Another evening, another blog and another week with two books polished off since the previous blog! We’re not doing badly on the book front this month with one week of September left, we have finished off six books so far this month, 39 for the year. It’s been fairly quiet on the book buying front, only one purchased, and that was a bargain from the church hall where I go to choir, and a free book from the table at work. I need to take some of my old books in to put on the table when I go in for one of our monthly in-office days.
That pile of books was the Ongoing Concerns for last week, but, as I have said, two of those have now joined the ranks of the books I have read, those being Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, and then I’ll Die After Bingo, by Pope Lonergan, which was the free book I picked up from the office on 12th September.
We will get on to the other three books in a bit, and also have a shufty at which books I might want to start and add to the OCs.
However, we have had the sad news today that the legendary cricket umpire, Dickie Bird, has died. He was 92 so, as they say in cricket, he had a good innings! Also, since the previous blog, we lost the actor Robert Redford last week at the age of 89. He had starred in a wide range of films, one of the most notable being Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. May Robert and Dickie both rest in peace.
That’s our choir! Vocal Sounds, performing on Saturday morning at Monton Unitarian Church as part of their celebrations for the church’s 150th anniversary. We sang five songs – ‘Cross the Wide Missouri, Perhaps Love, Perfect, Tears in Heaven, and Thank You For the Music.
We will have another concert on Saturday 11th October, an evening one this time, and it will be in the church hall where we rehearse, so there will be more songs that night!
We are still looking for new members, all voices but particularly men so if you are a tenor or a bass, please give some serious thought to joining us if you can get to Monton Unitarian Church Hall on Thursday evenings from 8:15pm to 10pm. We sing a very wide repertoire of songs, and you don’t have to be able to read music, so don’t let that put you off. Some of us can read music, others can’t.
We also have cakes on a fairly regular basis! Often brownies or scones. These are made by Biba, one of the sopranos, and there’s loads, so when there’s cakes there’s plenty to take home with you as well as having a cake or two during our break.
Talking of our choir, while I am still on the subject, this is a reminder that voting is still open to help me choose the choir journal for 2026! The choice is from these three lovely journals from Notebook Therapy, which are currently on the “subs’ bench” so to speak. They are Berry Sweet, Lemon Love and Lunar Spells. Currently, Lemon Love has two votes so that one is in the lead.
I will close the voting in mid-November so that I can start prepping the journal to be ready for use. I will be sending it out to warm up on the touchline, so to speak, lol!
You will probably know that I use a lot of football analogies when it comes to my journals, so here’s a few and what they mean…
Transferred in. A journal has been purchased and has joined the squad. For example, my choir journals have transferred in from Notebook Therapy, but other journals have transferred in from Oops a Daisy, Under the Rowan Trees and one or two other stationery suppliers.
The Subs’ Bench. In football, this is where substitutes sit before they are sent onto the pitch by the manager. In my journaling scheme of things, the subs’ bench is where all unused journals sit until I choose which ones I’ll be using next.
Sent to Warm Up. A bit of preparation has been done in one of the journals that will be put into use in the near future. The above photos are of some spreads in my Northern Lights A5 journal, so that one was sent to have a bit of a warm up.
Coming On as a Sub. A new journal has been prepped, it has warmed up, and now it is being put into active use as a journal. My Archer & Olive B6 Swallows journal was the most recent to come onto the pitch, so to speak, as that became my current commonplace book recently. The next ones will be my Northern Lights journal as my main one for the first half of 2026, plus whichever journal wins the vote to become next year’s choir journal.
Coming to the End of its Playing Days. Bit like my Archer & Olive Wayfinding journal which was the main journal for the first half of this year. There are still some things in that journal that I need to fill in, like blog logs and some reading trackers, so I still need to use it and refer to it, but it’s not the main journal as that’s my Oops a Daisy pistachio one that I’ve decorated as a rainforest.
Hung Up its Boots. Retired. This journal is full and I don’t need to fill any more trackers in or anything. Previous years’ journals have retired, also previous commonplace books and previous choir and travel journals.
Before I get back to the books and the Ongoing Concerns, I just thought I would give you all advanced warning that the Christmas Fair at St Thomas’ Church in Pendleton, Salford, will be taking place on Saturday 29th November from 11am to 2pm. Mum and I will be there with our stall, we will be back after having to miss the summer fair. Mum has fancy goods, and I have books, CDs and stationery. Most of the stuff on my stall is 50p each or 3 for £1.
Now back to the books, and the Ongoing Concerns that have not been polished off yet. We have two books currently at the 33% read stage. These are The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, by Samuel Burr, and The Darkness Manifesto, by Johan Eklöf. Shōgun, that absolute chonky bad boy of a novel by James Clavell, is 10% read.
When it comes to stuff I am thinking about reading in the coming weeks as we end September and head into October, I’ve got one or two in mind both for fiction and non-fiction reads.
On the factual front, I’m giving thought to Measly Middle Ages, a Horrible Histories book by Terry Deary, and also The Extra Mile, the autobiography of rugby league player, Kevin Sinfield, the guy who raised loads of money for research into motor neurone disease doing several marathons and similar challenges in honour of his friend and team mate, Rob Burrow.
Fiction-wise, I am considering Way Back, by Sara Cox, but also considering The Lamplighters, by Emma Stonex, Elevation, by Stephen King, or The Gallows Pole, by Benjamin Myers – apparently, that last one has been adapted as a drama series on the BBC, so if I enjoy the book, I may have to watch the series on iPlayer.
Before I bring this blog to a close, congratulations are in order to Sarina Wiegman, manager of the England Lionesses, who won the Ballon D’Or for Women’s Team Coach of the Year after guiding our ladies to their European Championships victory this summer as the Lionesses retained the title they won in 2022.
That’s pretty much it for now. I’ll be back next week when it will be monthly review time, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Back again with more postbox topper photos, random waffle and news of another couple of books being finished off! Yay! There has also been progress made with Shōgun and another book has been started today and is already past the 10% mark and heading for the 1/4 read stage!
First up, some sad and quite shocking news from yesterday and the breaking news that boxer, Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton, had been found dead at his home in Hyde at the age of only 46. That’s no age, is it?
The cause of his death is not known as yet. He had actually been planning a return to the ring and a fight in Dubai in December had been pencilled in. He had struggled with his mental health since hanging up his gloves but had used that experience to campaign for more support for other guys suffering from depression. He’d been a big supporter of CALM – Campaign Against Living Miserably.
I always find it especially sad when someone young passes away, particularly, like Ricky, if they were younger than I am. May he rest in peace.
All my ducks are in a row, lol! Sorry, this meme is a bit of an in-joke, it reminds me of one of my fab colleagues, one of our senior managers, who is known for informing the meetings that she chairs that “we need to get all our ducks in a row”.
Anyone else watch Last Night of the Proms on Saturday?! Wasn’t it brilliant?! This year’s Last Night will take some beating, especially with the performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” including Sir Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, and also Bill Bailey tapping away to perform “The Typewriter” by Leroy Anderson!
I would love to see Bill Bailey if he is touring! I love how he combines comedy and music, and he can play so many instruments! He has some serious talent!
The arrangement of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is to celebrate the song’s 50th anniversary! Yep, it was way back in 1975 that Freddie Mercury wrote the song and Queen recorded it – a song that may have started out with its doubters – radio stations were concerned it was too long – but it was championed by Kenny Everett and it has since become the stuff of legend, a song that usually tops polls of all-time greatest songs and, of course was used in that famous car scene in “Wayne’s World”!
The film may not have been released until after Freddie passed away, but was being made while he was still alive and the clip of the prospective car scene was sent to Freddie, who gave his approval.
Hazelnut latte and a gingerbread ghost! This is what I had on Thursday afternoon. I’d had a half day annual leave and an appointment, so after the appointment I popped into Costa on Monton Road and had a coffee and a gingerbread ghost. It’s definitely autumn now, the weather has gone back to being shite (the well-known technical term) and there’s lots of Halloween stuff around…
You’ve already seen my Halloween stuff in my journal though, as I prepped that last month. October’s theme is “There’s a Ghost in My House” as in the song by R. Dean Taylor.
I did receive an order of stuff from Soto Studios last week, though, that had some Halloween and Christmas stuff in it. The Halloweeny stuff will always come in handy for next year, especially as I have started putting some of my journaling supplies together based on themes, so all Winter and Christmas together, all Autumn and Halloween, plus some stuff is already in themes, like coffee and travel. I should get all the book stuff together though.
While we are still on stationery, you may remember that my journals for 2026 are Northern Lights and Mushrooms. Well, at the end of this month, Oops a Daisy are launching a Cosy Autumn range which will be perfect for the ‘shrooms journal next year as it is all mice and mushrooms! Once I order it, I’ll have to put it in a safe place, but not too safe that I can’t find it when I need to start setting up the journal, lol!
Northern Lights and Mushrooms, my journals for 2026, and I will be getting some mouse and mushroom stationery to decorate the latter journal.
