Category: Blog

48-hour TBR read-a-thon – halfway point

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48-hour TBR read-a-thon

So, an update on my progress so far in the 48-hour TBR read-a-thon. Yesterday I started well, finishing off Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (which I was already three-quarters through) before reading Saturday by Ian McEwan, on the back of a recommendation from Kath of [Insert suitably snappy title here…]. That turned out to be an excellent choice, keeping me so absorbed that I was awake until 1 a.m. when I finished it.

Today I decided to tackle Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, which I’ve been eager to read for a while but then I mentioned this to a friend on Thursday who said she thought it was horribly hard-going, so that put me off. Some encouragement via Twitter put me back on track and I am definitely liking it so far. I’m only halfway through, partly because it’s not a quick read despite its short length, but also because I wasn’t able to entirely ignore the rest of the world today.

I’ll write proper reviews at a later point, but for now some quick summaries:

The Graveyard Book is an evocative, imaginative adventure with intriguing characters and, in true Gaiman style, doesn’t shy away from tough subject matter. However, I just wasn’t absorbed by it and kept putting it aside to read other things instead.

Saturday, on the other hand, was all-consuming and brought together politics, self-discovery, brilliant characterisation and outstanding writing. My only complaint would be that the main character is so irritatingly, snobbishly upper middle class; but that’s part of the point of course.

And now I’ll get back to the reading. I hope all my fellow read-a-thoners are enjoying their weekend reads!

(If you missed my last post and are wondering what all this is about, Wallace of Unputdownables challenged her readers to join her for a 48-hour TBR read-a-thon this weekend. I am still intending to read the Southland Tales books by David Kelly, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Double Fault by Lionel Shriver. Or at least, that’s the slightly unrealistic aim.)

48-hour TBR read-a-thon – the plan

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48-hour TBR read-a-thon

Wallace of Unputdownables has challenged her readers to join her for a 48-hour TBR read-a-thon this weekend. Because clearly I have nothing else I should be getting on with (like decorating or building bookcases) I have decided to join in.

(I know, I know, I am all about the challenges lately, which is a little unlike me. Thing is, I’ve been struggling a little to read much but these mini challenges from wonderful fellow book bloggers have helped me enormously, so thank you to everyone who takes the trouble to run these things.)

Anyway, the point of this particular challenge is to make a dent in the TBR, which in my case is more than 130 books. That’s a lorra lot. We’re supposed to pick out a few that we intend to read, but I’m a bit lost as to where to start so I thought I’d ask for recommendations. My TBR is here. Please do take a look then come back and tell me what you both recommend and think I stand a chance of getting through in a weekend.

I was thinking of queueing up Half of a Yellow Sun, Slaughterhouse 5 and the Southland Tales books. Any advances on that?

Hello Japan! January mini-challenge: Something New

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Hello Japan! mini-challenge

On Tanabata’s book blog, In Spring it is the Dawn, she challenges her readers every month to do something Japanese. Each mini-challenge has guidelines and January’s was “try something Japanese that you haven’t tried before”, which I did. And it was most certainly an experience.

For my birthday earlier this month I booked a karaoke booth at a local Japanese restaurant. I love Japanese food, I love karaoke, as do several of my friends – what could possibly go wrong? The only real question was why I had never done this before.

There were some setbacks. A few karaoke-friendly friends couldn’t make it so I ended up with a group heavy on the “I’ll come but I probably won’t sing” side. On arrival, as we squeezed ourselves into a tiny room that could only possibly have seated the advertised occupancy of 20 if they were all model-thin, was boiling hot and had the music volume so loud we couldn’t hear each other across the table, I began to worry this wouldn’t be all it was cracked up to be. The hostess didn’t explain the computer properly and we appeared to have a songlist composed solely of Madonna, Britney, Mariah and Japanese acts we’d never heard of.

Thankfully, while I knocked back my first flask of warm sake and caught up with my friends over the as-always immensely tasty food there, some of my more computer-savvy friends worked out not only how to adjust the volume to an acceptable level but also that there was a huge long list of songs to choose from hidden in a sub-sub-menu. And we were off!

And it was a brilliant night. Sure the computer crashed a few times, wiping our carefully crafted playlist. We suspected that the karaoke tracks and videos were largely cheap knock-offs, with hilariously wrong lyrics and videos either from some tourist agency or a sort-of Japanese Pop Idol show. But everyone had a good time, everyone sang (sometimes all at once with harmonies and everything) and I laughed so much I cried.

