February Review: Tigers, Discount Tents and the Wheelie Bin Grand Prix!

Hello again, fellow Bookworms!

Yes, another month gone by and thus time for another review blog for books read, bookmarks made, and all sorts of other mad stuff that has gone on during February. There’s also some books bought, and some news of things that Mum found today while continuing her sort-out of The Stuff In the Garage! One of those things may well be familiar to any of you who have been following this blog since at least around 2017 or 2018…

At the end of January, 5 books had been read and one bookmark made, and it is actually the same story for this month, which I will come on to shortly. It does mean I have now read 10 books already this year, and finished two bookmarks. I have some “ongoing concerns” of the bookmark variety which I will feature later, but, anyway, let’s get on with the show and look at what happened and what got read in February…

February started with Chinese New Year as we let in the Year of the Tiger, and there will be a tiger amongst my reading matter so look out for that!

However, the first finish for February was Wintering, by Katherine May, which had been nearing completion by the end of January. I would definitely recommend it.

Next up were a couple of short books, so these didn’t go on the Ongoing Concerns list at all. First of them was The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka, and then, because it is the Year of the Tiger, I read The Tiger Who Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr. Children’s books, if they’re only short, are read in one sitting, there is no need to class them as an OC.

I was also engaging in the usual silliness which is customary on this blog, and had some fun with a bit of wordplay, hence the poem on the blog and the Winter of our Discount Tents bookmark, which you can see above!

Two more finished books to mention, and both of those are music autobiographies. True, by Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet, was the first of those books, and I finished Face It, by Debbie Harry, at the weekend, so we have reached five books for the month again, and hit our first Goodreads Challenge target for this year. 10 books read, so it’s time to increase the target, and it has now been upped to 15 books.

We have also had the Winter Olympics in Beijing during this month, and Team GB may have had to wait til almost the very end of the Games to get on the podium, but we did end up with two medals, both for curling. Our women won gold, our men won silver, so it is 8 Winter Games on the trot winning at least one medal, and 4 Winter Games on the trot winning a gold.

The weather at present is that well-known technical term, in other words shite, lol! Having said that, at least it’s not another storm. We have had enough of those! Three on the trot, Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, and they were all about as welcome as a fart in a wetsuit, as Sir Billy Connolly might put it!

The storms caused various items to change gardens, trampolines to roll down the streets, and also led to wheelie bins doing their best impressions of Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen! Cue the bass riff of “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac – the end of that song but the start of the F1 Grand Prix theme!

Anyway, I said I was going to look at the bookmarks in progress as we have a few at various stages of being stitched…

Right, OK… on the left is one I only started on Thursday evening, and it’s a Ukrainian pattern – there will be more blue and yellow added shortly to that. Next to it is a bookmark that isn’t too far from being finished. Think it needs something either side of the crown at the top, and maybe even another row at the bottom, and then a border and tassel, but it is not too far from being stitched. The other three are a bit of a way off yet.

The brown one is going to be shades of brown, three or four shades, the green one with the year will eventually be a garden sampler bookmark, and the one at the end is the Durene Jones flowers and bees one, but is still just a partially-stitched vase at the moment, lol!

I did say, at the top of the blog, that Mum has been in the garage, and is in the process of having a significant sort-out, so let’s get on to that. Eventually, she is aiming to make the Book Chest more accessible, and then yours truly will go in there and have a Book Reshuffle, lol!

What I aim to do is have a clear out, with books being bagged up for the church summer fair, and then some books from inside the house, particularly those on the landing, can go in the Book Chest to replace those going to the church and to charity shops.

I did say that one of the things Mum found might be familiar to those of you who have been following my blog since around 2017 or 2018, and this is the item… the Ongoing Concerns board! I’ve given it a good scrub to get it as clean as I could, and am going to start using it again for the OCs. I got it from The Range on West One near Eccles, although the magnets are my own. There are some emoji magnets as well, but they are around the sides so you can’t see those at the moment.

She also found some souvenirs from 50 years ago… not sure if I have mentioned it on here before, although I probably have given my love of the Olympic Games, but Mum and Dad went to the Olympics the year before I was born! In fact, Mum was expecting me at the time. Dad was working in Switzerland (the first of the two occasions he worked over there) so they went next door into Germany – a friend of Dad’s got them tickets and put them up in Munich and they went to the Olympic Stadium to see heats of the athletics.

Programme from the athletics heats of the Munich Olympics, 2nd September 1972. Thankfully, they were at the Games before the terrorist atrocities on 5th September.

Programme and Mum & Dad’s tickets for the athletics. 2nd September 1972. I would still love to go to the Olympics. I have been in and near some stadia, though. Been outside the stadium in Montreal from the 1976 Summer Games, and past the side of the stadium in Rome from the 1960 Summer Games, and I have been inside four others, a couple of them while watching United in pre-season friendlies and the others just as a tourist.