I’d better get on with mentioning some actual books now, though! In the previous blog, I had got two books finished, and it is the same story in this blog. First up was After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, which is the fourth in his series of travel books and I have been reading those on my Kindle. There is a fifth book, which I have bought and downloaded, but I will take a break for a bit and come back to his books soon.
The other book which was finished off last week was When the Museum is Closed, by Emi Yagi, a short novel about a frozen food warehouse worker in Japan, and former language student, who gets a part-time job conversing in Latin with a statue of Venus every Monday when the museum is closed.
Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, is still 33% read, and The Darkness Manifesto, by Johan Eklöf, is still 10% read, there was no change last week with their progress but I hope to get some reading done on those two this week. However, I DID manage to get Shōgun, by James Clavell, to 10% read, so that chunky monkey of a novel is now an Ongoing Concern!
A very clever topper – it makes it look like the can is in mid air!
Having finished two books last week, we have room to start a couple this week, and I have started one book, which I found on the book table at work on Friday when we had our monthly day in the office. The book is I’ll Die After Bingo, by Pope Lonergan, and it is about his time as a care home assistant. So far, it has been really good and funny in parts.
I figured I would probably like it as it sounded similar to books like This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay, about his time as a doctor, and Anti Social, by Nick Pettigrew, a memoir of his time as an anti-social behaviour officer for the housing department of his local council, and I loved both of those books.
Pope’s book has passed the 10% milestone and is currently at 21% read, so I am aiming to get it to at least 25% after I have finished and published this blog.
I also have room on the Ongoing Concerns for another book, which would probably be a work of fiction if I decide to take on more reading matter right now. I’ve got The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, by Samuel Burr, within arm’s reach, so it could be that one next.
I think that’s about all for now, though. This is actually my 30th blog for this year. I’m looking at my blog logs pages in my journal and I have now completed five pages, each of which has six columns topped with a stencilled lightbulb. I have one more spread of six lightbulbs and checklists in that journal, which is the one with the ship on it from the first half of this year, then I will go on to my current “rainforest” journal which has some more blog logs at the back.
I will be back soon enough with blog number 31 for 2025, lol, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Welcome to another blog as we complete the first week of September. Children have returned to school, I have returned to choir, and two books have been finished off already this month! Yay! My 34th and 35th books for the year, and I will go into a bit more detail in a while.
One thing I have done this week, which I probably should’ve done a while ago, was to make Ian Dixon an admin on the book group on Farcebook. Had yet another instance of the stupid numpties at FB flagging his posts up as spam, which they are NOT as they are book reviews on a book group, so there couldn’t be anything more appropriate and less spammy than posting something which is 100% relevant to that group!
Hopefully, now he is an admin, he will be able to go in the relevant group management section and publish his own posts if I’m not available to do it and the dickheads think he’s spamming.
Some sad news broke this week. Firstly, we lost the former boxer, Joe Bugner, who was 75, and then on Thursday we lost the fashion house founder, Giorgio Armani, who passed away at the age of 91. At one point, in the 90s, I owned a pair of sand-coloured Armani jeans, but if I am thinking of that particular fashion house, I often think of Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys, who has been known to wear a fair bit of Armani clobber over the years! The brand even gets namechecked in the song “Paninaro” which is mostly recited by Chris, and there is a bit in the lyrics where he goes “Armani, Armani, Ar-Ar-Armani”.
May Joe Bugner and Giorgio Armani both rest in peace.
As I was mentioning music just then, I noticed one of the music groups I’m in on FB earlier this week asking what was the weirdest song you’ve got in your playlist, and one person had commented “Fish Heads” so I asked them if they used to listen to Annie Nightingale’s Request Show back in the day, and they replied that they sometimes did. That show is the reason why I know “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes, one of the daftest songs I’ve ever heard, lol!
As I said before, with schools being back, so is our choir and we had our first rehearsal since July on Thursday night at Monton Unitarian Church Hall and we also had some scones from Biba again as she’d been baking. One other choir member, apologies for not remembering who, brought a big bag of baking apples, so I took some of those home as well as some scones. Mum has made an apple crumble this afternoon, so we will probably have that tomorrow evening.
Still on the topic of choir, the above photos are of my October theme which I have now set up, choosing “Tears in Heaven” as it was the only one of the five songs we sung on Thursday that I hadn’t already done as a theme in my current choir journal.
For next year’s journal, of course, I have three journals from Notebook Therapy all vying to be the chosen book, lol! Currently, the yellow one, Lemon Love, has had a couple of votes, so that one is in the lead. The others are Berry Sweet (pink) and Lunar Spells (black) and I will put the photo up again in another blog this month to give you a refresher. I am keeping the voting open until about mid-November before announcing the result and starting to set up the winning journal to be put to use for 2026.
Right then… onto the book news, which is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?
As I mentioned at the start, I have already got two books read this month and we’re only on 7th September today! On 3rd September, I finished The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, which is going to take some beating if any other book wants to be Book of the Month for September! This is the book I picked up for free from the book table at work when I went in the office in July and I loved it.
The book flits around in time, particularly between a US hospital in modern times and a monastery in Medieval Germany. It is essentially the story of an unnamed adult male and his rather self-inflicted car crash (he’s under the influence of drink and drugs) which causes him to be admitted to hospital with severe burns pretty much all over. While he’s in hospital, he is visited by this other patient, Marianne Engels, from the mental health ward, and she lets him know they were lovers hundreds of years ago in Germany. I won’t spoil any more of it for you, but it is a really good book and I would definitely reread it at some time in the future.
The other book I read was Don’t Put Yourself on Toast, by Freddy Taylor, a memoir about the loss of his father, a TV show producer, from an aggressive brain tumour.
Those arrived yesterday. Very pretty. As you know, I have started to set up the first of the journals I will be using as main journals for 2026, and I have gone for the A5 Northern Lights journal by Archer & Olive, so I was using my Northern Lights PET tape for some of the decor… but I’m nearly running out, so I need some more! Oops!
Looking it up, I find that the design is called “Winter Aurora” and it had sold out in some places. Bugger. Even with Loloyaya, I couldn’t get it as an individual roll. I could, however, get it as a set of 6 tapes, so I ordered that and they arrived fairly quickly.
I have also got some washi tapes from a UK-based company called Where’s Clare, that sells travel-themed stationery stuff. If you want to know where Clare is, she’s up in Geordieland, as the package came from an address in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, so now you know, lol! One of those tapes has a Northern Lights design, so I am also using that in the journal to be.
Anyway, time for the Ongoing Concerns, plus a couple of books I intend to start in the coming week given that I finished two books this week. I have been doing a bit of reading this afternoon to get books progressed. After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, is currently 43% read, so I am hoping to get that to 50% after I finish this blog.
Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, is now 33% read, so good progress has been made with that, as it has with When the Museum is Closed, by Emi Yagi, which is also 33% read. This is an English translation from Japanese. The book is set in Japan and is about Rika who works in a frozen food warehouse, but she gets another part-time job on the recommendation of her old uni professor, and on Mondays, when the museum is closed, she goes to chat to a statue of the Venus de Milo!
As I will have space for two books, one I plan to start is The Darkness Manifesto, by Johan Eklöf, which is actually translated from Swedish. It’s a non-fiction book about natural darkness and why the world needs the night. We have to go back to where I go to choir for the other book…
As I have mentioned before now, there are bookshelves full of books and an honesty box at Monton Unitarian Church Hall and I have had one or two books from there already, but on Thursday evening, while enjoying my scone at break time, I had a shufty on the shelves and found Shōgun, by James Clavell and thought I would give it a go!
It was first published back in 1975, so it’s 50 years old this year, and has been televised back in the 80s, I think. It’s a right chunky monkey of a book, this particular edition I picked up at choir has 1243 pages! However, I have watched some book videos on YouTube and other readers have said that the thickness of the book should not be offputting as it is not slow to get through.
I think that is pretty much it for now, other than to say that ITV Quiz have moved things around a bit. The triple bill of “Tipping Point” has moved back an hour, so it is now 10pm, 11pm and midnight rather than 9pm, 10pm and 11pm as it used to be. I think it is staying on a little bit longer now than it did when the channel first started up on 9th June.
I will be back again soon enough with another blog, but until next time, take care and Happy Reading!
What better to start the monthly review blog than a postbox topper of a hippo in a hot tub?! A very happy hippo in a hot tub with a glass of bubbly, no less! There are some amazingly talented knitters and crocheters out there who make all these decorations!
So, we have reached the end of August. Eight months of 2025 done, four more to go, and where are we at with the books? Well, so far, 33 books read this year, five of those having been polished off in August and I will go through the five books shortly.
We have also had the regular short break in the Lake District at the start of this month, and I have been off work this last week. Although we have not been away, we have been out, particularly on Thursday when Mum and I went to a couple of local attractions.
As I said, August started with our visit to the Lakes and we visited the Borrowdale Rainforest while we were there, with Mum also joining the National Trust. This visit was inspired by a couple of books that I read last year, particularly The Lost Rainforests of Britain, by Guy Shrubsole, but also An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, by Eoghan Daltun, which I bought from Fred’s Bookshop in Ambleside on our 2024 Lakes break.