I loved that we had to take our shoes off and that we sat at a table at floor level, something I’d only seen in films before. I loved that the most resistant of my friends let inhibitions go and belted out tunes wholeheartedly. If they had let us we could have carried on all through the night and they would have made a fortune out of our sake and Asahi consumption, but sadly they closed at 10.30pm.

It was a great way to spend an evening with friends and I shall definitely accept any opportunity to try it again.

(By the way, this is my 100th post! Very exciting. I was hoping to post about my newly redecorated library on this auspicious occasion but progress has slowed on that front, mostly because I’ve been too exhausted to help Tim out with the legwork. We will finish it…one day.)

I said I would

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I come from an active family and I have a health condition that requires me to maintain my fitness so as not to fall to pieces, so it is with great regret that I admit that I am frankly pretty rubbish at doing exercise. I have good intentions but I don’t follow through with them.

Over the years I have tried many forms of exercise, from kick-boxing to trampolining to pilates to plain-old gym workouts. I quite like swimming but Bristol doesn’t have a central public pool and I’m rubbish at figuring out buses (I know it’s a poor excuse). Bizarrely the one thing I managed to keep up the longest (now lapsed) was the one I always maintained that I hated: running.

I don’t really consider running fun or pleasurable. It’s a free form of exercise that makes me feel like I’ve worked really hard because…well, I find it really hard.

My Mum said this to me back in 2009. She had talked me into entering a 5k race for charity (Lupus UK) and as she ran with me she alternately egged me on and chatted about anything and everything to take our minds off the painful physical effort. One thing she said that really resonated was that, because she runs a lot and has done for years, enters races, has run the London Marathon twice, people tend to assume that she finds running easy and fun. She does not. It has always been hard and she still finds it hard. That’s why she does it. You get a greater sense of achievement when you do something that you find really hard.

And I get that. When I get back from a run I really feel like I’ve pushed my body, done something that’s good for me. I’m proud of myself every time. That’s worth the pain and effort. On occasion. However, the occasions have got further and further apart so this year I signed up to a gym with a swimming pool and then bam! Along came a bold new idea: hulaerobics.

I’ve heard it said that when committing to a new exercise regime, one of the best motivators is to sign up to something with a friend or two. I can’t promise it works in the long run but it did get me to try out something I very much doubt I would have tried alone.

The ominous-sounding hulaerobics class is held at the Southville Centre. I don’t remember owning a hula hoop as a child so it wasn’t much of a surprise when, while waiting for the class to begin, my attempts to hula lasted approximately three seconds each.

Thankfully the class was aimed at beginners, which most of us were, and much of it was devoted to the simple task of learning to keep the hula hoop spinning (there was also some aerobics thrown in, if you hadn’t guessed that from the name). Apparently, by the end of the course we will be salsa dancing while hulaing. It feels a long way off but not impossible.

In one hour, as well as holding my abdomen tenser for longer than I have since I was a gymnast umpteen years ago, I learned to keep the hoop spinning (mostly) and do stuff with my arms at the same time. Result!

I had a lot of aches and pains afterward and I’m still tired today, so I’m not certain I’ll be going back next week, but I may yet be persuaded.

Hic

So you might have noticed that this site was down for a few days. I finally decided to abandon my non-WordPress-friendly host and sign up elsewhere. I may have been in too much of a hurry to do this properly…

It turns out that it’s a good idea to check back-ups have actually worked before relying on them. Somehow the result of my last site back-up is a directory full of empty folders. Not so helpful. So I had to reinstall an old version of my doctored-to-suit-me theme (which thankfully Tim had held onto long after I thought I had any need for it). At some point I’ll go back in and tweak it to how I like it.

Also, I hadn’t realised that the WordPress export file contains only posts and pages. It doesn’t include anything else that you’ve personalised like images, links, site name and description, user name…stuff like that. No doubt I’ll continue finding things I need to update for weeks to come. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s very clear instructions on all this on WordPress.org somewhere.

Life is still hectic and I’m getting very little reading done but if you ask nicely I might just blog about the fun and pains of my new discovery: hulaerobics. Yes, it is what it sounds like.

New year, new books

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Happy new year!

I now have a lot of new books, except I only physically have half of them so the photo doesn’t look as impressive as it might do. Stupid rubbish postal service. Not that I read fast enough to get through these before the end of the month.