I’ve seen the Reds play at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was the venue for both the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games, and then a couple of years after seeing a match in that venue, I saw the Reds in the original Olympic Stadium in Tokyo which hosted the 1964 Summer Games – I think it was altered significantly for the more recent Games which eventually took place last summer, a year late.

With the other two stadia, there wasn’t an event on, I was just being a tourist, lol! Actually, when I went to the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, which had hosted the 1992 Summer Games, I was actually over in Spain with the City of Salford Youth Concert Band in 1997, staying in Tossa de Mar, but we had a day trip to Barcelona and we were having our lunch in the Montjuic Olympic Park. You could actually just wander into the stadium at that time, so some of us did!

My most recent brush with Olympic history, though, was ten years ago in February 2012, when Mum and I had a short break in Berlin and went to see the Olympic Stadium there, pictured above, which had hosted the 1936 Summer Games, where Jesse Owens famously won 4 golds in the athletics, which pissed Hitler off big time, ha ha! Served Adolf right for being a fascist knobhead!

There are still plenty of other stadia to be visited, and although I didn’t go in the stadium, I have been in the gymnastics and trampolining venue from the Sydney Olympics of 2000 as the 1998 World Trampoline Championships were held there as a warm-up event for the venue and my sister was competing for Great Britain and it was thus our perfect excuse to go to Australia!

I still have plenty more Olympic venues to visit, and wouldn’t mind seeing a winter venue, particularly Sarajevo as that’s the Games that actually got me into the Olympics thanks to Torvill & Dean winning gold there in 1984.

Time to get back to some recent purchases and also the Ongoing Concerns shortly, though. This is supposed to be the February Review, after all, but here I am waffling on about the Olympics, lol!

The main Ongoing Concern is now Life’s What You Make It, by Phillip Schofield, which I am really enjoying. Definitely a good read for those of us who grew up in the 80s! I have read 61% of it thus far, and there is one part when he said that when it came to being interviewed, his favourite interviewers were from Smash Hits, which he described as “always a bit random and bonkers” which is how I like to see this blog, really, lol!

I was a Smash Hits reader in the late 80s, early 90s, during my teens, and the fact that it was random and bonkers was precisely what made it so special and why it appealed to me so much! There was also the fact that Neil Tennant had been the assistant editor before he became the singing half of the Pet Shop Boys, of course, so they were always very pro-PSB and thus got my approval for that reason.

So, if you have ever wondered why this book blog is so random, and why I like to bring a sense of eccentricity to the whole proceedings, then the fact that I was a teenage Smash Hits reader in the late 80s should tell you all you need to know, ha ha! They had their quirky little sayings, such as “a snip”, “down the dumper” and “pop tome” and I have mine, such as “shite is a technical term” and concepts such as Handbag Books, the Literary Slap List and the legendary Ongoing Concerns!

Anyway, talking of the Ongoing Concerns, as well as the Phillip Schofield book, the other one I have been focusing on has been I Named My Dog Pushkin, by Margarita Gokun Silver. I guess that, as she got the hell out of the USSR (back in the days when it was still the Soviet Union) to become American, and she doesn’t exactly have a particularly positive opinion of Vlad P, it should be ethically OK to continue. Needless to say it would be a different matter for any writer who was a member of Vlad’s fan club, so to speak…

The other OCs are still only in the 10% to 24% read range and not advanced enough for me to think, right now, that they’ll be finished soon. Phillip Schofield and Margarita Gokun Silver are a different matter. Phil’s book is 53% read, Margarita’s is 39% read, so there’s a decent chance of getting those read in March. We shall see what else crops up, but there are also some new purchases from the Trafford Centre on Thursday which I want to list before I bring this blog to its conclusion.

Devotion is the third novel by Hannah Kent, an author I have actually met, and whose first two books I really enjoyed, so that purchase was pretty inevitable. Two other novels purchased are The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah, and The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, by Marianne Cronin. That one, in particular, looked interesting.

There are also two non-fiction books, those being Complications, by Atul Gawande, and The Secret Lives of Planets, by Paul Murdin. There’s nearly always non-fiction, as I read more factual books than fiction these days.

Well, for a short month, that was quite a long monthly review, wasn’t it?! I think we have covered the main things, though, so we shall see what March has to offer… it will start with Pancake Day tomorrow, that one day of the year when you can call someone a “complete tosser” and mean it as a compliment, lol! Until then, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Wintering – Katherine May
• The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales – Jon Scieszka
• The Tiger Who Came to Tea – Judith Kerr
• True – Martin Kemp
• Face It – Debbie Harry
• Life’s What You Make It – Phillip Schofield
• I Named My Dog Pushkin – Margarita Gokun Silver
• Devotion – Hannah Kent
• The Four Winds – Kristin Hannah
• The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot – Marianne Cronin
• Complications – Atul Gawande
• The Secret Lives of Planets – Paul Murdin

We DO Talk About Bruno!

