Good evening, fellow Bookworms!
It’s been a week or two since the Bank Holiday Book Blog, in which I had got to the halfway point with Before the Coffee Gets Cold and had met Stephanie from the former Waterstone’s Deansgate book club when I was in that particular branch on Star Wars Day, spending my birthday money, lol!
Before the Coffee Gets Cold was finished off on 7th May, and I have since started on Tales From the Cafe, the next book in the series, and that is now 10% read, so it is an Ongoing Concern, but I didn’t start that one until this week, as I’ve been away again!
The Dalai Lama is said to have advised “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before” – well, Mum and I have taken that advice this year, as we popped over to Norway on 9th May for a short break in Bergen! This also included a full day trip to Flåm with a trip on the very scenic Flåm Railway, and then a sailing on the fjords! Hence the blog title, which is from the legendary Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch.
We didn’t see any parrots, dead or alive, lol, but we saw a lot of goats, ate a lot of seafood and went through A LOT of tunnels! I know Wilson Pickett had a hit back in the 60s with “Land of a Thousand Dances” but I reckon Norway must be the Land of a Thousand Tunnels! Some were really long winding ones too!
On the way to Flåm and enjoying a coffee while admiring a particularly spectacular waterfall. Didn’t get much reading done during our break, too much to pack into our short break, and we were both quite tired on the Sunday after our long day the previous day, so we both feel it could do with being a day longer, but it’s great that Jet2 have started doing this “Discover More” break, which was something which had caught our eye earlier this year as it was in the in-flight magazine when we went to Lanzarote.
Even though I barely read much while I was in Bergen, I did buy a book at Manchester Airport, so I can report to you that it was my 6th book purchase in May, after the five I bought on Star Wars Day. The book was My My! ABBA Through the Ages, by Giles Smith, which was appropriate as I was off to Scandinavia, albeit Norway rather than Sweden, and it was the Eurovision Song Contest while we were away, which was won by Switzerland. This year is 50 years since ABBA won for Sweden with “Waterloo” back in 1974.
In my last blog, I was talking about my purchases on 4th May and mentioned that The Cabin in the Mountains, by Robert Ferguson, has a very similar cover to that of Lakeland, by Hunter Davies, which was one of the books I read last year. I’ve got a photo of them side by side, so you can see what you think…
Definitely a similar style of cover.
Some Ongoing Concerns progress to report to you. Obviously, the first of the Toshikazu Kawaguchi novels, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, was finished before I went to Norway, and the second book, Tales From the Cafe, is now an OC, but there has been some other progress.
Unofficial Britain, by Gareth E. Rees, is now 50% read, so I will be looking to get that one finished before May is out, and About Britain, by Tim Cole, is 33% read so it joins Abroad in Japan, by Chris Broad, at the one-third read stage.
T.V. by Peter Kay is 25% read, and there are three books on 10% read. One of them is the Japanese cafe novel I was mentioning earlier, but the others are Dark, Salt, Clear, by Lamorna Ash, and The Lost Rainforests of Britain, by Guy Shrubsole. Need to get some progress made with those, but I think Unofficial Britain and the two books at 33% read stand the best chance of being finished off sooner, so will be focusing on those. It would be good if I could manage more than three finishes this month.
I have now started to prepare June’s setup in my book journal, and will also do likewise in my general one, but as you can see from the above photo, I have been having a rethink on the journal front and looking at how I can combine the book and general journals but not take up too many pages per month, so that I can have just one journal for both the reading and the other stuff, and get six months in one then six months in another.
The travel and choir journals will remain separate, but the choir one only needs a few pages per month, and the travel one only needs doing when I’m getting ready to go away somewhere.
With the change, I only need to think of one theme per month for July onwards, prepping and thinking up playlists will take up less time, but I will still be decorating each month in a creative way.
Thinking I will probably use the pink Oops a Daisy “Coffee Cup” journal for the next six months, so I will start prepping that in June ready for the second balf of 2024.
I know you’ve seen it before, but it has been a while since I looked at what I’ve got on the “subs’ bench” so to speak!
That’s about it for now, I think, but I’ll be back again soon with more book news and possibly a bit more about the trip to Norway! Until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Tales From the Cafe – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- My My! ABBA Through the Ages – Giles Smith
- The Cabin in the Mountains – Robert Ferguson
- Lakeland – Hunter Davies
- Unofficial Britain – Gareth E. Rees
- About Britain – Tim Cole
- Abroad in Japan – Chris Broad
- T.V. – Peter Kay
- Dark, Salt, Clear – Lamorna Ash
- The Lost Rainforests of Britain – Guy Shrubsole
Joanne's Bookshelf 