Guy Shrubsole had also been on the regional news last year talking about temperate rainforests when the Borrowdale Rainforest was made a National Nature Reserve. I think King Charles III had a lot to do with this, he’s always been very green, always been into his plants and stuff.
The main difference between rainforests is the temperature. A tropical rainforest, like those in countries such as Brazil and Costa Rica, is where it is wet, but the temperature is warm. A temperate rainforest, like we have in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, is where it is wet and the temperature is cool. There are a lot of ferns in a temperate rainforest, and this was very evident at Borrowdale. With ferns like that, who needs anemones?!
I am hoping the above was just a joke! Scafell too hilly?! Well, it’s a hill! What d’ya expect?! It’s the Lake District, there’s a lot of hills as well as lakes. Indeed there are 214 of them and some people like to try to climb all of them and tick them off on their Wainwright wall charts!
Plus, if they think that’s too hilly, then what would they make of mountains?! They’re probably best off avoiding anywhere like Austria or Switzerland, lol! Or Norway. There’s a lot of mountains there, too, some with trolls in them if the Peer Gynt Suite is anything to go by, hence “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.
I should get on with the books, though, and the five that I have read this month, starting with a couple of autobiographies that I finished off which had been paused earlier in the year. First up was My Life in Red and White, by former Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger, and then Mr Unbelievable, by Chris Kamara.
In that same week as I finished Kammy’s book, and we celebrated the 15th anniversary of this very blog, I also finished off The Offing, by Benjamin Myers, which I have chosen as my Book of the Month for August. I definitely want to read more of his books, as I had already previously enjoyed The Perfect Golden Circle a couple of years ago.
This month, we were also looking at the scandal around The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn as a lot of things have come to light since the book was made into a film, and people have now been nicknaming the book “The Pinch of Salt Path”, lol, due to the fact that a lot of it is not how Ms Winn said it was… and the fact that it isn’t even her real name is just one of the more minor issues!
They are Sally and Tim Walker, not Raynor and Moth Winn, she caused them to lose their house because she’d been embezzling money from a (former) friend’s business, they weren’t as homeless as they claimed as they had property in France they could have sold, the author seems to have lied about the severity of her husband’s medical issues which has caused a lot of distress to those who are genuinely afflicted with the condition Raynor claimed her husband was diagnosed with, and the Cornish coastal path doesn’t even have a name that has anything to do with salt!
So, in one of the YouTube videos I was watching about this book and the controversy surrounding it, a lady whose account is called Lunabird Bookclub gave a recommendation for a book for anyone who wanted some travel and nature writing that WAS authentic and this brings me to Off to the Lakes, by Jessica Lofthouse. An old book, published back in 1949, and written in 1945 during the end of and just after the Second World War, but all the lakes, hills, towns and tarns of the Lake District are instantly recognisable.
Just before I get on to my fifth and final finish for this month, a little reminder of the three journals which are vying to become my next choir journal. It is the middle one, Lemon Love, that has had a couple of votes, so that is in the lead so far. The other journals are Berry Sweet and Lunar Spells.
Anyway, in the early hours of this morning, I finished off Home Waters, by David Bowers, which is about discovering the submerged science of Britain’s coast. It even looks at why the sea is salty, which is mostly due to salt flowing into it from rivers, but there is a good fable about someone having made a machine that manufactured endless salt, and which ran forever.
The machine was sent as a gift to a neighbouring kingdom, but during the crossing, the ship was caught and battered in a great storm. It sank to the bottom with its contents, and the salt machine continued to churn out salt as it does faithfully to this day.
The book obviously touches on lighthouses and areas mentioned in the Shipping Forecast, but also mentioned Newlyn in Cornwall, which is a link to Dark, Salt, Clear, by Lamorna Ash, another book I have read in recent years, and it also mentions how author Kazuo Ishiguro fetched up on these shores.
The author, probably best known for The Remains of the Day, was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954. However, his dad, Shizuo Ishiguro, was an oceanographer by profession and a pioneer in using computers to simulate the flow of water, so the director of the British National Institute of Oceanography, George Deacon, met up with him and invited him to come over to the UK to help work on the problem of predicting storm surges, an invitation he accepted.
Thus he and his family, including the author to be, who would have been around four or five, came to live in England in the late 1950s.
Now that I have gone through the books I have read, I can give you some updates on the Ongoing Concerns. The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, is currently 54% read, and After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, is now 33% read. I have had a bit of a read of both of those earlier. Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, is 10% read. There’s room on the Ongoing Concerns list for two more books as we start the new week and new month tomorrow.
The above photo is from Thursday when Mum and I went into town by tram to visit two free attractions. This is from Castlefield Viaduct, which is a recently-opened attraction run by the National Trust and is near the trams. Just get the Metrolink to the Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop, near the G-Mex, and follow the signs! Phase two has got funds, and is set to start before the end of this year. They will be working on a lift up from near the Mancunian Way and then working towards the centre so that the two phases meet in the middle with the information centre.
We also then went to the Museum of Science and Industry as that is not far away from the Viaduct, and that is also free entry. Yes, there are some things you would need to pay to see, such as Power Up, the retro video games event, but there is a lot that you can see for free.
I would just like to know this, though… Has there been any film or show on in Manchester or Salford this last week that is Christmassy in nature and has some festive songs in it? I ask this because when Mum and I got on the tram to head back to the park and ride at Ladywell, there were a couple of little kids, of primary school age, trying to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” although they didn’t quite get all of the words. Then, when we were a bit further on, in Salford, a bunch of older kids, high school age this time, got on and they were singing “Rudolph” as well! We’re in August! Why were kids singing a Christmas song on the tram?!
Before I wrap this up, just thought you would like to see the start I have made on setting up my main journal for the start of next year. In the last blog, I said I was going with Northern Lights for January to June, with Mushrooms for July to December, so I have made a start in my Northern Lights journal.
I wanted to go for a cosy on the inside while it’s winter on the outside look with the main journal theme, so we have books and hot drinks and plaid washi while also having wintery trees washi tape and Northern Lights PET tape. There’s still a bit more to do, such as the Laterbase, and I’ve had to order more Northern Lights tape, but it’s a start! I also need to add a bit more to the future log pages, they need a bit more decor in the top right corners.
That is about it for now, though, but I will be back soon enough with more book news and random waffle. Probably won’t ever know why kids were singing Christmas songs on the tram, though, lol! I guess that will remain a mystery! Until the next time I blog, take care and Happy Reading!
Originally, I didn’t expect to be blogging today. Until recently, I had expected that I would have other things on and would not be blogging at this end of August, but there’s been a change of events and I am here so you are getting a blog tonight, lol, and I will be around to do the monthly review next week which I originally thought I would have to have done either Friday or yesterday.
As you can see from the photo above, those are two of my journals from my infamous “subs’ bench” – an A5 Northern Lights dot grid journal and an 8×8 square Mushrooms dot grid journal. Those are the books I have now chosen to be my main general journals for 2026!
The Northern Lights journal will be put to use first, that one will be for January to June, and then the Mushrooms journal will be used for July to December. Although I do already have an 8×8 journal, Frame Wall, in use, that is not one I am using all the time, that is just for reading statistics so I update it every now and then.
Mushrooms will be my first square one to be in regular use. It has 160 pages, as opposed to 192 pages in the A5 journal, but the pages are bigger, so I can probably do different layouts when I use that one
More stationery news later, but need to give you some book news now.
Last time I blogged was the anniversary edition, and I had read two books up to that point, with The Offing, by Benjamin Myers, at the 75% read stage that day. However, I finished that book the following day, so that became my third finish for August and 31st for the year.
I’m not sure I mentioned this book last time with all the 15th blog anniversary celebrations, but I have another finish and it’s one that came courtesy of the internet and a recommendation from Lunabird Bookclub on YouTube!
I was watching her video which was all about the kerfuffle over The Salt Path, and towards the end of her video she was talking about alternatives as an antidote to Raynor Winn’s increasingly-innacurate and considerably dishonest “memoir” – she was looking at what we could read instead if we enjoyed travel and nature writing and wanted a memoir of this kind that was a legit account of a writer’s travels.
Thus she recommended Off to the Lakes, by Jessica Lofthouse, which is an old book but a good read, especially for anyone familiar with the Lake District, as I am. It was published back in 1949 and is an account of Ms Lofthouse’s regular trips to and walks around Lakeland in 1945, so during and just after the end of the Second World War.
It might be telling us events from 80 years ago, but the place names of the towns, tarns, lakes and hills are very familiar to anyone who has ambled around Ambleside or anywhere else in Cumbria in more recent times, like earlier this month in my case, lol!
When I saw those, I just had to have them! They were one of the designs from Archer & Olive’s “Fall Collection” for this year and I had email alerts from Under the Rowan Trees to let me know about them and I was able to go online when they launched on 13th August and order the Bookshelves dot grid journals in A5 and B6 sizes, plus matching sticker set and washi tape set. Aren’t they gorgeous?! The B6 one will be one of my commonplace books, the A5 will be a future main journal.