So these are the books I received for Christmas…

Stack of books

An Image of Africa by Chinua Achebe
Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot
And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
The Breaking Point and other stories by Daphne du Maurier

…and if anything I have less reading time than last year, so this should be an interesting exercise in time management. Please don’t judge me if it takes months for my reviews of these titles to appear!

Another year is over

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We’re off up north to celebrate the new year and then have a hectic first week of January looming so I doubt I’ll get much time for reading or blogging. I won’t do a full review of 2010 here but the one question I’ve seen a few bloggers answer that I find endlessly interesting is: what did you do/experience for the first time this year? So, in no particular order:

1. Started a blog. Obviously. You’re reading it. I’m enjoying it so far. I have interacted with some very lovely people, met people in real life through it, flexed my writing muscles and read more because of it.

2. Went to Manchester. At least I don’t think I’d ever been there before February. Not that I remember. I think I like it. And it has some very nice people.

3. Grew courgettes. With a little help from Tim and our allotment buddy Swish, I planted half a dozen seeds and we grew so many courgettes we had to give some away! And we can eat a lot of courgette in this house. Total success.

4. Exhibited a photograph in an exhibition. One that was curated and had a preview night with wine and nibbles and everything. It was really cool to be a part of.

5. Got asked to be someone’s bridesmaid. The wedding itself is next year but just being asked was incredibly exciting for me because I was honestly starting to think I’d never get to be a bridesmaid. (The bride’s my sister, by the way, so I was already pretty darned excited about this wedding.)

6. Made a tau neutrino from felt. As you do. Summer fun work thing. I was quite pleased with my handiwork actually. It’s on my desk at work. (Except actually it’s not, it’s in a crate, because I packed up my desk last week ready to start my new job at a new desk in the new year. It’s a lot of new all at once. Exciting and scary and another reason I may be too busy to blog much for a while.)

7. Volunteered at an astronomy fair. I spotted a notice asking for volunteers to man a physics fun stand at a fair in Devon and in a moment of crazy I offered my services and Tim’s. Science outreach is hugely important but I’m not the most outgoing person so I may not do that to myself again.

8. Employed a builder to work on my very own house. Or rather, our very own house. We knew we’d have to get work done when we bought this place and it’s very satisfying to have got a big chunk of it done. We still need to do some decorating before I post any photos. Which leads me on to…

9. Painted a ceiling. Which is very tiring, it turns out. Thankfully I had help from Tim and my Dad. In fact they did more than me. But I did do some of it, honest.

10. Watched It’s a Wonderful Life. I know. How could I possibly have gone almost 30 years without watching the epitome of Christmas films? I finally sat down in front of it on Christmas Day and it has immediately won top place in my favourite Christmas films list. Unsurprisingly.

I could probably cheat and add a whole bunch of blogging-related firsts, because it’s all been new to me this year! And a few more owning a house firsts as well. But that would get boring pretty quickly. So instead, feel free to tell me your 2010 firsts in the comments, I hope you have had a good year, and all the best for 2011.

Christmas sledging fun

The snow stuck around just long enough for us to replace our traditional Christmas Day walk with sledging up at the local park. It’s the same park my siblings and I sledged in as children so it was a real memory lane moment to be up there with a variety of sleds, my Dad throwing himself enthusiastically down every slope while I took it a little easier. The light was falling so I didn’t get many photos, but here are a few to show the great fun we had.

Practice run on a gentle slope:
On your marks

Tim following my Dad’s cue by going headfirst:
Whoosh

Kitty the dog didn’t get that sledging and fetch are a tad incompatible:

Holly the dog was content to just dig around in the snow:
Digging

Happy holidays!

The Great Grocery Bag Exchange #2

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My second parcel of goodies is here (after a delay while it sat forlornly at the sorting office until Tim kindly cycled over there and fetched it for me). In case anyone missed my last post about this, I took part in the Great Grocery Bag Exchange, organised by Carin of A Little Bookish. Go here to find out more.

This second parcel came from Lydia of The Lost Entwife, another book blog that was new to me and I am now enjoying. Which was what this was all about, after all. Thank you Lydia for my lovely lovely parcel. Here they are:

More goodies in the post

Yes I have eaten three of those rather chunky cookies already and yes they are very tasty. Yum yum. Thanks again Lydia!