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

Yes, I am back on what is for us in the UK a palindromic date! As we put the date before the month, it’s 22/02/2022 and is the same backwards as it is forwards! It is also the same upside-down! That makes it an ambigram as well, apparently. You learn something new every day!

One week left of February, as I will have to do the review of the month either this coming weekend or on Monday 28th, but I’ve got news on three of the Ongoing Concerns, one of which I am pictured reading above, and I will be giving you progress reports on those.

The Winter Olympics came to an end on Sunday, and, thankfully, Great Britain DID manage to get on the podium twice before the closing ceremony, and it was curling which brought about the medals, with our men winning silver and our women winning gold!

OK, we were hoping for more than two medals, but, as I see it, there are still some national achievements here. As we won at least one medal, it means that we have now been on the podium at least once in the last EIGHT Winter Olympics! We have not come home empty-handed since Albertville 1992 as we’ve won at least one medal from Lillehammer 1994 onwards.

Also, as our ladies, pictured above, are Olympic curling champions, we have won gold in the last FOUR Winter Olympics, a new record for consecutive Winter Games with Team GB setting foot on the top step of the podium. Three women’s skeleton titles at Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018, and now women’s curling in 2022.

Our previous best record of gold in consecutive Winter Olympics was three Games on the trot in 1976, 1980 and 1984 when we had champions in figure skating – John Curry, Robin Cousins and then Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean. Actually, Christopher Dean is the most recent bloke to win Winter Olympic gold for Team GB, as all our champions since Sarajevo have been female! Two women’s curling teams in 2002 and this year, plus our skeleton staff!

I will get to the books shortly, lol, but while we are still catching up with sports results from the weekend, my lads enjoyed a 4-2 away win against Leeds United in tbeir own backyard. Unlike the characters in the film Encanto, we DO talk about Bruno, lol! Well, as long as that Bruno is a certain Portuguese attacking central midfielder, anyway!

Harry Maguire, aka Slabhead, gave us the lead, but Bruno scored deep into Fergie Time at the end of the first half. Leeds got back on level terms early in the second half, which I was not chuffed about, but, fortunately, we regained our lead thanks to Fred on 70 minutes and extended it with a couple of minutes to go thanks to Anthony Elanga, he of the brilliant terrace chant to the tune of “Rhythm is a Dancer” by Snap!

So, that’s the sports news done. I’ve got some food and drink news, well food anyway, as it involves cheese, lol, but it’s about damn time I got on with the progress reports for three of my Ongoing Concerns, and we are in a promising position now as March is in sight…

The open book in the photo above is Face It, by Debbie Harry, and that book is now 77% read! Yay! We are in an excellent position to get this one finished off before February comes to an end and it would be my 5th finish for the month if this happens. It will also be my 10th finish for the year and the first serious milestone reached for 2022. I will have to increase my Goodreads Challenge target once I have got to that point. The bunny bookmark in my copy of Face It was from my niece, Charlotte, a few years ago, in case you were wondering!

At the top of the blog, I started with a selfie of me reading Life’s What You Make It, by Phillip Schofield and that one is just over the halfway line now at 53% read, so it’s in a very good position for making progress and getting it finished fairly soon. Could well be an early March finish especially as I am enjoying it very much.

Hardly surprising, though, as it is by a guy who presented children’s television back when I was still at school in the late 80s and was also on Radio 1 at one point, so he is mentioning a lot of other presenters and disc jockeys I remember from when I was growing up, including the late great Alan “Fluff” Freeman doing Pick of the Pops on a Sunday lunchtime on the radio! Those were the days! I can still hear that music now from Fluff’s radio show!

Someone on Classic FM in the early hours of this morning said it was Margarita Day today. I think they meant the cocktail, of which I have enjoyed several over the years since turning 18, lol, but as I am reading I Named My Dog Pushkin, by Margarita Gokun Silver, I can always claim that it is in her honour and that one is currently 39% read, so I’m looking at getting that one to at least the halfway point before February is done. With Phillip Schofield, I’m aiming to get his book to the 67% or 75% mark so that there’s not much more to go when we turn over our calendars and enter the mad month of March!

I’m very likely to be off to the Trafford Centre again this week, probably Thursday, providing the weather isn’t too wild, lol! Seriously, we do NOT need all these stupid storms! They need to bugger off and leave us all alone! Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, your presence was NOT welcome and you can do one! Don’t come round here with your ridiculous wind like you’ve been devouring an industrial vat of curried beans, and blowing everything the hell over! It’s NOT big and it’s NOT clever!

