Category: Blog

Sunday Salon: Here comes the sun

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The Sunday Salon

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.

10 May is World Lupus Day

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?

All these books that I have

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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.

Foyles haul

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.

ARCs

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!).

North Greenwich haul

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

Borrowings

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?

The Sunday Salon: I ♥ coffee

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The Sunday Salon

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!

I agree

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.

The Sunday Salon: Lupus sucks

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The Sunday Salon

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.

Seek the truth

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?

The Sunday Salon: All systems go

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The Sunday Salon

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!

Look up

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.

Baby turtles

The Sunday Salon: Day of chocolate

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The Sunday Salon

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.

Yummy churros

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?

Browsing

And there’s still a day and a half stretching out before me with little to do other than read and sleep. Perfect.

Holiday snaps

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Last week Tim and I went on holiday to Pembrokeshire with some good friends and it was perfect. We had seaside, a pretty cottage to stay in, log fires, lots of board games to play and the random heatwave meant we had sunshine too, despite it being March.

The beaches were almost empty.
Untitled

I revisited a place that had a profound effect on me when I was younger (17, I think. I read Frankenstein for my A level English while sat on the cliffs outside).
Untitled

I fell in love with the fossa, an animal I had never even heard of before.
Untitled

And I milked a goat. It only stood in the bucket once, despite my hideously long nails.
Kate milks a goat

The rest of my photos were on film so they will follow soon. Keep an eye out on my Flickr photostream.

Bloggiesta is here!

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Bloggiesta

Bloggiesta is an online event for (book) bloggers in which we are encouraged to spend the next three days working on our blog in any way we see necessary. We Plan, Edit, Develop, Review and Organise – no wonder our mascot is called PEDRO! Olé! Bloggiesta is organised by It’s All About Books and There’s A Book.

The Bloggiesta fun begins here with my vague not-nearly-planned-enough to do list; and there’s a lot to be done!

TO DO
1. Change how hyperlinks appear (I don’t like the current style).
2. Tidy up sidebar.
3. Catch up on book blog posts in Google Reader.[Done for now at least!]
4. Contact some publishers about getting their new releases catalogues.
5. Back up all blog content (thanks to Leeswammes for that idea).
6. Read and join in as much as possible with the Bloggiesta discussions on Twitter and other blogs. (If you’re on Twitter, you can use the hashtag #bloggiesta to keep in touch with what’s happening. I am @Nose_in_a_book.)

For me, that last is the real point of all this. I hope to learn a bunch and meet lots of new book bloggers. So, let’s get started!

UPDATE 1 (Sat): I have changed one of my goals to a more realistic one for this weekend because I am already flagging! And catching up with my fellow book bloggers is way more important than most other stuff anyway 🙂

UPDATE 2 (Sun): I will soon be going out for the rest of the evening so here ends Bloggiesta for me. I have achieved everything I set out to and gathered together a bunch of new ideas, not to mention meeting lots of ace new book bloggers (new to me) on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who took part!

11 random things about me

Whenever I get tagged by one of these things, I am torn. I have an age-old hatred of chain letters (remember when they were actual letters and you were expected to write the whole thing out 10 times?) but I like to learn more about my fellow bloggers and have no problem with sharing more about myself.

So, because Jo is so nice I will half-reply (and direct you to her far-more-interesting answers) but I won’t continue the chain (though if you want to carry it on yourself, feel free!).

Here goes…

1. I had glue ear when I was little and was almost entirely deaf by the time I turned 6. Thankfully, one operation, two grommets and a bunch of unpleasant wax-drainings later my hearing was completely restored. (Theories about how this may have affected the rest of my life or at least childhood could fill a whole series of blog posts.)

2. I was a quite-good gymnast as a child and am a trained gymnastics coach.

3. I have a phobia of fish.

4. My first foray into journalism was at primary school when I wrote, produced and distributed an environmental newspaper that I now sadly not only have no copies of but cannot even remember the name of.

5. I have been a vegetarian – for ethical/moral reasons – since I was 13 but when I was 17 I worked on the deli counter in the local supermarket and had no problem with skewering chickens for the rotisserie; indeed to this day I’m happy (well, okay with) pulling apart a chicken carcass. I am also very careful about food hygiene since that job.

6. My first job was doing my Dad’s filing. He would take me to work on Saturday mornings and before we left he’d log my hours in the petty cash book and pay me my wages. It was such a good gig I continued to work the occasional Saturday for Dad until I left home.

7. As a kid I always had a project on the go. I planned theoretical trips around the world. I made a database of kings and queens of England that was harder to refer to than the books I’d used as reference.

8. I used to cut out pictures from magazines that I thought might inspire my writing.

9. I was, briefly, a member of the Barbie Fan Club.

10. I once adopted a whale (or rather, it was a birthday present, but I asked for it specifically). She was called Scylla.

11. I have read Ulysses. I had to for the modernism unit of my English degree. I recognise its brilliance but did not enjoy the experience.

Apparently most of the things I think might be interesting about me date back to my childhood.