Crossy Road Christmas: My nephew, mum, niece and myself on our iPads, lol!
Hello there, fellow Bookworms!
It has just dawned on me that this is not just the last blog of this year, but it is also the last blog of this decade as the 2020s start very soon! Tomorrow, I’ll be busy preparing for an upcoming event, and then I will be unavailable due to that, so I am blogging today for the final time this year and indeed for the 2010s. I started this book blog back in the summer of 2010, not long after I became an auntie, so you have been hearing from me on here for the best part of the decade, give or take a few months, and the occasional gap in blogging due to book slumps and stuff.
Thus I shall start by looking back on this year’s books that I’ve read, and then we can have a look at stuff from across the decade…
I have managed to read 20 books this year, which is not bad considering that I didn’t get a book finished until April, just before my birthday, as I didn’t feel like reading prior to that having lost my dad in January. I had already been in a book slump at the end of 2018, but bereavement added a few more months to that, before I felt ready to read again in April. The first one I finished was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, which I really enjoyed. As I have said on here, many times, I am not a fan of self-help books in general, but I find the odd one or two which are relatable.
I then got into the Object Lessons books, a series of non-fiction books about various objects or things, so I am going to list those here, including my current one, Hotel, by Joanna Walsh, which I have started, although that may well be finished off in 2020 as my first book of next year.
- Souvenir – Rolf Potts
- Luggage – Susan Harlan
- Personal Stereo – Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
- Bookshelf – Lydia Pyne
- Sock – Kim Adrian
- Eye Chart – William Germano
- Hotel – Joanna Walsh
So, six Object Lessons books read during the course of this year, and a seventh one started. I don’t need to list the OL books at the end of this blog now, as I’ve done that up here. Gets those mentioned.
Some poetry was read in 2019, three anthologies made my list. You Took the Last Bus Home, by Brian Bilston, The Luckiest Guy Alive, by John Cooper Clarke, and One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, by Neil Tennant, as I am classing song lyrics as poetry for the benefit of this blog. Neil came to the Royal Northern College of Music in October as part of the Manchester Literary Festival, so me and my friend Sarah, fellow Pethead, went to see him. Brian Bilston is coming to Manchester in February, so I will have to sort that out and look at tickets for that. I think that is near the universities in town. Then I can take my books with me and have them signed. He’s the guy who often posts his poetry on social media -I’ve seen him on Facebook and Instagram regularly.
You Do You, by Sarah Knight, was next on the finished list after Brian Bilston and John Cooper Clarke. By the way, I particularly recommend the poem “Pies” by John Cooper Clarke. I think there’s even a YouTube clip available of him reading that poem out on TV quiz show, Countdown! Then came a couple of books on the disability/medical condition front. First up, The Girl With the Curly Hair, by Alis Rowe, which I read on my Kindle, and which deals with her autism. I have been following her posts on Facebook for some time now. Then came I’m Only In It For the Parking, the autobiography of Lee Ridley, the Lost Voice Guy who won Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago.
Ole, by Ian Macleay, was next, which I finished when I was on my jollies in Mauritius. A biography of our current manager, the Legend who put the ball in the Germans’ net in the Nou Camp on 26th May 1999. He scored against them again in May this year when we had the 20th anniversary match at Old Trafford and our old boys stuffed Bayern Munich’s old boys 5-0!
Four Object Lessons books followed, from Luggage through to Sock, then came The Prison Doctor, by Dr Amanda Brown, which I think I got from Asda if I’m not mistaken. That was a very interesting read. Then came the first of only two works of fiction I have read this year, Trinkets, by Kirsten Smith, a YA novel about a trio of teenage shoplifters who end up as unlikely friends because the cops send them on a course to try to stop them being a bunch of tea leaves!
Adam Kay‘s book, ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, was next. Very funny, my only complaint being that it was too short! Then I finished Pier Review, which was one of the books I bought in September when Mum and I went to the Lake District and then came home via Brockholes and Blackpool. I bought Pier Review, by Jon Bounds and Danny Smith, at Waterstone’s in Blackpool, as it seemed appropriate due to the town having three piers. Really enjoyed that book. I think my late Dad might even have enjoyed that one! Wish he was still here so I could tell him about it and lend him my copy.