We don’t need any trampolines or wheelie bins rolling down our streets, thank you very much! One witty person, the other day, said their wheelie bin had been pinged by a speed camera on its way to Sheffield and was being brought back to Derby on a train, ha ha!

These two were having a race in the recent storms, lol!

If they’re full and quite heavy, you have more chance of them staying where they are, but if the binmen have just been and emptied them, it’s anyone’s guess whether they will even stay upright, or where they might wander off to…

Before I wrap this up for now, I did say I had some more news on the cheese front, and have recently tried some St Jude, which I bought on Saturday – all my purchases from Wandering Palate can be seen above. The St Jude is a soft, very spreadable, creamy cheese – even kept in the fridge it is creamy to the point of a tad runny, so it’s just as well it comes in that round container. Ideal for spreading on digestive biscuits, though, which is also true of the Bix and the Baron Bigod.

I know I’ve not mentioned that many books today, but I just wanted to focus on three of the Ongoing Concerns that I am most into at the moment, and which stand the best chance of being read soon and coming off the OC list. I’m certainly hoping the Debbie Harry book will come off the list before Monday, and the other two will be read to an advanced stage so that they can be finished off in early March. I might even look at the bookmark situation, see if I can finish another one off. I certainly have one which is not too far off being finished.

If I don’t blog before then, I certainly will on Monday, as it will be time for the monthly review, and I’ll probably have some purchases of the literary variety from Thursday to mention, lol, so I’ll be back with more book waffle soon enough! Until then, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Face It – Debbie Harry
• Life’s What You Make It – Phillip Schofield
• I Named My Dog Pushkin – Margarita Gokun Silver

In a Relationship With Books.

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

Roses are red, violets are blue, I really love books and I know you do too! Welcome to the 14th February book blog, an opportunity for us to celebrate our long-term committed relationships with reading matter, lol! My love of the written word began long ago, probably when I was a toddler. Certainly, by the time I was three and had become a big sister, I already loved reading and I was fluent by the time I was four and a half and starting primary school, so books and I go back a long way!

Anyway, got some significant news for you in terms of both books and bookmarks as we have finishes! One of each. One book off the Ongoing Concerns list and a bookmark made, although bit of a surprise one for you as it wasn’t one I was already working on, but one I just came up with on the spur of the moment.

So, it was in keeping with our bit of wordplay from recent blogs that I decided I’d make myself a “Winter of our Discount Tents” bookmark! That is my second finished bookmark of the year, after the “ship” sampler-style bookmark which is now in one of my cross-stitch books.

I also finshed a book off, too, over the weekend, so True, by Martin Kemp, is my 9th book of the year on the Goodreads Challenge, my 4th during the course of February. We are halfway through the month now and just need one more book before I have to increase the challenge target for the first time this year.

Face It, by Debbie Harry, is now 50% read, as I also made progress with that one and got it to the halfway stage, so there is a decent shout that we can get that one read by the end of the month.

With Martin Kemp’s solo autobiography now read, we move on to It’s a Love Story, appropriate for Valentine’s Day, lol, and that one is by Shirlie & Martin Kemp. This was a Christmas pressie in 2020 from my friend Sarah in Preston, and is now an Ongoing Concern as it is 13% read.

An oldie but a goldie – couldn’t resist posting that!

I have also started Elementary, by James M. Russell, which is about the Periodic Table of the Elements. That one is 10% read, so is officially an Ongoing Concern. Not a particularly long book, either, at only 178 pages. Also, it mentions John Dalton – he has a street named after him in town. When Bridge Street crosses Deansgate, it becomes John Dalton Street.

Time for a bit of an evaluation, one and a half months into 2022… So far, we have nine finished books and two finished bookmarks. We have four partially-stitched bookmarks which are still on the go.

Including “paused books” my Ongoing Concerns include two at the halfway stage – Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, by Maurice Leblanc, and Face It, by Debbie Harry. Then comes I Named My Dog Pushkin, by Margarita Gokun Silver, which is 26% read. After that, we seem to have a fair few in the 10 to 24% read stage… As I’m listing these next ones now, they won’t be listed at the end of the blog.

• Britain By the Book – Oliver Tearle, 16%
• Thinking On My Feet – Kate Humble, 13%
• Seashaken Houses – Tom Nancollas, 13%
• It’s a Love Story – Shirlie & Martin Kemp, 13%
• Life’s What You Make It – Phillip Schofield, 10%
• Elementary – James M. Russell

Yeah, quite a lot at the first stages of being an Ongoing Concern, there! I definitely feel I will continue with the Debbie Harry book, see if I can get that finished fairly soon. The others could do with progressing, particularly as I’ve started more. Mind you, I have just finished a book, so there is that. I think it’s a case of progressing Debbie’s book and also focusing on the “lower” end of the OCs to get at least a couple of those moved on quickly.

