French composer, Claude Debussy, was born on this day in 1862, so I thought I would give this blog a title in which he is name-checked! Of course, you may probably have guessed, knowing my taste in music, that those lyrics are the spoken part of a Pet Shop Boys song, but which one? I will give you the answer at the end of this blog!
The above photo is the most recent Mini One from Oops a Daisy, the Autumn Leaves box, and I’ve got some photos to show you later from my October setup in my general journal which makes good use of the contents of this box! But we need to get on to some book stuff first, don’t we?
Itchy Feet & Bucket Lists, by Emma Scattergood, is now 85% read, so that is in the lead on the Ongoing Concerns charts and I hope to have it finished off pretty soon. Very interesting and enjoyable travel writing, documenting something of a world tour by Emma and her other half, Darryl, at the end of 2019 and early 2020. Obviously, at 85% read, their journey and the book are heading to a conclusion, but coronavirus is starting to make the news… will they make it back to Australia before lockdown?! I shall let you know!
In the part when they were in Switzerland, they visited Basel, which I was very chuffed about as that’s where we lived back in 1978 when my dad was working over there! I have many fond memories of 45 years ago! We made friends with an Aussie family while we were over there, the Koeppens, which I may have mentioned in previous blogs.
Well said, Dolly! As regular followers will know, the absolute Legend that is Dolly Parton is on this blog’s Hall of Fame for promoting literacy and a love of books. The local library of my Canadian friend Liz Craig in Bashaw, Alberta, is a partner in Dolly’s Imagination Library scheme, as is my local doctor’s surgery now! Monton Medical Centre signed up to it not long ago. The scheme is available in a number of countries, including the USA, UK and Canada, and sends out a free book each month to children from birth to 5 years old.
Back to the Ongoing Concerns now, and Days Like These is now 65% read so getting ever closer to the two-thirds read stage! As I’ve got one of those busy times coming up, I have read a few days ahead so that I don’t fall behind and get off track. It will reach the next milestone on 31st August, and as there’s no choir practice that night, I’ll be doing the monthly review blog and celebrating reaching 67% of that book.
It’s the only one left now where it’s on a progress chart in my first book journal for this year, all the other OCs are on pages in my current journal. We have some more progress on Wham! George & Me, by Andrew Ridgeley and that one is just over halfway now at 51% read! Reached the bit where Wham! get their big break – although just outside the Top 40, they get on Top of the Pops after another band has to drop out at the last minute, and that appearance gives them lift-off in terms of chart success.
Talking of Top of the Pops, I was watching an old one on You Tube just before I started this blog. It was the TOTP which was originally aired on BBC1 on 16th April 1987, so just before Chief Bookworm’s 14th birthday! “Let it Be” by Ferry Aid was number one, a charity reworking of the Beatles song to raise money after the Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster of March 1987 when the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized just after setting sail from the Belgian port because the bow doors had been left open. The closing credits of TOTP were played out with “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna which would be number one the following week, in time for my birthday.
I love that song, but as someone who was a fire and bomb warden in my civil service days, the video for that song is an epic health and safety hazard! Loads of lit candles and there’s Madonna in a big frilly Flamenco dress! A fire risk if ever there was one! When she goes downstairs to join the band in the street, I hope she blows all those candles out first!
Before we go any further, we had the sad news recently that legendary chat show host, Sir Michael Parkinson, passed away last week at the age of 88. Parky had many legendary guests on his show over the years, and actually gave one or two people their big break – Sir Billy Connolly in particular. The Big Yin told his now legendary joke about the bloke who needed somewhere to park his bike, and that appearance was the making of him!
As promised earlier, this is my October setup in my general journal… As Seen on TV! New series tend to start in the autumn, so I felt that the combo of televisions and autumn leaves was a good one. The stickers of the mushrooms and the leaves were from The Dotty Room and fitted the autumn theme and their use in my self-care corner. I’ve ditched the trackers for individual days for both health issues and You Tube and am just having boxes to record anything notable for that week. We’ll see if this works better for me than trackers did, which I kept forgetting to fill in, so it was defeating the object.
Back to the Ongoing Concerns now, and the remaining books on the list. Two books about the Lake District almost level-pegging. 36 Islands, by Robert Twigger, is 34% read so a tiny bit ahead of Lost in the Lakes, by Tom Chesshyre, at 33% read. Then we have Moderate Becoming Good Later, by Toby and Katie Carr, at 25% read, and Summit for the Weekend, by Pete May, at 10% read.
