flared in the meantime it was quite helpful – when thinking through brain fog, fewer choices = good) but damn I missed coffee!
So this week, feeling miles better, I treated myself. I have also read some good books, including The Light Between Oceans and the first few volumes of Y the Last Man by Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra. Life is good.
So last weekend‘s feeling a bit bleh turned into a lupus flare and I have lost half my week to the black hole of SLE. Which sucks.
I’m afraid I’m going to vent a little bit about being ill now. It is not my most interesting topic. In many ways I should be grateful that my major lupus symptoms – fatigue and brain fog, with added dizziness and double vision if I push myself – are not painful. Even my lupus symptoms that do hurt – headaches and joint pains – are quite low-level pain. My specialist called them “irritants” once, which is probably accurate but also a little demeaning. Because pain or not, lupus can (and does) still incapacitate me. When it flares I can’t think, I can’t make the most basic decisions like what to eat, in fact I get panicky if faced by a choice. I can’t hold a conversation. I certainly can’t read a book. Standing up long enough to shower completely drains me.
It passes. I am lucky that I only get really bad for a few days at a time now, thanks to medication and fatigue-management techniques. I am lucky that Tim knows me well enough to spot the danger signs and make me rest (if I can be persuaded). But it never goes away. I am always tired. I am always one push-too-hard away from being “lupus tired”.
Rant over.
While I have not read much this week, I do have a small backlog of book reviews so I was still able to post about Balthazar and Mountolive. Yesterday Tim took me to the cinema to see Cabin in the Woods (which I knew nearly nothing about beforehand and that was totally the best way to see it so I will say nothing other than “it’s great”) and to Foyles bookshop, because the TBR is always hungry. Today I will be mostly sleeping.
How was your week?
After last weekend‘s perfect mix of activity and downtime, it feels like life has switched up a gear. Evenings and weekends are full of plans, with many more things needing to be slotted in – when will I find time to read?
One thing I did this week was finally get my latest film processed. I took most of it on our holiday in Wales and I’m pleased with how some of the shots came out, though the scans don’t do them justice. We must find a way to display more photos in our house!
I haven’t been feeling 100% (it happens) so I have been tempted on getting home from work to just stare at the TV rather than read. Which makes sense when my brain is frazzled but the rest of the time I think reading actually makes me feel a lot better than even my favourite TV shows could. What about you – do you read when you feel unwell?
I also went to the zoo with Tim and a couple of friends. We go to the zoo a lot and always have a good time. Bristol Zoo is very good about breeding and conservation programmes and doesn’t have many large animals so I don’t feel animal lover guilt and can just enjoy the cute animals.
Ah, four-day weekend, piles of chocolate, plenty of time with my books. What could be better? Oh, and I threw in a bit more culture with a trip to the theatre just for good measure.
After spending Good Friday being thoroughly lazy reading and watching films, yesterday my Dad and brother came to visit and get me out of the house! We went to see the Bristol Old Vic’s excellent Pinter/Beckett double bill A Kind of Alaska/Krapp’s Last Tape. I didn’t know anything about either play but I figured with writers like those you can’t go wrong. Glad to say it was a brilliant show. Both plays are meditations on ageing, in different ways. Both had touches of humour but were overall contemplative pieces. The small cast (three in the first play, one in the second) was fantastic and the Old Vic’s little Studio space was ideally suited.
Today, friends told me there was a chocolate fair being held in the city centre so we headed down there and enjoyed a few free samples before pigging out on churros and hot chocolate.
While we were in the area, we had a quick browse of the weekly books, arts and crafts market on the harbourside, where obviously I could not help myself buying a couple of books (really I am proud it was just two. I was sorely tempted to pick up handfuls of secondhand PG Wodehouse). My TBR will never get smaller, will it?
And there’s still a day and a half stretching out before me with little to do other than read and sleep. Perfect.