I have added the Neil Tennant book around this point on my finished books list, as it was the autumn when I went to see him at the RNCM. It’s a book of song lyrics, so I’m classing it as poetry, and you can just dip into poetry books. After that comes Eye Chart, by William Germano, which I started around the time I needed new specs! As you may recall, I had an optical emergency at the end of July and had to take a day off work to go to the optician’s and have an eye test. I ended up with two pairs of specs, one for distance, one for reading. I’ve got my reading specs on at the moment as I type this blog.
So, we now come to my most recent reads, which are Me, by Sir Elton John, which I totally recommend, and A Man Walks Into a Kitchen, by Robert Graham, which is my work book club’s current reading matter. That one is really short, probably only really a novella or short story, so I was able to finish it pretty quickly and get a 20th book finished this year.
Right, so let’s now look back on the whole time I’ve been blogging! I started in August 2010, just after I’d become an auntie to Charlotte, Junior Bookworm. I currently have 93 followers, so thank you so much for reading my waffle!
I started off in 2010 looking at e-readers, of which I have since owned a few, including my current Kindle Paperwhite, and such themes as books set in different countries, and the fact that you always seem to find the same books in lots of charity shops. There are certain titles which always seem to be on the shelves in those places! Never did get round to the reading around the world thing that I mentioned back then, though, but I may have covered a fair few countries in the books I have read and mentioned on here since that summer.
2011 saw me, evetually, receiving my original Kindle, which I won as a result of finding a book at Barbakan Deli in Chorlton on my lunch hour one day. The book was How To Leave Twitter, by Grace Dent. I’ve seen her on Masterchef a few times, actually, as she’s a food critic and restaurant reviewer. I also blogged about growing up as a bookworm and the books I read as a kid, some of them being those I had to study at school and college, and then at uni in my early adult life. There’s also a blog about footballers’ autobiographies as I had met Paul Scholes at a book signing in the Trafford Centre and got my copy of My Story signed.
2012 marked 200 years since Charles Dickens was born, but I didn’t actually get around to reading any of his works that year. I have read Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol, but not in that particular year. Incidentally, I bought my niece a copy of A Christmas Carol – it was one of the books I bought her for Christmas just gone! She has seen an adaptation of it and talked about it at school, so I felt she was ready for a copy now.
It was also in 2012 that I took part in World Book Night, and spent the evening of my 39th birthday, 23rd April, giving out copies of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, in the Trafford Centre. I ended up giving them to various members of staff in shops. It was a Monday night that year, and things were pretty quiet, so I think people were quite pleased that they were getting a free book. I also had one of my rants about book snobbery in this year, and also about why some books have different titles in different countries, which just confuses people! I mentioned The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave, which is known as Little Bee in the USA and New Zealand. I am putting both editions on my List Challenges list. Feel free to tick off which one you’ve read. Or both, as it’s the same damn story anyway!
There are no blogs in 2013 or 2014. I was having something of a book slump at times, and at others, I was just so busy doing other stuff that I forgot to blog! I hit my Big 40 in the April of 2013, and Manchester United won their 20th league title. In fact, the title was declared the night before my birthday thanks to Robin van Persie’s hat-trick at home to Aston Villa, so the title celebrations and my birthday kinda merged into one! In the October of that year, Mum and I went to Mexico – one of the best holidays I’ve ever had! That’s where I discovered Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly, which I have mentioned on a great number of occasions since, lol! I had read I Am the Secret Footballer, by The Secret Footballer, while I was in Mexico, but finished that while I was over there. I hadn’t finished Attention All Shipping, so I brought it home with me.
I think it was in 2013 that Hannah Kent came to one of our book club meetings – pretty sure it was around that time. Burial Rites had just been published and she was promoting it, so she came to our meeting and she was lovely. Told us all about the background behind it. She’s Australian, but had gone on this one year exchange programme to Iceland. While she was in Iceland, she found out about the last woman to be executed in that country, and that’s what formed the basis of her historical fiction novel. We read it for our book club and loved it.