Not sure there’s anything further to report on the book front. I did say in a previous blog that I had set up a choir journal to keep a record of what we have sung each week and also things like when I am due to pay subs and any details of concerts as and when they arise, so I said I would show you photos of my choir journal and I have August and September to show you. The dates with boxes are the Thursdays for that particular month as that’s our rehearsal night.
As it’s a choir journal, my themes are based on songs we’re practising. So far, I’ve gone for “Seasons of Love” from the musical “Rent” and then “From a Distance”, probably best known due to the Bette Midler recording. I don’t need too many pages per month, not as yet anyway, compared to my other journals, but then I only need to keep a record of songs once a week.
That is probably it for now, though. Not sure there is any more news to bring you. Commiserations to the Lionesses, who didn’t quite get to bring football home as they lost the final of the Women’s World Cup to Spain. However, Mary Earps, the United and England goalkeeper, did win the Golden Glove for most clean sheets in the tournament so we didn’t come home completely empty-handed.
That’s definitely all the news now that I’ve mentioned the footy, except that I just need to give you the answer to the little teaser I set at the start of the blog when I asked which Pet Shop Boys song featured the lyrics “Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat”. The answer is “Left To My Own Devices”, which was released in November 1988 and reached number 4 in the UK Top 40 singles chart.
Funnily enough, the song was one of the red herrings on “Pointless” earlier today in the round where the semi-finalists get the chance to find a couple of pointless answers to boost the jackpot. The category was Lerner and Loewe songs and “Left To My Own Devices” was one of the wrong answers because that’s a Tennant and Lowe song!
OK, that definitely IS all we’ve got time for now, and brings us to the end of broadcasting, er sorry, blogging, for tonight, lol, so until next time, take care and Happy Reading!
Was going to blog last night but it was too hot to do so, back to being the Costa del Salford once again, lol! Therefore, we’re now 10 days into July, and wishing a very happy 69th birthday to Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys – regular followers of this blog will know I’ve been a huge PSB fan since I was 14 so Neil and Chris get regular mentions!
Got some more music news for you in this blog, but more to do with myself and my niece Charlotte, so that’s coming up later, but I have quite a bit of book news tonight as I have already finished FOUR books this month! We had a finish on 1st July, when I polished off Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, by Will Ferguson. Appropriately enough, I finished this travel writing about Canada on Canada Day!
Any post box toppers in this particular blog are to mark the 75th birthday of the NHS, which was on 5th July – I am particularly impressed with whoever it was who knitted or crocheted that ambulance in the photo above!
I didn’t blog the first weekend of July as it was so soon after the June Review, but the other reason that I didn’t was the Monton Festival which took place on 1st July, and both my niece and I were very busy! First up, Charlotte was performing with Anthem Music School, and then it was the turn of the Mancunian Singers, including yours truly!
Then, on Tuesday, Charlotte had her Grade 2 piano exam and got the results on Friday – she passed with Distinction! Well done to our Young Adult Bookworm! She’s nearly a teenager, so not junior anymore. Reuben’s still a Junior Bookworm, though.
Seriously, is it really nearly 13 years ago that I became an auntie?! She definitely takes after me with her love of books and her music. Maybe one day she’ll be headlining the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury?!
As I said earlier, there have been four books polished off so far this month, so what else came off the OC list besides the Will Ferguson book? Next one to become a finished book was Sea Fever, by Meg and Chris Clothier, and then Prince Philip’s Century, by Robert Jobson, came off the OC list and went on the Goodreads Challenge list. That made it 35 books and I have had to increase the target to 40 books.
The fourth book to be finished so far this month was the brilliant novel by Benjamin Myers, The Perfect Golden Circle, which I really loved!
I know when a lot of people mention historical fiction they usually refer to novels set a seriously long time ago, for instance those set in the days of Henry VIII, but I would like to make the case for historical fiction also being about novels set in the more recent past, such as the latter end of the 20th century – books set in the 1970s or 1980s for instance, and Myers’ book is set right at the end of the eighties when I was sitting my GCSEs and leaving high school.
1989 is now a long time ago! When I was leaving school and the crop circles were starting to appear in fields and on the news, the Berlin Wall was still up for a few months yet. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia still existed, as did East Germany and the Soviet Union. The charts were full of Stock, Aitken and Waterman productions, plus loads of dance and house music by the likes of Soul II Soul, Black Box and Technotronic.
So, with so many finishes, we need fresh books on the OC list, don’t we? Hands of Time, by Rebecca Struthers, is 11% read, as is Gold from the Stone, a poetry anthology by Lemn Sissay. Bizarre England, by David Long, one of those miscellany-type books, is 10% read. I have also started Treasure Islands, by Alec Crawford, which is the true tales of a shipwreck hunter, but that one was only started earlier today and has not reached the 10% read stage yet. I’m sure it will do soon enough!