Talking of books, I should do the Ongoing Concerns now that I’ve done the finished books. The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, is now 50% so I shall be aiming to either finish it in the coming week or get it read as an early finish for September. After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, is 25% read, and Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls, is 10% read.
I really could do with getting those progressed a bit more, but will also have space for a couple more books on the OC list. Probably one fiction and one non-fiction. I certainly would like to get at least one more book read before August is over and I have a week left to do it in before the review of the month blog needs doing next Sunday.
Journaling to show you, and quite a bit of it as I was in a very creative mode earlier this week and got both October and November set up in my main journal! October’s theme is There’s a Ghost in My House, as in the song by R. Dean Taylor, and November’s is November Rain, like the Guns ‘n’ Roses epic rock ballad from 1991.
With the ghost theme, I’ve gone with a house theme for the playlist – so songs about houses or parts of houses. November’s theme is just rainy, as you’d expect, lol! Mostly rain, some storms and an umbrella.
Was listening to Pick of the Pops earlier, which was from 1995 and 2000 this week, but next week’s is from 1979 and 1987, so something tells me we might be getting Rickrolled next Sunday, lol!
That’s my November Rain setup, with a lot of brollies, lol! The Hibernation Station page is for the Ongoing Concerns that are getting a bit of a nap. As is my tradition, any books that are not finished by 30th November have a kip during December and I resume them in the new year.
I do this so that I don’t have to be fussing over unfinished books when I’m busy getting other stuff ready for Christmas and New Year. I still get a bit of reading done in December, but sometimes just re-reads of old, and often festive, books.
That is probably about all for now. It will soon be time for a nice night watching ITV Quiz, lol! There is a nightly triple bill of “Tipping Point” so I will end up shouting correct answers at the telly and also accusing the machine of being stubborn and playing hard to get when it doesn’t let any counters go over the edge and into the tipping point! That often happens at the start of each quiz – it can take a few goes before counters start falling.
So, I will be back again next weekend with the review blog, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
I like to party, and by party I mean read books, lol!
Yep, today’s the day. 14th August 2025. On this day in 2010, I typed and published my first book blog! I was 37, working in Chorlton as a civil servant and had just become an auntie. Now I’m 52, been in my current job almost 8 years and working from home since 2020. My niece is now 15, she will be sitting her GCSEs next year, and I also have a nephew who is nearly 9. Such a lot has gone on in the last decade and a half!
A lot has gone under the bridge since that time. In the case of Barton Road Bridge, a few buses have got stuck under it, lol!
Coming up in this anniversary edition are the answers to the quiz from the previous blog, news of a couple of finished books and one very much nearing completion, plus the usual nonsense that you’ve come to expect from this blog over the last fifteen years.
Whether you have been reading this waffle from the start in 2010, or you’re relatively new to Joanne’s Bookshelf, get your party hat on, grab a drink and some cake (I can only provide virtual party food so you may need some real drinks and cakes of your own) and enjoy the blog post!
To get our party started, I have news of two finished books! My Life in Red and White, by Arsène Wenger, was finished off last week, and Mr Unbelievable, by Chris Kamara, was finished yesterday! So, two books read already this month, and my total for the year so far is now 30 books! It also means two more squares of the book bingo card coloured in as both those finished books were autobiographies.
That particular challenge will not be finished this year, as I have said in previous blogs, but it doesn’t mean that other autobiographies won’t be read before we let in 2026. At least it has been partially done, though, unlike some challenges mentioned on this blog in years gone by!
Early on in the life of this blog, I mentioned a potential “Around the World in 80 Books” thing, but that never happened, nor did the reading of a Charles Dickens novel in 2012 to mark 200 years since he was born, so I have still not added to the two books of his that I have read, those being A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.
Actually, though, with the round the world in 80 books thing, it could be that I probably have managed this in the fifteen years of blogging as I have read well over eighty books and a lot of those have been set in other countries. Indeed, I read a lot of travel writing, so there is a good bet that I have possibly achieved that aim without realising it!
I did read 24 travel books in 2024, though, so some challenges have been achieved, even if mentioning them on here often tends to jinx things!
I did mention that I have got a book that’s nearing completion, and that is The Offing, by Benjamin Myers, one of the books I bought in Ambleside when I was in the Lake District at the start of this month, and that one was 67% read by the end of last night. It is now 75% read at time of typing this so I am hoping to get that read before the weekend’s out for my third finish of the month.
The other Ongoing Concerns are The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, at 25% read, and both Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, and After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, at the 10% read stage.
With Chris Kamara’s book finished and The Offing likely to be finished soon, there will be space on the Ongoing Concerns for other books. I will be looking at one fiction and one non-fiction, which might be an autobiography or it might not. If it is, reading that would at least get that total to ten.
I still need to give you the answers to the quiz from the last blog, and I will get on to that later, but maybe we should have a look back at fifteen years of book blogs. Way back in 2010 I was considering an e-reader device, and I have had a few since then! One Sony E-reader and several Kindles.
I have had to stress, every now and then, that all book formats are valid, and yes, audiobooks count as reading. It irritates me beyond belief that this still needs pointing out to some people. It is extremely ableist to claim that audiobooks don’t count, especially as they are one of the best ways for visually-impaired people to enjoy a book, also those with reading difficulties such as dyslexia. If it has an ISBN, it is a book and thus it counts. An audiobook has an ISBN just as hardbacks, paperbacks and ebooks do. It usually has it on the back of the box of CDs that make up the audiobook.
We’ve also had some book controversies, particularly around memoirs not being as true as first thought, including A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey, and the current kerfuffle about The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn, although that isn’t even her real name, to add to the list of inaccuracies about the “Pinch of Salt Path” as it’s now being nicknamed, lol! She and her other half are Sally and Tim Walker, not Raynor and Moth Winn.
Even the salt path bit is inaccurate! Yes, it’s a coastal route around Cornwall, but as an English historian, Paul Whitewick, pointed out in a video on YouTube, maps for Cornwall don’t include any roads, streets or paths named after salt! The vast majority of saline-named thoroughfares on these shores are in Cheshire with some in Derbyshire! Those counties are up near my neck of the woods, nowhere near Cornwall!
Cheshire is south of Greater Manchester and east of North Wales. Mum and I pass through it on the motorway if heading towards Llandudno, as we did in 2021 when that short break resulted in the North Wales Book-Buying Spree and 30 books came home with us in the boot of the car, lol! See the June 2021 archives for that blog should you wish to read it!
As I also said, there are some salty places in Derbyshire, and Chesterfield’s home ground is called Saltergate. These names are due to the history of salt production in these counties.
So, she has lied about her name and her husband’s, and she has lied about how they came to be homeless, not owning up to the fact that it was her fault. She had stolen money, £64,000, from a (former) friend’s business and given costs and interests, the house had to go so she could pay it back.
They also have a property in France they could have done up and lived in or sold off to buy somewhere to live over here! The place is not in good nick, but there are loads of people who like doing up cottages on the continent so I’m sure she’d have had a buyer if she’d sold it.
She has also been extremely misleading about her husband’s health issues. I don’t doubt that Tim (aka Moth) has something wrong with him, but whatever it is, the condition is a lot milder than the one his missus implies that he has. If he had that, he would probably have been bedridden after a short while and she would have had to provide round the clock care for him. Going for a short walk would have been difficult, let alone going on a long and challenging walk around the Cornish coastline!
He seems to have a condition that flares up now and then but is manageable at other times. This doesn’t sound like one that meets the description of CBD which his wife has implied he has been diagnosed with. Also, he has lived a very long time since then. If he actually had that condition, he would have passed away some time ago.
And now we find that even the damn title of the book is inaccurate as there aren’t any salt paths, salt roads or salt ways around the coastline of Cornwall! Our salty street names are up in Cheshire!
You may find that you can sing the words of the book titles in this photo to the tune of “All Things Bright and Beautiful”, lol!
Anyway, it’s about time I gave you the answers to the quiz in the previous blog. The first letter of each correct answer should spell out a message appropriate for this occasion…
Giant who tells Harry Potter that he’s a wizard – Hagrid
First word of the title of Charlie Connelly’s book about his journey around the Shipping Forecast – Attention
Items of street furniture often decorated with knitted or crocheted toppers – Postboxes
First word of the name of my fave duo since I was 14 – Pet
First word of the title of the David Nicholls novel featuring Marnie and Michael – You
Norwegian city visited by Mum and I in 2024 and 2025 – Bergen
Size of life indicated in the title of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel – Little
Type of emergency I had in 2019 when I needed new specs – Optical
Type of cupboard where I found my big pink parcel in February – Gas
Team stuffed 9-0 by Manchester United in 1995 – Ipswich
Erupting mountains, one of my interests – Volcanoes
First word of the title of the baby book my sister discovered in the library in Dun Laoghaire – Economics
Type of blog at the end of the month and in December – Review
End at Old Trafford where I had my seat from 1993 to 2025 – Stretford
What I became in 2010 shortly before my first blog – Auntie
When you unexpectedly hear “Never Gonna Give You Up” – Rickroll
Colour of wallpaper in novella by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – Yellow
If you have got all of those right, it should say HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY!