I do like them to be at various stages, but it feels like two of them have got a bit “stuck” even though they’re a decent way in, and I’ve got a load where they’re only just Ongoing Concerns. If we can get Debbie Harry read for the end of February, as that one is halfway through now, we can also get some of the others moved on a bit at a time and be in a better position for March.

Been distracted by the Winter Olympics and disappointed that we still haven’t got a medal yet, especially as we’d done really well in recent times. Hope we can get on the podium before the Games are over. I know we’re not really a winter sports nation, but I had felt we’d made improvements so it’s a bit frustrating that we are still devoid of medals thus far.

Talking of the Winter Olympics, however, we can’t let 14th February pass by without mentioning that it’s the anniversary of Torvill & Dean winning gold in Sarajevo way back in 1984! This is the reason I will always love Ravel’s Bolero, although I can’t quite believe it is now 38 years since I sat in front of the telly, aged 10 going on 11, watching the ice dance final on Olympic Grandstand!

We had good figure skaters when I was little, actually! The first three Winter Olympics in my lifetime saw Great Britain win gold on the ice! In 1976 in Innsbruck it was John Curry, in 1980 in Lake Placid it was Robin Cousins, and then in 1984 in Sarajevo it was Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. I was a bit too young to remember John Curry, I think I vaguely remember Robin Cousins winning gold, but I definitely remember T&D as I’d been following their routines since “Mack & Mabel” in 1982.

I was eight going on nine, it was around this time 40 years ago, early months of 1982, and I happened to wander into our front room when there was some ice skating on the telly. As it turned out, just in time to see T&D’s free dance routine at the World Figure Skating Championships. I saw this couple dressed in gold win gold. Not only were they brilliant, but they were ours!

I actually have a book about Torvill & Dean, by John Hennessy, so perhaps I should read that? I can see it right there on one of my piles of books.

Actually, as I was mentioning Torvill & Dean’s “Mack & Mabel” routine from 1982, it made me think of other stuff from 40 years ago, like going to see E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial) at the cinema around the same time. John Williams, who composed the music to that film, turned 90 last week so would have been celebrating his Big 50 at the time that E.T. was phoning home and the film was a massive box office success.

Most of the films I went to see as a kid were the animated Disney ones when they were on at our local cinema – we still had one on Monton Road back in those days! E.T. would have been the first “blockbuster” film that I went to see. Directed by Steven Spielberg and with music by John Williams, including that memorable bit with the flying bicycles!

Well, I’ve probably waffled on enough now, lol, and I’ve ended up reminiscing about the 1980s yet again, but that’s normal for this blog, ha ha! I’ll be back again soon enough with more books and the usual nonsense! Until then, take care, Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned that weren’t listed earlier in the blog…

• True – Martin Kemp
• Face It – Debbie Harry
• Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief – Maurice Leblanc
• I Named My Dog Pushkin – Margarita Gokun Silver
• Torvill & Dean – John Hennessy

Discount Tents, 80s Books and Extra Cheese.

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

I have returned, and to prove it, I’m back with another helping of typical Chief Bookworm waffle about reading matter, bad puns, food and drink and all sorts of random nonsense, exactly the sort of things you’ve come to expect if you’ve been reading my blogs for any length of time, lol!

If you remember a couple of blogs ago, I included the above photo of that mug and said it would be great if an outdoor supplies shop actually used that line for advertising their January sales. Well, not long after publishing that blog entry, things entered my head… I wouldn’t say I was “inspired” as that might be stretching things a bit too far, ha ha, but a few ideas entered my cranium for a bit of poetry about a winter sale at an imaginary camping shop…

Anyway, now we’ve got that attempt at poetry out of the way, I have a couple of progress reports for your reading pleasure, although there have been times when I have been rather distracted by people doing mad stuff on snow and ice in the Winter Olympics, but I do have news on a couple of the Ongoing Concerns…

The big news is that True, by Martin Kemp, is now 75% read, so we are heading towards the end of that one and I expect that to come before February is out. It would be my 9th book so far this year and my 4th for this month.

The other progress report is for Face It, by Debbie Harry, and that one is now 42% read, so we are heading towards the halfway point with her book. If that is not finished in February, I hope it will be in March.

Went down to Wandering Palate on Tuesday after work, and ended up coming back with a few cheesy comestibles, as you can see in the above photo. I noticed, to my delight, that the Bix had returned, so I got a couple of those, and for some reason, a bit of a song came in my head, to the tune of a certain old hit by Sir Elton John…

It’s a Bix, it’s a Bix, yes the Bix is back! Soft and creamy as a matter of fact. And I got some Gorwydd ‘cause I like that one too. Baron Bigod to try, and a bit of Bath Blue! Woh-oh-oh!

Apologies should probably go to Bernie Taupin really, as he wrote the lyrics, Elton writes the music.