Of the OCs with more progress made on them, Days Like These is currently 53% and Slow Trains Around Spain is now 51%. I was making progress with that one last night, and as Tom Chesshyre is going around Spain, he was at the top end of the country and not far from Santiago de Compostela, so he mentions the Camino and also the forests of eucalyptus trees, probably the exact same ones that Tim Moore mentions in Spanish Steps and calls them the VapoRub Forests, lol!
The other OC is It’s All in Black and White, by Pepsi & Shirlie, and that one is currently 14% read. I plan to get a move on with that one during the course of this week.
While we’re back on music, it was on the news that the book collection of the late great Charlie Watts, drummer of the Rolling Stones, is being put up for auction, and it includes quite a few signed first editions, most notably The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As with David Bowie, who was also known to take an extensive library of books with him on tour, it seems Charlie Watts did likewise and loved a good read when he wasn’t busy keeping the beat for Mick and Keith to strut their stuff!
And now some peeks into my book journal, lol, as I have set up September in that journal and have gone with the theme of “She Blinded Me With Science” which was a hit for Thomas Dolby back in the 80s! Across the monthly set-up I have included different aspects of science – chemistry (which was Dad’s area of expertise), physics, mechanics, ecology and a bit of space exploration!
In my general journal, it kinda ties in with science as I’ve gone with a theme of retro video games, so there’s definitely computers and technology! I have started on the set-up for that one but not quite finished it yet. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give you a shufty in my next blog so you can see all the pixellated pals from old-school computer games!
Before I finish, I just want to say muchas gracias to David de Gea who has left United after 12 years in goal at Old Trafford. In that time, he has won the Premier League (2013), FA Cup (2016), League Cup twice (2017 and 2023) and the Europa League (2017), has kept countless clean sheets, won the Golden Glove, and was voted Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year four times during his stay at OT, including 3 seasons on the trot! I do hope there is an opportunity for him to come back to OT so we can give him the proper goodbye he richly deserves. Quite frankly, he should be given a testimonial match given that he was with us for over a decade!
While we’re on fantastic former United goalies, best wishes for a continued and speedy recovery to the absolute Legend that is Edwin van der Sar, who was rushed to hospital at the weekend, while on holiday in Croatia, with a bleed on the brain. His condition is currently stable.
Well, I think that is about all my news for now, we’ve covered pretty much everything – books, music, football, stationery, and some post box toppers to mark the 75th birthday of the National Health Service. I will be back with yet more waffle soon enough, lol, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Welcome to the first monthly review blog of 2023 now that January is almost over, lol! Got Sky Sports News on for transfer deadline day as Marcel Sabitzer, an Austrian central midfielder, is set to join United on loan from Bayern Munich for the rest of this season due to Christian Eriksen getting injured during our recent FA Cup 4th round win over Reading.
Will keep you posted on the footy, but got a month’s worth of the usual nonsense to get through, so let’s get through it, starting with the start of the year when it was a few days into 2023 before I felt well enough to blog. I came down with the lurgy just before new year and Mum and I had to have our New Year’s Eve meal from La Turka as a takeaway rather than heading down the road to our local restaurant.
I did get a book read while recovering from the lurgy, though, as I had a re-read of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy due to the animated version having been shown on BBC1 over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Second week of the month, two more books joined my re-read on the finished books list, as I polished off Wall and Piece, by Banksy, and then the sheet music from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. That came about because of my choir audition, as I chose to sing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” – I am now an official member of the choir, and have an absolute shedload of music, lol, which is in two concertina file boxes!
A postbox on a postbox, lol! We’ve already had some good ones as we started 2023, including some new year toppers, Chinese New Year toppers and one for Burns Night with a haggis being piped in as per the tradition in Scotland.
Also had a couple of rants already this year. We are now in 2023, almost a quarter of the way into the current century, and yet some people still need to be told that ALL formats of book count as reading, and, yes, that DOES include audiobooks, and it’s very ableist to say they don’t count as they are a major way in which blind and visually-impaired people can enjoy books.
The other rant was aimed at spammers on Farcebook and their creepy way of replying to people’s comments with their bullshit about how they tried to send a friend request but FB wouldn’t let them. They always target females, so I’m going to have to change my profile pic back to something that’s not a photo of me, that should help reduce the number of requests to me from these pricks, but why do they even do it?