We probably should have a look at the last fifteen years, stuff that got blogged about and any other events and random nonsense…
2010 I’m working in Chorlton at the time, bit of a long bus ride but some good book shops near work. My niece Charlotte is born and I start a book blog by pondering if I should buy one of those new-fangled e-reader devices so that I can have a lot of books on one gadget. It would be good for reading on my jollies, I think, so I get one.
2011 Still based in Chorlton job-wise, I win a Kindle in an offer thanks to a book called How to Leave Twitter, by Grace Dent, which I find for free at the Barbakan Deli while I’m on my lunch! United win their 19th league title, Lancashire win the county championship in cricket so there are champions at both Old Traffords!
2012 It’s 200 years since Dickens was born but I don’t get round to reading one of his books for the anniversary. I DO get to give out copies of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, for World Book Night on my 39th birthday, though.
Not the best of years as I lose my maternal Grandad, my job comes to an end due to redundancy and United are empty-handed. However, we sign Robin van Persie that summer and Team GB host the London Olympics and Paralympics and Royal Mail are very busy issuing stamps of all our champions and painting postboxes gold! There is still a gold postbox near Gilda Brook Post Office in honour of Dame Sarah Storey.
2013 United win their 20th league title the night before my Big 40 as the lads become champions thanks to RvP’s hat-trick at home to Aston Villa. I am mostly doing my football blog around this time, but author Hannah Kent comes to our Waterstone’s Deansgate book club to promote her début novel, the brilliant Burial Rites, which we all loved. It was rare for all book club members to like a book, but this was one of those instances.
2014 Not really much to write here. Was still blogging about football rather than books, United were crap, I was looking for work and I don’t really recall any stand-out book from 2014 to mention. I may even have been having a reading slump. Made a few bookmarks that year, so I was doing some cross-stitch.
Also more loss in this year as my Nana passed away in the January and my Grandma in December. Played “Silent Night” on tenor horn at her funeral in the new year as I had joined the Flixton Community Brass Band in the November of 2014.
2015 Reading was a bit hit and miss, but there were some book blogs for the first time since 2012. Loved Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, and after another reading slump, I was rescued by Why the Dutch Are Different, by Ben Coates. I start “art on prescription” at Start in Salford in this year and get to try various crafts!
2016 The art on prescription continues into 2016 and this is when I do the wood turning and some pottery. Potter’s wheels are trickier than they look on “Ghost” and I end up with more clay on my arms than on the wheel, lol, but do manage to make a small dish, plus other clay stuff that doesn’t need the wheel. When my arty time is up, I start volunteering on reception.
United win the FA Cup, our first silverware since Sir Alex retired, I have an epic Book Hangover after reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, and Mum and I have a holiday in Morocco, hence the tagines!
2017 United win the League Cup and Europa League and thus complete the set of European silverware having previously won the European Cup (Champions League) and the old European Cup-Winners’ Cup. I am on jury service in the spring and use this as an excuse to use some law-themed song titles as blog titles, opting for “Love in the First Degree” by Bananarama, “All Rise” by Blue and “Good Morning Judge” by 10CC!
Also in 2017… I GET A JOB! Yay! In September of that year, I am back in full-time employment again as I start my job as an admin officer for my local authority. One of my favourite books of this year is the hilarious This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay who I get to meet at Waterstone’s Deansgate. I also get to meet Stuart Maconie at Waterstones in this year, so it’s a good year for meeting writers.
It is also the year I get to see the Pet Shop Boys twice on their Super Tour, seeing them at the Manchester Arena in the February and then on a boiling night in June at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool. This is the gig where a bloke spots me and Sarah and leads us right to the front during the gig so we get an unimpeded view of Neil & Chris for the rest of the concert!
2018 My job becomes permanent, it had been fixed-term to start with but that got extended a few times until becoming permanent, although I never did get a letter from HR. Mum and I go to Boa Vista, Cape Verde, for our jollies and land at the cutest little airport ever – it’s like a big sandcastle, and it is just over the road from the hotel we stayed at.
This is where I first start having spa treatments while on my holidays, having a hot stones massage. I like to have this, or similar, when I’m on my jollies these days. Unfortunately, I go into a book slump at the end of 2018.
2019 I hope the slump will end but things get worse as I lose Dad in the January and bereavement leaves me too upset to read for quite a while. I don’t finish my first book until just before my birthday in the April, that being The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson.
Mum celebrates her Big 70, we go to Mauritius on our jollies and get to feed giant tortoises, then once we’re home again, it’s off down to London for afternoon tea at Claridge’s, travelling first class by train and getting to experience the talking toilets, lol!
At the end of 2019, I have a bit of a “weird cold” where I have a bad cough and I can’t smell anything, even Vicks Vapo Rub, even though I don’t actually feel my nose is bunged-up at any time. My sense of smell will return on my jollies as Mum and I head to Madeira to let in the new year…
2020 begins in Madeira, birthplace of Cristiano Ronaldo, and my sense of smell returns on my jollies. Unfortunately, the first thing I notice I can smell is someone smoking near me, which I absolutely HATE, so Mum and I have to change tables at the cafe.
In February, we go over to visit our family in Ireland and see where Dad’s ashes are interred (along with Nana, Grandad and Uncle Nigel’s ashes) at the cemetery in Dublin, under the flight path of planes from Dublin Airport, appropriate as Grandad was a pilot before he retired.
We visit the library in Dun Laoghaire and Ellie spots the now-legendary Economics For Babies, by Jonathan Litton!
Then, in March, everything shuts down. We are issued with laptops from work and have to start working from home as lockdown begins due to Coronavirus. Five years on and I still work from home, although we do have office days in on a regular basis these days.
I have a bit of a book slump due to the pandemic, but In the Pleasure Groove, the autobiography of John Taylor from Duran Duran, gets me reading again. I also realise my lost sense of smell back in December would have been due to Covid.
Rocking the matching mask and top look! This was on one of our short breaks here in the UK in 2020 when things were a bit better between lockdowns and we could travel to a certain degree. We got to St Anne’s on Sea, Chester and the Lake District in 2020.
2021 Pretty similar to 2020 as the year started with us all in lockdown, things starting to ease in March and April and then continued to unlock until everything was open again in July. Mum and I went to Llandudno and Conwy in the June, resulting in the North Wales Book-Buying Spree, lol!
In August, we were down in London and Watford with Ellie, David, Charlotte and Reuben to visit the World of Harry Potter. Then Mum and I were off again, up to the Lake District, and then on to Scotland, staying in Gretna for a few days and visiting Wigtown, Scotland’s national Book Town, where I met shop owner and author, Shaun Bythell!
Book-wise in 2021, I was reading a lot of books about the Shipping Forecast, but also a lot of books about bread, particularly Slow Rise, by Robert Penn, and the bread books gave rise (pun intended) to me reading The Epic of Gilgamesh and realising that Gilgamesh and Enkidu had the world’s first literary bromance, lol, and that even the Epic had fanfiction! Clay tablets found with the Epic were discovered to be fan writings once they had been translated from the Cuneiform.
2022 This was a year of doing stuff that was originally planned for 2020 before Coronavirus delayed it – going to see Fascinating Aida at the Lowry Theatre, seeing the Pet Shop Boys on their Dreamworld greatest hits tour, and going to the amazing Hotel Cordial Mogán Playa in Gran Canaria, which has its own bowling alley as well as a Michelin-starred restaurant where Mum and I had the tasting menu with wine pairing.
It was also the year I started bullet journaling properly and discovered the joys of Oops a Daisy and other stationery suppliers. In the August we went to Madeira and Reuben spotted a lot of lizards!
2023 This was the year I hit my half century but amazingly didn’t get bombarded with spam as I thought I would once I reached my Big 50. Book-wise, there were a lot of books about trains, but also about 80s music, particularly those written by members of Spandau Ballet, Wham and Pepsi & Shirlie.
2024 Ah, last year… still got 60 books read even though I was on my travels a lot! Lanzarote, Bergen and the Fjords, the Lake District for our now annual visit to Bowness on Windermere, and then to Mexico. I met my challenge of 24 travel books in 2024. It is when I read The Lost Rainforests of Britain, by Guy Shrubsole, which inspired our recent visit to the Borrowdale Rainforest at the start of this month!
Well, that about brings us up to date and that’s pretty much it for now. It is a long blog, lol! Will be back to the normal-length blogs soon enough, but I hope you’ve enjoyed the 15th Anniversary Edition! Until next time, take care and Happy Reading!
We shall start this evening’s blog by wishing a very Happy Birthday to our former striker, Robin van Persie, who is 42 today! Photo is from back in the good old days of 2013 when Sir Alex was (just about) still manager and we won the Premier League, our 20th league title. Gelukkige Verjaardag, Robin!
From a bookworm’s perspective, 42 is a special number if you’re a frood and you know where your towel is! If you have ever read The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by the late great Douglas Adams, you will know that 42 is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything!