So, the next time I blogged, we were in 2015, and I was not enamoured with Elizabeth Smart, as I had had to read By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for my book club, and I thought it was just a pity party in writing! I just wanted to slap her and tell her to stop sulking like an overgrown teenager! That book may have been short, but it really wasn’t short enough! I didn’t understand at all why it got such rave reviews. All you need to do is listen to “Love’s Unkind” by Donna Summer, and it would tell a pretty similar story in a 3 to 4 minute pop song, and spare you having to read Ms Smart’s book!
On a better note, though, I did read some good books at that time, including Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, and Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, all of which I definitely would recommend to my followers! There was another book slump, but then I enjoyed Why the Dutch Are Different, by Ben Coates, and The Art of Racing In the Rain, by Garth Stein at the end of 2015, and I was back in reading mode.
2016 saw a glossary on the blogs, and the introduction of the concept of Handbag Books! I also came up with Chunky Monkeys, I think, for some of my large books, particularly anything with 500 or more pages. A lot of historical fiction novels are chunky monkeys, although not all of them. Tracy Chevalier writes historical fiction and her books are not bulky.
I had a massive rant about self-help books at one point in 2016, and about how ableist they are. Too many of them seem to be written by some top sports coach or some sergeant in the armed forces or whatever, and they are used to dealing with super-fit people on a day to day basis, so I don’t think it occurs to them that there are people out there whose bodies are not as capable as those of the people the writers deal with! There are plenty of bookworms out there with various medical conditions and/or disabilities and I don’t think self-help books really take any of that into account.
Plus, of course, there was the notorious Duplicate Books List! Yep, over the course of several blogs, particularly around 2016 and 2017, I blogged on a number of occasions about the fact that there were several books of which I owned two copies! I think it got to the stage where there were 19 books on that list! I ended up giving one set of them away to various charity shops in the area.
There were some photos of my cross-stitched bookmarks, including one which was a tribute to David Bowie who had died in the January of that year, and a Blind Date With A Book was unwrapped on the blog for Valentine’s Day. It was also in 2016 that an Oxfam bookshop hit the news – their bookstore in Swansea, South Wales, had been donated so many copies of the Fifty Shades trilogy that they’d been able to build a fort out of them in their back room! They were saying that they were happy to receive donations of any other books, but please, pretty please with a cherry on top, no more Fifty Shades books!
I had a go on an accordion at Forsyth’s in March 2016 as part of their Learn To Play Day. Seriously? That was 2016? Wow! Longer ago than I thought. I actually took part in Learn To Play Day again this year, although this time I had a lesson on the cello. I have played quite a lot of musical instruments over the years, as regular followers will know, lol! I don’t just read books, I also read music! That’s for another blog another day, though. When the topic gets back round to music again, which it often does with me, I will no doubt blog about all the instruments I’ve ever had a go of, whether they’re ones I’ve had a one-off go at, or those that I have played frequently and attained a decent level of proficiency on.
I took some books and the Kindle down to Wembley in May 2016 to see United beat Crystal Palace 2-1 in extra-time in the FA Cup Final. On my Kindle, I had downloaded A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, as I was not willing to lug my paperback edition to Wembley and back!
Talking of Manchester United…
Burnley 0 Manchester United 1. Anthony Martial 44 minutes. Woohoo! Get in!
Tony Martial came from France
English press said he had no chance
Fifty million down the drain…
Tony Martial scores again!!!
Sorry, not sorry! Just getting a bit excited as my lads have scored just before half time at Turf Moor in tonight’s evening fixture. I’m a Stretford Ender as well as a bookworm! Half-time now and it’s 1-0 to Manchester United. So far so good.