Anyway, the cheeses I got are those named in my little song, and they are also mentioned in A Cheesemonger’s Compendium of British & Irish Cheese, by Ned Palmer, which I read last year and am still keeping around as a handy reference. The Baron Bigod is another very soft and creamy cheese and is nicely spreadable on a Hovis digestive…

Well, what do we have here? Oh yes, my purchases from Tuesday night’s visit to the Trafford Centre. The Brain, by Marco Magrini, is, as I realised on Tuesday night, a duplicate book. Oops! I will keep one copy and the other can go to the church fair in the summer or to a charity shop, so it’s not the end of the world. Also, at least it’s not 19 pairs of books, like the Duplicate Books Saga which reached its peak around this time in 2017! Yep, five years ago, I was dealing with the fact that there were several books of which I owned two copies!

It has not got as bad as that since, thankfully, but it has happened every now and then. The whole saga kinda happened on this blog around 2016-17 and it was probably around February or March in 2017 when it peaked and I had two sets of 19 different books!

Some of it had been because they had different covers so I had forgotten I had already bought that book, which is what happened with my current one, but other times it was that I didn’t realise I had it, or I knew I had it but thought it was somewhere I couldn’t get my hands on it that easily, only to realise that I could, ha ha!

That’s an accurate depiction of me coming home from Waterstone’s, lol!

I saw the Pepsi & Shirlie book, It’s All in Black and White, and had to get that one as it’s in keeping with my 80s music autobiographies thing at the moment and fits in with the planned sequence of reading once I have finished True.

Everything You Need to Know About the Menopause, by Kate Muir, was kind of a necessary book as I’m in my late 40s and I get the distinct feeling mine has started or is at least about to start.

Toxic Positivity, by Whitney Goodman, is one I had seen featured on Farcebook, and is all about the exact sort of shite peddled by that idiotic ex-friend of mine, initials HLA. The sort of idiot who goes round telling people “don’t be sad” when they don’t even know the person and they might have a totally legit reason to be sad!

So, those are the latest book purchases. Nothing more done on the bookmarks at the moment, but I will let you know when I’m back in stitchy mode and resuming at least one of them.

When I said I had a bit of a sequence in mind, this is what I meant. True is a current Ongoing Concern of course, but Martin Kemp is married to Shirlie from Pepsi & Shirlie and they were originally Wham’s backing singers, so there is this whole Spandau Ballet – Pepsi & Shirlie – Wham thing, hence the 80s music autobiographies rabbit hole!

Talking of music, I was back at a show last night, as Mum and I went to the Lowry Theatre on Salford Quays to see the utterly brilliant Fascinating Aida! Originally, we should have been going to see them on 22nd March 2020, but then coronavirus happened! It got moved to May last year, but too soon for theatres to reopen, by one day, so it got moved again and ended up on 10th February 2022 so we finally saw them last night. Definitely worth the wait!

That is about it for now, though, but I may have got Martin Kemp’s book off the OCs by the next time I blog, so I hope I have another finish to report fairly soon. Until then, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• True – Martin Kemp
• Face It – Debbie Harry
• A Cheesemonger’s Compendium of British & Irish Cheese – Ned Palmer
• The Brain – Marco Magrini
• It’s All in Black and White – Pepsi & Shirlie
• Everything You Need to Know About the Menopause – Kate Muir
• Toxic Positivity – Whitney Goodman

A Good Day Despite the Weather!

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

You’re getting a Chinese lantern photo ‘cause Mum and I went into town earlier for the Chinese New Year celebrations, and it’s one of the lanterns from City Buffet where we ate. We also went on to Old Trafford afterwards, as today is the 64th anniversary of the Munich air crash, so we went to the remembrance service outside the stadium. Very well-attended, especially given that today’s weather has not been the best. In fact, at times, to use that well-known technical term, it has been shite!

As I said when I blogged earlier in the week, we are in Chinese New Year mode, and we have just let in the Year of the Tiger, hence I have another book finish to report to you, my third for February and eighth overall, as I felt it was appropriate to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr as part of the celebrations! Also quite good that it was my 8th book as the number eight is particularly auspicious to the Chinese.

Only two more book finishes and I will have to increase my Goodreads Challenge target! We are now halfway there with True, by Martin Kemp, as the Spandau Ballet bassist’s autobiography is now 50% read! Yay! Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief is also at the halfway stage, so we have two half-read books on the Ongoing Concerns list at present.

Before I go any further with news of Ongoing Concerns, I have some book-related news from my friend Liz in Canada – Bashaw Public Library have retained their Read for 15 title! They are the most readerly community in the under 1,000 population category.

Also, more book news, this time closer to home as Mum recently finished reading Prince Philip’s Century, by Robert Jobson, and she is now reading Ole, by Ian Macleay, which regular followers of my blog might recall me reading a few years ago. It was one of the books I read in 2019, and I’m pretty sure I read it, or at least part of it, when I was on holiday in Mauritius that summer.