On a sad note, though, the news broke on Friday that Allan Ahlberg had died at the age of 87. He met his wife Janet at teacher training college and together they wrote many classic children’s books, including Funnybones (which I bought Reuben for his birthday a few years ago), Please Mrs Butler, The Jolly Postman, and Each Peach Pear Plum, which both my niece and nephew loved when they were little. May he rest in peace.
So, as you see, Chief Bookworm has brand new specs! These are my new reading glasses and I also have new distance glasses, having been to Boots Opticians in the Trafford Centre this afternoon to pick them up.
It was a bit of a Goldilocks moment, though. One pair, the distance specs, were too loose and needed tightening up, but then my reading specs were too tight and needed loosening a bit, but eventually, after a bit of adjustment, both pairs were just right, lol!
So, what do you do when you’ve got new glasses? Buy some new books to celebrate, of course! I popped into Waterstone’s and came out with Us, by David Nicholls, The Gallows Pole, by Benjamin Myers, and How to Kill Men and Get Away With It, by Katy Brent, which was on one of the tables and was giving me the Call of the Book!
We have some news regarding the choir journals, as we have had a couple of votes for Lemon Love via family and friends on Facebook and Messenger, so the yellow journal is currently in the lead.
Also, I have got my arse in gear re List Challenges lists. Not that you will see this list until either the very end of this year or the very start of 2026, but I have a list of all the different books I mention on here, but it hadn’t been updated since about mid-March, so I got that done after my last blog and I just need to remember to do it more frequently in future! I needed to update my list of books I’ve read this year, so it reminded me I also needed to update the list of books mentioned on the blog.
A selection of photos from our visit to the Borrowdale Rainforest! Yep, Mum and I have been for our usual short break in the Lake District, and we got up to the temperate rainforest in Borrowdale, near Keswick. Mum joined the National Trust, so we actually got free parking, and we went for a bit of a walk, admiring our surroundings. With ferns like that, who needs anemones?!
I would like to thank Guy Shrubsole, who wrote The Lost Rainforests of Britain, and also Eoghan Daltun, who wrote An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, as they made me want to visit a temperate rainforest, particularly Guy as his book was about the UK and mentioned Borrowdale. There was also an article on the north-west news last year, I think that must have been because the rainforest was designated a National Nature Reserve in 2024.
There are two kinds of rainforests in the world, tropical and temperate. I guess a lot of people think mostly about the tropical ones in Costa Rica and Brazil, like the Amazon. Those occur where the climate is warm and rainy. Where it is cooler and rainy, you get temperate rainforests, and that is why there are some rainforests down the west coasts of the UK and Ireland. Over here, you have rainforest in western Scotland, the Lake District, Wales and in Cornwall.
Books were bought while I was in the Lake District, all being purchased on Monday afternoon when Mum and I ambled around Ambleside, lol! Three were bought at Fred’s Bookshop – The Satsuma Complex, by Bob Mortimer, and both the Benjamin Myers books, Rare Singles and The Offing, and Children of the Volcano, by Ros Belford, was bought at Books and Brews.
You may remember mention of Benjamin Myers, as I read The Perfect Golden Circle a year or two ago, which is a book set in the summer of 1989 when crop circles were in the news. These are other books by the same author, and I started The Offing last night and it is 10% read so it has become an Ongoing Concern.
Other books at 10% are Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, and After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher. However, some reading got done while I was enjoying myself in the Lake District, and The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, is now 25% and My Life in Red and White, by Arsène Wenger, is now 50% read! Yay! I want to get that read as my main priority, but will also get on with the others.
Obviously, as we are now in August, there is a very special day coming up next Thursday… on 14th August 2010, I wrote and published my very first book blog! So, next week marks one and a half decades of book blogging. It hasn’t always been regular, there have been some years I’ve not blogged about books, and I have had reading slumps, so those have caused gaps in the blogging, but I have been blogging for almost fifteen years!
Therefore, I have come up with a quiz for you and the answers will be in the blog on 14th August. The first letter of each correct answer will spell out a special message! Good luck…
Giant who tells Harry Potter he’s a wizard.
First word in the title of Charlie Connelly’s book about his journey around the Shipping Forecast.
Items of street furniture often decorated with knitted or crocheted toppers.
First word of the name of Chief Bookworm’s favourite duo since she was 14, becoming a fan way back in 1987.
First word in the title of the David Nicholls novel featuring Michael and Marnie and their coast to coast walk.
Norwegian city visited by Chief Bookworm and her mum in 2024 and 2025.
Size of life indicated in the title of the novel by Hanya Yanagihara.
Type of emergency Chief Bookworm had in July 2019 which resulted in new pairs of specs.
Type of cupboard outside next door’s house, where Chief Bookworm found her Big Pink Parcel in February this year.
Team stuffed 9-0 by Manchester United in 1995 – Chief Bookworm often says she’s as stuffed as this team after chippy tea on Fishy Friday…
Erupting mountains, one of Chief Bookworm’s interests, her favourite of which is Mt Etna.
First word of the title of the baby book discovered by Chief Bookworm’s sister in the library in Dun Laoghaire in 2020.
Type of blog at the end of the month, then a series of blogs in December.
Name of the End at Old Trafford where Chief Bookworm had a seat from 1993 to 2025.
What Chief Bookworm became in 2010, shortly before her first blog.
When you unexpectedly hear “Never Gonna Give You Up” by a certain Mr Astley, as happened to Chief Bookworm while giving blood in 2023…
Colour of wallpaper in the title of a novella by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that Chief Bookworm read in her university days.
So, that is about it for now. As I said, I will be giving the answers in the next blog, so it gives you time to think about them. I should be back next week with that special blog, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
That time already? Another monthly review? We’re on the last day of July so therefore it must be review time, and a look back at a month where I gave an armful, my dressing-gown twin returned to our screens in Amazon Prime adverts, we marked the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, Debbie Harry turned 80 but we lost Ozzy Osbourne, and the Lionesses retained their European title!
Yes, I was blogging on Sunday but before the outcome of the Women’s European Championships final between England and Spain, so I didn’t have anything to report on at the time. The Lionesses, who were the reigning holders from 2022, came from a goal down to draw 1-1 and take the game to extra time and then a penalty shoot out, which they won 3-1 to win back to back titles, meaning that manager, Sarina Wiegman, is the most successful England manager in football history!
Two trophies, won back to back. Amazing stuff. It was amazing enough when we won in 2022, in the championship delayed by a year, but to do it again this year, and to do it overseas, is amazing. As I said, it makes the coach our most successful ever, overtaking Sir Alf Ramsey’s sole World Cup for the fellas in 1966. After the managers that have led England to trophies, the best record of those that haven’t managed to do that belongs to Sir Gareth Southgate.
The month started with me giving a pint of my O positive to the Vampires at the donor centre in town, and that blood has now been given to Hull Royal Infirmary. I love getting the texts to tell me where my blood has been sent. Of course, after I had donated, we had the palaver of the plaster trying to come off, which led to the purchase of the hair scrunchy as a temporary armband, and some surgical tape to keep the plaster in place. The tape is in my bag so it’s there in case I need to do likewise with future plasters.
Choir has finished for the summer, the last rehearsal was on 24th July and we will resume on 4th September. I hope the cakes also resume, as Biba, one of our sopranos, has been baking and we have been having cakes when we have our break. At out last rehearsal, we had scones with jam and clotted cream. Yum!
Debbie Harry, Blondie’s lead singer, hit her Big 80 at the start of the month, and it was the 40th anniversary of Live Aid on 13th July, which was celebrated with a blog. However, we also had some notable losses. Portugal and Liverpool striker, Diogo Jota, was killed in a road accident in Spain, along with his brother. He was only 28.
We have also lost Malcolm-Jamal Warner of Cosby Show fame, rock legend, Ozzy Osbourne, whose funeral took place in Birmingham yesterday, singer Dame Cleo Lane, and yesterday Sylvia Young, whose theatre school has produced a huge number of stars, including Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls, a couple of members of All Saints, and an absolute load of actors and actresses who have gone on to be in “Eastenders”!
I mentioned buses in the blog title as there has been another recent incident under the Barton Road bridge. You may remember back in April 2023, just before my Big 50, there was a driver who got his double-decker bus stuck under the bridge while shearing the roof off it? At least that one didn’t have any passengers on it. However, a week or so ago, a driver managed to shear the roof and part of the top deck off his double-decker bus when he went under that bridge, which caused a number of injuries to passengers on the upper deck.
The driver has been charged with causing injury by dangerous driving. He must have been speeding to actually get through that bridge with a double-decker bus as you CANNOT get tall vehicles under that bridge! When are people going to learn this and remember this?!
Also, I wonder if the driver has relations who drive trucks in Melbourne, Australia? I ask this because they have had a similar issue with a low bridge in their city and drivers trying to get tall vehicles through it and failing miserably! A trucker managed to shear the top of his truck off and get stuck under the Montague Street bridge, which seems to be the Aussie equivalent of the Barton Road bridge for our bus drivers!