Anyway, I was on about A Little Life, wasn’t I? Oh, blimey! That was a book and a half, wasn’t it?! 720 pages! I really enjoyed it, but it was such a big pull emotionally that I ended up with a massive Book Hangover afterwards and really couldn’t bring myself to read any more works of fiction for the rest of 2016! Good job I also like non-fiction books! Spent the remainder of that year reading factual stuff, including Faster Than Lightning, by Usain Bolt, which my friend Sarah had lent me, and The Rules of the Game, by Pierluigi Collina, the former referee, the guy who reffed the 1999 European Cup Final in the Nou Camp when United did the Treble.
Before we move on to 2017, must mention that I gained a nephew in 2016 when Reuben was born that October, Junior Bookworm’s baby brother! Charlotte has been reading to her brother from the start, thus ensuring he also likes a good book! If the book is about dinosaurs or diggers, better still! He LOVES dinosaurs. He has so many of them that you could easily recreate a model version of Jurassic Park at my sister’s house! Charlotte is very much into Harry Potter, I am proud to announce! She is also into her music, she sings, and also learns violin and piano. She has just had a violin exam before Christmas, although I think we will get to hear how she’s done in her Grade 1 some time in the new year.
OK, on to 2017 in our book blog review… A year in which some of my books got rather over-excited at a United goal and fell over, lol, and I went down to Wembley again, this time for the League Cup Final, which we won 3-2 against Southampton. We also won the Europa League that season, although I didn’t go to that final in Stockholm. As for the toppling books, it was early February, United were away to Leicester City and when we got our first goal, two piles of books fell over! We ended up winning 3-0 as I recall.
There was also some literary time travel in 2017 after I got an idea from Facebook. I went back in time to 1985 with 12 books for my 12 year old self. This is also the year I finish off Pet Shop Boys, Literally, by Chris Heath, ahead of seeing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe in concert twice that year! I saw them in the February at the Manchester Arena, and then in the June at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, Chris Lowe’s home town. I also saw Billy Ocean in concert that year, that was in the April at the Lowry Theatre on Salford Quays.
And, of course, 2017 saw me back in work! Yay! In September 2017, I started my current job as an administration officer for my local council. At first it was 6 months, but my manager kept extending it, and then it became permanent. So I’ve been there two and a bit years now. Reading time is often lunchtime or after work these days. And on my jollies, obviously. Being back in work, I have the pleasure of annual leave once again.
Couple of notable author events in 2017 at Waterstone’s on Deansgate. Stuart Maconie was there to talk about Long Road From Jarrow, so I met him and he also signed my copy of The Pie At Night as well as the aforementioned book. I still need to read Long Road From Jarrow, actually. Anyway, the other event was Adam Kay promoting This Is Going To Hurt, so I was able to meet him and get my copy signed. That was my favourite book of 2017! Very moving in parts, hilarious in others!
OK, what did 2018 bring on the book front? Another autobiography lent to me by my friend Sarah, this time Not Dead Yet, by Phil Collins, which was a really good read. I also read some science fiction classics, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds, both by H. G. Wells. Science fiction was probably created with that novel – certainly the idea of alien invasion as a theme. I also enjoyed Russian Winters, by Andrei Kanchelskis, our former winger. It covered his whole career in football and pretty much brought me up to date on what happened after he left United in 1995. He was one of my favourite players back in the day.
And on the subject of football…
Burnley 0 Manchester United 2. Marcus Rashford scored 5 minutes into stoppage time and that is now a full-time score, so we end 2019 with a nice away win! Yay!
Right, OK, back to books again, lol! This is what it’s like when I am blogging and there’s footy on… blogs get interrupted by goals! At least none of my books fell over this time, ha ha, unlike that time in 2017 when we won away to Leicester, lol!
We were on for 2018, which was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Space Invaders, and I cross stitched some bookmarks with space invaders on them to mark the occasion. I also finished off Twisting My Melon, Shaun Ryder‘s autobiography, which was on my Kindle. I had started it some years ago, but got that finished. At one point it was my match-day read, and I would read it in the car coming home from Old Trafford when we would be stuck in the inevitable traffic trying to make our way out of the ground and through Trafford Park after the game…
I also got a new Kindle in 2018, a Paperwhite, and got it from a colleague at work through Yammer, which is like an internal social media thing for council staff with noticeboards so there are buying and selling notices on there. I got that in time for my jollies that summer, as we took advantage of me being back in work by going off to the Cape Verde Islands for a week at the Riu Karamboa on the island of Boa Vista. While I was over there, I got Mum to take a photo of me reading Dune on a sand dune, although I still actually need to read the Frank Herbert novel.