Back to the OCs now, though, and after the two half-read books, next in line is Face It, by Debbie Harry at 33%, with I Named My Dog Pushkin, by Margarita Gokun Silver still at 26%. Of the remaining OCs, Britain By the Book, by Oliver Tearle, is now 17% read as I did get a little of it read on the way home from the match the other night, and I will return to Tearle’s book shortly.

Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas, is now 13% read, so is level with Thinking On My Feet, by Kate Humble, and Life’s What You Make It, by Phillip Schofield, is 10% read, so that’s all the OCs as they stand at the moment.

Couple of bookmarks there, which were both acquired this afternoon at a shop in Chinatown. The wooden one is my Chinese sign, the Ox, and the other is a see-through leaf-type bookmark.

Back to Oliver Tearle’s book for a moment, as promised, and when I was reading a bit of it on my Kindle on Friday night on the way home from a rather disappointing match to say the least, he mentioned the writer Laurence Sterne, and the fact that, after the poor bloke had popped his clogs, grave-robbers dug him up and sold him to a surgeon for an anatomy lecture. Thankfully, someone in the audience at the lecture recognised the author, so he wasn’t dissected.

I bring this bit up as it sounded familiar to me already, a fact I had already discovered from a previous book, and I have a feeling I know about Sterne’s body being dug up from when I read Stiff, by Mary Roach a couple of years ago! I can definitely recommend Mary Roach’s books, by the way. I have also read Gulp by the same writer, and have a couple more of her books in to read so might get around to those at some point this year.

That is one of my magnet boards, the Manchester Chinatown one is the latest addition as I bought that this afternoon. The lifeboat and Conwy Castle magnets were bought in Wales in June last year along with the 30 books that came home from that particular short break, lol! The Gretna anvil magnet was from my trip to Scotland in August last year, and the Irish ones from Dublin were acquired back in February 2020.

I did mention that I was going to review some of the OCs, didn’t I? I’m looking at the three that have stalled a little bit – Arsène Lupin, I Named My Dog Pushkin, and Thinking On My Feet. Those haven’t been progressed for a while and I am thinking I might pause at least a couple of them and return to them some time later to see if they hold my attention better then.

I have, after all, got eight books on the go. One hardback, six paperbacks, and an ebook on my Kindle. Pausing three of them, at least for a while, cuts it down to five. I could, maybe, work them back in when I get others off the OC list, although I already have another book in mind for when I’ve finished True by Martin Kemp. You won’t be terribly surprised to learn that Chief Bookworm intends on disappearing down an 80s music rabbit hole on the autobiographies front!

So, that’s about it for now, really. I’ve got reading to get on with and, as you know, a few cross-stitched bookmarks on the go as well, so when I have significant progress to report on one or both fronts, I shall be back to waffle on at you once again, lol! Oh, and there might well be a poem for you! Until the next time, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• The Tiger Who Came to Tea – Judith Kerr
• True – Martin Kemp
• Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief – Maurice Leblanc
• Prince Philip’s Century – Robert Jobson
• Ole – Ian Macleay
• Face It – Debbie Harry
• I Named My Dog Pushkin – Margarita Gokun Silver
• Britain By the Book – Oliver Tearle
• Seashaken Houses – Tom Nancollas
• Thinking On My Feet – Kate Humble
• Life’s What You Make It – Phillip Schofield
• Stiff – Mary Roach
• Gulp – Mary Roach

A Great Basin of Otherness

Hello again, fellow Bookworms!

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Wishing you all happiness, prosperity and plenty of good books in the Year of the Tiger! Plenty of book-related waffle coming up, including news of another couple of finished items of reading matter!

Currently got Now 80s on as I type and it’s all number 1s today, so everything played was an 80s chart-topper. “Perfect” by Fairground Attraction at the moment, so that was from May 1988, back when Chief Bookworm was a teenager, 15 to be exact. Only had a week at number one, but some singers and groups never even get that.

Ah, now we’re having a selection of USA number ones from the 80s, many of which didn’t hit the top over here. Interesting to find out what got to the top elsewhere in the world.

Also, the Winter Olympics start on Friday with the opening ceremony, although some events have already got under way, as there has been some mixed doubles curling earlier. If we get a few medals, as I hope we will, although probably not loads as we are not a winter sports nation, the action will happen overnight as it’s over in Beijing, so a pretty similar time difference as for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last year.

Right then. Better get some books mentioned! Let’s start with the ones I’ve finished, and I did hint in the January blog that Wintering, by Katherine May, would be polished off at the start of the following month and so it proved to be the case. My first February finish and another Radio 4 Book of the Week read and enjoyed!