Some bits of news before I get on to the books and stuff, and as I think I mentioned in my last blog, I need new glasses, one pair for reading and another for distance, and these will be ready for me in early August from Boots Opticians in the Trafford Centre.
The above bit of journaling is an eye-themed playlist that I did because I was thinking of songs to do with eyes while I was waiting to be seen for my eye test.
The clock on my work’s laptop is now showing the right time again… for now! I was in the office last Thursday so I took the laptop over to our IT guys in the afternoon and they synced the clock for me, as it had been gaining and had become three minutes fast. My previous work’s laptop, the one I was given in March 2020 just before the original lockdown, never did that to me. It always kept the right time.
Oh, and I have FINALLY had a reason to remember the formula for calculating the area of a circle! Those who’ve followed this blog for some time will know that I have mentioned now and then, that my brain still remembers A = Pi r squared even though I hadn’t needed it since I was still at high school and I left there in 1989.
Anyway, I was watching “Tipping Point” on ITV Quiz the other night, and the question came up, asking what the r stood for in the formula! The answer is, of course, radius. However, this now means that there was at least a good reason why my brain retained this information for all those years – it would come up on a favourite quiz show 36 years after I last needed it for any maths, lol!
Some stationery news before we go on to books… Lemon Love has had a vote from one of my friends on Facebook and Messenger, so the middle one of the above journals is now in the lead in the poll to decide my next choir journal!
I have read three books this month, and bought 11. My total of finished books so far this year is 28, and my Book of the Month is You Are Here, by David Nicholls, which I absolutely loved and I want a sequel! I want Marnie and Michael to meet up again!
Tuk-Tuk For Two, by Adam Fletcher, the third part of his travel series, was finished off next, and I have actually started his fourth book on my Kindle, After Happy Ever After, which I will come onto shortly.
Last, but not least, in the finished books for July, is The Lighthouse Stevensons, by Bella Bathurst, which I polished off earlier. At some point I nearly referred to it as The Lighthouse Family, as I was getting confused, lol! I’m a perimenopausal middle-aged old fart now and I need plenty of coffee to get me to think accurately and get stuff right! There is a Lighthouse Family, but they were a pop group back in the 1990s who enjoyed some success in the UK charts, particularly with “Ocean Drive” and “Lifted”.
A few more tributes to Ozzy and celebrations of the Lionesses winning the European Championships in Switzerland.
Anyway, we’ve done the finished books but there’s the matter of the Ongoing Concerns. I’ve been un-pausing some of the ones I put on hold earlier in the year, hence the likes of Bibliomaniac eventually got read, as did The Lighthouse Stevensons, which I have just finished, and I have got a couple of paused OCs that were 33% read when I was last reading them, and I am thinking of resuming one of those.
The 33% brigade consists of My Life in Red and White, by Arsène Wenger, and Mr Unbelievable, by Chris Kamara. As I started the autobiography of the former Arsenal manager first, I think that one will be resumed, and then Kammy will be resumed later.
I now have a 10% brigade of three books that have recently been started and became Ongoing Concerns during the course of this month. I have Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls, about Brian who wants to get on “University Challenge”, The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, with the unnamed burns unit patient, and After Happy Ever After, by Adam Fletcher, which is on my Kindle and he is off on his travels with Evelyn again, the lady he went to India with for the tuk-tuk racing!
I also had some books donated to me at the weekend for the eventual church fair, as I mentioned in Sunday’s blog, and have picked out a few for myself, but they will get mentioned again as and when I get around to reading them.
Well, I think that is probably about all for now. I will be back in August with more book news and waffle, and new glasses too, of course! Plus, it is the blog’s birthday in August, so expect a special blog post for that occasion! Until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Chief Bookworm here again with another blog and some news of considerable progress on the Ongoing Concerns front! Since I last blogged, two books have now been finished and one long-standing OC is now at the halfway stage, so I am wanting to finish that off before this month is up so that I will have a third finish for July.
Before we get on with that, we have had some notable losses in the past week or so, starting with the sad news of Malcolm-Jamal Warner at only 54 years old, not much older than me, who played Theo Huxtable, the eldest son in The Cosby Show, back in the 80s when I was a kid. He died in a drowning accident on holiday in Costa Rica.
Then we had the passing of Ozzy Osbourne, rock legend, at the age of 76. He had had a number of health issues in recent years, including a Parkinson’s diagnosis, but he still managed to make it through Black Sabbath’s final gig at Villa Park a few weeks ago, bowing out in his native Birmingham. The topper in the photo may be on a bollard rather than a postbox, but it’s a pretty good topper of Ozzy!
Also in the last few days, the news came that singer Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, had passed away at the age of 97. May they all rest in peace.
My niece celebrated her 15th birthday, which was why I was waiting a while to do the blog so that she would have opened her pressies as one of them was a book, Good Girl, Bad Blood, by Holly Jackson. I always leave it until after a birthday or Christmas to blog if I have bought someone a book so that they can unwrap the reading matter before I mention it on here.
Even though I did a first half of the year review at the end of June, I have some stats for you from the first half of 2025. By 30th June, I had read 25 books and I had bought 31 books.
January: read 4 and bought 5. Book of the month was Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly, which was also my Quarterly Champion for the first three months of this year.
February: read 4 and bought 3. Book of the month was Night Trains, by Andrew Martin.
March: read 6 and bought 9. Book of the month was Don’t Go There, by Adam Fletcher.
April: read 2 and bought 5. Book of the month was Undoctored, by Adam Kay.
May: read 5 and bought 1. Book of the month was Dog Man, by Dav Pilkey, which was also my Quarterly Champion for the next three months of this year.
June: read 4 and bought 8. Book of the month was The Flat Stanley Collection, by Jeff Brown.
So, that brings you up to date. So far this month I have read two books and bought 11, but we are not quite done with July yet, so I am hoping there will be a third finish…
Let’s get on to the book news then, as I said we have had two finishes this month, and the first one was the brilliant You Are Here, by David Nicholls. I want a sequel, please! I want Marnie and Michael meeting up again! A mutual friend gets a bunch of people to meet up for a few days in the Lake District, including Marnie, who’s a self-employed book editor, and Michael, who’s a geography teacher. He is staying on even when most of the others head home as he is planning on doing Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk from the north-west to the north east…
I absolutely loved this book and want a follow-up, Mr Nicholls! It is certainly going to be my book of the month for July and is a good bet for a quarterly champion, although that depends on what I read and enjoy in August and September.
Next up was Tuk-Tuk For Two, by Adam Fletcher, the third in his travel writing series, and this was on my Kindle. This is factual but reads like fiction at times. Adam is in a bar in Berlin and gets chatting to a lady named Evelyn. She is supposed to be going to India with a friend of hers to take part in a tuk-tuk race through the country, but she gets a phone call. It’s her friend who was supposed to be going to India with her… she’s in hospital with a broken arm after a fall so she can’t go. This is where Adam steps in and bravely agreees to take her place at the last minute…
A mixture of sports-themed postbox toppers for you, including cricket, tennis, Torvill & Dean doing their final show recently in Nottingham, the Tour de France, and the England Lionesses who are in the final of the Women’s European Championships tonight against Spain!
Anyway, we’ve done the finished books, so now back to the Ongoing Concerns and the news that The Lighthouse Stevensons, by Bella Bathurst, is now 52% read! Yay! Just over halfway. I want to get on with that and try to get it read before the end of Thursday so that I will have three books read this month.
I have got a couple of books that have been started recently and have reached the 10% milestone meaning that they are Ongoing Concerns.
First up is Starter For Ten, by David Nicholls. Set in 1985, it’s about Brian who’s just started university and about his aim to get on his uni’s team and appear on the TV quiz show University Challenge.
I must mention that University Challenge wasn’t on telly when I was at university. The original, on ITV, presented by Bamber Gascoigne, ran from 1962 to 1987. There was then a break before it went over to the BBC with Jeremy Paxman presenting it, and nowadays Amol Rajan. The Beeb started showing UC in September 1994… but I had graduated that summer!
The other book that is now an Ongoing Concern is The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, and it was a book I picked up from the table of books at work when I went in on Thursday. It is narrated by an unnamed male protagonist who was driving his car while under the influence of drugs. He hallucinated that a volley of arrows was being fired at him so he swerves and drives his car off the road and crashes into a ravine. He is severely burned as his car sets alight but is saved after the car falls into the water. So he is now in hospital for a pretty long stay…
In the above photo are the Notebook Therapy journals which are on the subs’ bench to be future choir journals. They are Bery Sweet, Lemon Love and Lunar Spells, and you have until mid-November to vote for your choice to be my 2026 choir journal! You can vote more than once, but no-one has voted yet and I would like some help, please, so do comment either here on the blog or in comments on Facebook when I share the blog onto FB.
I am also giving some thought to which journals I want to use for my main journals for 2026. I will need two, as I generally fit six months in each. I have a lot of A5 journals on the subs’ bench, quite a few Archer & Olive ones plus a few others of different makes. I also have an A5 journal from A&O which is a blackout journal, so it has black pages – still dot grid, the dots are light grey, and I have two 8×8 square journals from A&O, Snowflake Storybook and Mushrooms, that I could also use.