2018 was the summer when the giant bees were in town, so I was bee spotting on a number of occasions, and there was also a heatwave, and a fire on Saddleworth Moor. Even though we don’t live near there, the smoke carried on the wind, and you could smell it in the air even where we lived – I could smell it in Swinton while waiting for a bus home after work…
Oh, and England amazed me at the World Cup. Prior to the tournament, my expectations of my national football team were pretty low to say the least! I would tell anyone that we would be rubbish and that the Three Lions would be home from Russia before the proverbial postcards! I was not expecting them to get past the group stage, as they had been utter shite in previous tournaments! (Shite is a technical term, by the way!) However, inspired by Gareth Southgate and his magic waistcoats from M&S, lol, England actually made it to the semi-finals! Football wasn’t coming home, though, and we lost the semi and the playoff. Still, we came 4th which equals our performance at Italia 90 under the late great Sir Bobby Robson as the two best World Cup performances in my lifetime for the England team! Sadly, I’m not old enough to have seen them win the World Cup – 1966 was before I was born!
Besides cross-stitch, there was some loom knitting and some Pixelhobby on the crafting front, so I was getting creative, particularly towards the end of 2018. Sadly, the former book club at Waterstone’s petered out. However, a book club did form at work, and they have the benefit of being loaned sets of books by the library service! I haven’t always been able to make it, but it’s up and running and quite well attended.
So, that’s pretty much up to date, really, as we then go into 2019, but I’ve been through this year’s events and books already. The photo at the top was taken by my sister just before Christmas as my nephew, mum, niece and I all sit on our settee, playing Crossy Road on our iPads! Charlotte has introduced us to this game! One of my fave characters in it is the Thesaurus – a dinosaur with a book, who goes along letting words out! When he eventually gets run over, the words are usually those such as stomped, or flat, lol!
Well, I think that is about all for now, and therefore for the year and the decade! I will get the lists published shortly on List Challenges, and wish all my followers all the best, and plenty of good books, for the coming year!
Have a Happy and Book-filled New Year!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry (other than the Object Lessons ones)
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
- You Took the Last Bus Home – Brian Bilston
- The Luckiest Guy Alive – John Cooper Clarke
- One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem – Neil Tennant
- You Do You – Sarah Knight
- The Girl With the Curly Hair – Alis Rowe
- I’m Only In It For the Parking – Lee Ridley
- Ole – Ian Macleay
- The Prison Doctor – Dr Amanda Brown
- Trinkets – Kirsten Smith
- ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas – Adam Kay
- Pier Review – Jon Bounds and Danny Smith
- Me – Sir Elton John
- A Man Walks Into a Kitchen – Robert Graham
- How To Leave Twitter – Grace Dent
- My Story – Paul Scholes
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
- The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
- Little Bee – Chris Cleave (US and NZ editions)
- Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
- I Am the Secret Footballer – The Secret Footballer
- Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
- By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – Elizabeth Smart
- Where’d You Go, Bernadette? – Maria Semple
- The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry – Gabrielle Zevin
- Girl With a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
- Why the Dutch Are Different – Ben Coates
- The Art of Racing In the Rain – Garth Stein
- A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
- Faster Than Lightning – Usain Bolt
- The Rules of the Game – Pierluigi Collina
- Pet Shop Boys, Literally – Chris Heath
- Long Road From Jarrow – Stuart Maconie
- The Pie At Night – Stuart Maconie
- This Is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
- Not Dead Yet – Phil Collins
- The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
- The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
- Russian Winters – Andrei Kanchelskis
- Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder
- Dune – Frank Herbert
Joanne's Bookshelf 