Hot on the heels of my sixth finish of the year came the seventh, and you may recall that I had already read a book by Jon Scieszka last month… well, yesterday I read The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, which was a good quick read and suitably daft and amusing!

That one never went on the Ongoing Concerns list as it was much too short. I knew it would be a quick read, so there is no point in putting a book like that on the OCs if you pretty much know you’re gonna wolf it down in one sitting. Other children’s books DO go on the OC list, but those tend to be chapter books, for instance The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, which I read towards the end of last year.

With the finished books discussed, we can come on to the legendary Ongoing Concerns, the books already on the list and some recent additions. As I’ve got a few books off the list of late, others needed to be added, lol!

You might not see it on the photo, but one recent addition has been True, by Martin Kemp, the autobiography of Spandau Ballet’s bassist, and younger brother of Gary, whose autobiography, I Know This Much, I read back in the early months of 2017 as my friend Sarah lent me that one and I was reading it in time to give it back to her when we went to see the Pet Shop Boys at the Manchester Arena.

That gig was 19th February 2017, so nearly 5 years ago now!

Talking of 5th anniversaries, I think tomorrow might be five years since a couple of piles of books came toppling down when United scored a goal away to Leicester City! They were clearly as happy and excited as I was that we’d taken the lead, lol, but it did mean having to rescue one book from behind my radiator! We ended up winning 3-0 as I recall.

Today is a year since the 9-0 win over Southampton at Old Trafford, but at that time we were not back to going to matches, that only started in August at the start of this current footy season, so I had to resort to blogging, lol!

Anyway, the Martin Kemp book is 38% read. It had previously been started and had got to around 21% read, but I resumed it the other day and it’s now over a third of the way through.

Another music autobiography resumed is Face It, by Debbie Harry of Blondie. Last read in around May 2020, and it was at the 27% read stage back then, but that one is now 33% read, so another book a third of the way through.

Definitely in autobiography mode, as another addition to the Ongoing Concerns is Life’s What You Make It, by Phillip Schofield, one I picked up at Asda, I think, at some point in the last year or two, possibly during a lockdown when only essential shops were open. I got it to 10% read in the early hours before getting some zeds ahead of work today, so it has joined the OC list. It shares its title with a brilliant song by Talk Talk from around 1985.

For those not on my side of the Atlantic, Phillip Schofield is a TV presenter, and back when I was a kid in the 80s, he was the on-screen continuity guy in the “Broom Cupboard” presenting the after-school and before the news Children’s BBC slot and also Going Live on a Saturday morning. These days, children’s programmes have their own channels, but when I was a kid, our programmes were on at lunchtime and after school during the week and on Saturday mornings.

So, Martin Kemp, Debbie Harry and Phillip Schofield… Spandau Ballet, Blondie and Children’s BBC… a significant chunk of my entertainment when I was growing up, ha ha! Particularly as Blondie had been around since the late 70s. “Heart of Glass” is still one of my all-time favourite songs.

I think an outdoor activities shop should have a sign like that in their window in the January sales! Somewhere like The North Face or any shop like that which sells camping gear and stuff for people who like going hiking and that sort of thing, like Pete May who wrote about his love of the Lake District in Man About Tarn, which I read and enjoyed last year.

We did the camping thing donkey’s years ago, when Ellie and I were in our teens in the late 80s and early 90s, and usually in France and Switzerland as Ellie was still doing trampolining and did a couple of competitions in Switzerland back then.

While we are on the topic of outdoorsy things, it reminds me I have one more book to mention, although it’s not quite at the 10% stage yet, and that is Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas, and is about lighthouses, which, in a way, takes us back to some of the stuff I was reading this time last year about the Shipping Forecast. I aim to get that to be an Ongoing Concern later this evening. Tonight’s blog title, by the way, comes from that book, in case you were wondering and he was actually describing the sea.

I’m also going to have to have a look at some of the OCs which seem to have stalled. Am I going to resume them or pause them? The one on my Kindle, Britain By the Book, by Oliver Tearle, may well get read as United are at home to Middlesbrough on Friday evening in the 4th round of the FA Cup, and I may have a read if we’re stuck in traffic after the match, but I need to look at the paperbacks.

So, that is probably it for now, but we have had number ones of the 80s, the Winter Olympics, finished books, more music, footy, ongoing concerns, memories of tumbling books, and even a bad pun about camping gear, lol! I will be back soon enough with another helping of similar waffle, another great basin of otherness, so until next time, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Wintering – Katherine May
• The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales – Jon Scieszka
• The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
• True – Martin Kemp
• I Know This Much – Gary Kemp
• Face It – Debbie Harry
• Life’s What You Make It – Phillip Schofield
• Man About Tarn – Pete May
• Seashaken Houses – Tom Nancollas
• Britain By the Book – Oliver Tearle