If I use one of the square ones and decide on the snowflake, then I would use that for January to June as there are two winter months at the start of the year, and would use an A5 journal for the second half of the year. However, if I chose the mushrooms journal as the square one, I would use a regular A5 for January to June, and then the mushrooms for July to December, as mushrooms seem autumnal to me and autumn is in the second half of the year.
I love this! “I Want To Break Free” by Queen is one of my favourite music videos ever, so the fact that someone has knitted or crocheted Freddie with a vacuum cleaner from that video is awesome! I’m sure I read in FB that this postbox is near a jail, so that makes it even more amusing!
What other news have I got? I’ve been off these last couple of Fridays. Originally, we thought the church fair was going to be on the following Saturday so I booked time off. The fair is now in August and we can’t make it, but I have used that time to have an eye test, which was due, and also to have my feet seen to by a podiatrist.
I need new specs, but this is not really surprising. I have managed with my current prescriptions since 2019 when I first started needing separate reading and distance specs. You may remember the Optical Emergency in the summer of 2019 when an arm came off my glasses? That’s when I had the eye test where I found out I would need more than one pair of specs. Mind you I had got to 46 years old before this happened, not bad going! I am now 52 and the prescription has changed enough that I need new ones and there was a buy one get one half price offer on frames at Boots Opticians, so I am getting new glasses and should be able to pick them up in early August.
More book news before I bring this blog to an end… Mum brought more books home from church this morning, couple of bags of books donated to my stall, which will be for the Christmas Fair as we can’t go to the one in August. So, I looked through the books to see if there were any I wanted to read myself and, to my delight, I found these!
Back before the wheels fell off the Autobiographies Challenge, one of the memoirs I had read was At My Mother’s Knee… and Other Low Joints, by Paul O’Grady. Well, these are the other chapters, so to speak! The Devil Rides Out is the second part and picks up where the first autobiography ends, and then there is Still Standing – The Savage Years, about how he created his alter ego of Lily Savage.
I have also picked out A Complete History of Tim (The Tiny Horse), by Harry Hill, because it sounded suitably daft, lol, and also Elevation, a novella by Stephen King. Seems like an autumn read, so might be one for October or November.
So, that is about it for now! Will be back again with the review of the month blog, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
Good Girl, Bad Blood – Holly Jackson
Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
Night Trains – Andrew Martin
Don’t Go There – Adam Fletcher
Undoctored – Adam Kay
Dog Man – Dav Pilkey
The Flat Stanley Collection – Jeff Brown
You Are Here – David Nicholls
Tuk-Tuk for Two – Adam Fletcher
The Lighthouse Stevensons – Bella Bathurst
Starter For Ten – David Nicholls
The Gargoyle – Adam Davidson
At My Mother’s Knee… – Paul O’Grady
The Devil Rides Out – Paul O’Grady
Still Standing: The Savage Years – Paul O’Grady
A Complete History of Tim (The Tiny Horse) – Harry Hill
Greetings from the Costa del Salford! Still absolutely boiling here, it’ll be another night of lying on top of my bed rather than getting in it, I think! Absolutely roasting. I shall try to keep cool while doing this blog, as I’ve got various things to bring you including some journaling, a bit of book news, and another rant about our old mate, Farcebook!
I have said this before, Farcebook, and I shall say it again… Ian Dixon is NOT a spammer! He is a regular contributor to the FB group “I’d Spend All Day in Waterstone’s if I Could Get Away With It” and he reads a load of books, mostly crime thrillers, which he reviews on the group.
However, every now and then, some of his review posts get stuck in the pending tray as they have been flagged up as spam. They are NOT bloody spam! If you are reviewing books in a book group, that is the point of that group! It’s a group about books, therefore it is perfectly OK for people to post book reviews! Spam is when people post irrelevant crap that has nothing to do with the group or page’s main purpose.
And if Farcebook are saying someone posts too much, well isn’t FB supposed to be a social network? Therefore posting stuff and sharing your views of certain books is being social, surely?! Thus, it is NOT spamming!
While we’re on books, You Are Here, by David Nicholls, is currently 45% read and I’m hoping to get it to 50% later today or at least tomorrow. Really enjoying it. Tuk Tuk For Two, by Adam Fletcher, is still at 50% and The Lighthouse Stevensons, by Bella Bathurst, is still at 40% so that’s the current Ongoing Concerns.
Now onto a current issue in the world of books… the news that a popular book of recent years, which has been made into a film, is not actually true. We are talking about The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn, which has now been nicknamed The Pinch of Salt Path by some bookworms, lol! Seems Raynor and her other half were not as skint as they made out – they had property, or at least some land, over in France, which they could have sold to ease their financial issues!
It reminds me a bit of the kerfuffle around A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey, which was a book club book years ago when I was going to the book club at Waterstone’s on Deansgate. The issue with that was that the publishers promoted it as a memoir, which was actually against Frey’s wishes – he wanted it promoted as fiction as although there were elements in it that were true and based on his experiences, it was a heavily-exaggerated story.
However, I think the writer is at fault with The Salt Path, as they were the one who chose to put it out as a memoir. If it’s not true, or large chunks of it are exaggerated, it belongs in the fiction section!
Onto choir now, and there was another good turn-out on Thursday, 14 of us singing. Five sopranos, three basses and six altos, and there was more cake! Yay! Biba, one of the sopranos, has been baking these last few weeks so we have had slices of cake to enjoy at break time and have also taken pieces home. She doesn’t want it going to waste. This week we had chocolate and cherry cake and chocolate and banana cake.
The above photos are of my setup for September in my choir journal. I have gone with “Let the River Run”, the Carly Simon song from the film “Working Girl” as I love the song, although it does get a bit high towards the end of our arrangement, which is tricky for us altos!
Voting is still open, by the way, if you want to help me choose my choir journal for next year. Please do! There is a choice between Berry Sweet, a pink journal with berries on the cover, Lemon Love, a yellow journal with lemons on it, or Lunar Spells, a black journal with a moon and a book on the cover. Voting is open up to about mid-November, but I am always happy to hear from my followers, so please feel free to comment and thus register a vote.
Not to be outdone by my choir journal, my general journal also has September’s setup all done and dusted, but this theme is “Pigeon Post” a postal theme with postboxes, letters and stamps. And pigeons, lol!
I wanted September’s stuff out of the way as August is pretty busy for me with a lot of time where I won’t be blogging or setting up journal spreads, so I thought I would get stuff done now. There will be a bit of time in the middle of August when I will blog as it will be the 15th anniversary of this book blog and so there will definitely be a “blogiversary party” on here on or around 14th August.
Had my hair done yesterday, went to Monton Hair and Beauty to see Gemma and have a trim. It needed it, my mop was getting too long, and in my eyes, and with this heatwave, that was not needed, lol! It’s nice and short again now and has thus brought the curls back. I will probably have another perm later this year, most likely in November or December in the run-up to Christmas.
Gemma and I were having a chat about holidays (vacations), which just proved a BBC News article true. It was an item about holiday prices and in it, the report said that talking about holidays was the most popular topic of conversation when having your hair done!
Going back to the journals for a moment, as I have got September’s themes done, it will be time, before we know it, to start thinking about journals for 2026. I have already started asking you, of course, to help with the selection of my next choir journal, but I will also need to think about which two journals I choose as general ones for January to June and July to December next year. I have a lot of journals on the “subs’ bench” so there’s a lot of choice!
“It’s 12 noon in London, 7am in Philadelphia, and around the world it’s time for Live Aid!” That was how it was announced on BBC1 on Saturday 13th July 1985 and I can’t believe we’re on for the 40th anniversary, but here we are on Sunday 13th July 2025, so we have to look back at this epic gig and monumental achievement from back when I was 12 and coming to the end of my first year at high school.
The logistics of getting those gigs on at Wembley and at the JFK Stadium in Philly were incredible, especially given they didn’t have the tech in 1985 that we enjoy now!
Only yuppies had mobile phones back in the 80s and those were analogue and could only make and receive phone calls, they were nothing like the smartphones we have now, which are basically like pocket-sized computers.
One thing they did have in 1985, though, was Concorde, and that enabled Phil Collins to perform at Wembley and then fly over to Philadelphia in about four hours and perform in that gig!
They were showing the gigs on BBC2 last night, it was great seeing it again, especially bits that I didn’t see as a kid. Back on 13th July 1985, there was an event on at our primary school with a BBQ and disco, so we didn’t see some of Live Aid at the time, although the event at school did put the telly on for the Wembley finale when they were all on stage singing “Do They Know it’s Christmas?”
The true highlight of Live Aid, though, was Queen, whose set has gone down in music history as legendary, and rightly so. The late great Freddie Mercury knew how to work a crowd!
Anyway, on that note, I think that’s about it for now. I mean, how do you follow Queen at Live Aid? You can’t! I will be back again soon with another blog, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne's Bookshelf 