Do they actually get anyone who’s dim enough to fall for that shite? Do they actually get anyone who’s even remotely flattered by some creepy stranger putting a shit ton of flower emojis in their comment? I’ve seen forests less shady than these knobheads! Maybe that toxic ex-friend of mine might be gullible enough to fall for their smarm disguised as “charm”, but I can’t think of anyone else offhand who’d find that crap anything other than creepy and an insult to their intelligence.
Some of my happy mail this month – biscuits stickers and parcel tape. Also got wash tapes with the biscuits (cookies) on. They’re from Nikki’s Supply Store, but I have also had mail from the regulars – Oops a Daisy and Under the Rowan Trees, plus some from Gretel Creates and some stickers from The Dotty Room. I have a theme in mind for one of my journals which will include the biscuits!
The biscuits on the stickers are a Bourbon, a Jammie Dodger, a Custard Cream, a Party Ring (that pink circular one) and three Iced Gems. That’s for any of my followers outside of the UK who might not be familiar with certain popular British biscuits.
Back to the books, though, and there’s a couple more finishes to mention. Northerners, by Brian Groom, was polished off last week, and The Wood Age, by Roland Ennos, was finished in the wee small hours of Monday morning!
There was some crossover in what I was reading, and while coming to the end of The Wood Age, where Ennos was talking about trees taking over, I was reminded of Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, which I was reading around this time last year. That book, a former BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, was about how nature eventually returns to places abandoned by humans and pretty much takes over that corner of the world. Would definitely recommend.
So, with some books OFF the Ongoing Concerns, there is space for books to go ON the list! Bearing in mind that Days Like These, by Brian Bilston, will become an Ongoing Concern at the weekend when it reaches the 10% read stage on 5th February, it meant that there was space for another book, so one of my recent purchases has joined the list although I think it will be a fairly quick finish.
That book is Mother, Brother, Lover, by Jarvis Cocker, and it is the lyrics from a sizeable selection of his Pulp hits with some background note from Jarvis about the songs, how they came about and some places in Sheffield and local expressions that we would not otherwise be familiar with. You may recall that one of my 60 books read last year was Good Pop Bad Pop, in which Jarvis went exploring the contents of his loft and deciding whether to keep or cob – cob being a Sheffield term for “throw out”.
Mother, Brother, Lover is one of six books I have purchased in January, and you do know about one of the other ones, as I mentioned Dark Tide, by Stephen Puleo, in my blog on Sunday – that’s the book about the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. I will get round to mention of the other books in due course, but I will add that one of the other four is by a non-fiction writer I have already mentioned in these blogs a few times as I have read a few of her other books.
So, The Wood Age is a finished book, so comes off the OC list. Mother, Brother, Lover is 52% read already so well on the way to being an early finish in February. Dead Wake is 51% read, followed closely by The Man Who Tasted Words and Proust and the Squid, both 50% read. Buzzin’ by Bez is now at 37% read as I was reading some of that this evening, and Charles: Heart of a King is still 25% read. Days Like These will become an OC on Sunday.
That’s it for this month, then. Marcel Sabitzer is at the Carrington training ground and has had his medical. Just waiting for official confirmation that it has been passed and that he can be announced as a Manchester United player, but there will be more book news and waffle in February, which will hopefully contain news about the Read for 15 competition in Alberta, Canada.
As my friend Liz said, it’s a province-wide initiative, so they need to count up all participants from all libraries in that province, thus it takes a few days to add all that up. What we can tell you, though, is that Bashaw Public Library has over 60 children signed up to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library since they signed up to the initiative in late November.
I will be back again soon enough with the usual nonsense, and hopefully some more finished books, so until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – Charlie Mackesy
Wall and Piece – Banksy
Jesus Christ Superstar – Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice
I am back again for yet another waffling session in which some books will also get a mention, ha ha! Kung Hei Fat Choi for last weekend, as we let in the Chinese New Year last Sunday, so I wish all my followers happiness, prosperity and plenty of books during the Year of the Rabbit! This is why we’re starting this blog with a post box topper to celebrate the lunar new year.
Seems Word Press has now been taken over by Jet Pack. It remains to be seen as to how efficient it is or whether I have any lost blog problems like previously, but it seems that Word Press had actually taken over in the early days of my blogging, as I got an email around October last year to say happy 12th anniversary, but my actual 12th anniversary of this book blog was on 14th August!
I can’t even recall what blog host I was with back in August 2010, though. Word Press must have taken it over in the autumn (fall).
It was Burns Night on Wednesday, in honour of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, so here we have another brilliant post box topper, this one of a haggis being piped in!
Got a few books to the 50% stage since the previous blog, and we also have a finished book and another of the Ongoing Concerns which is now very close to being finished, and that is likely to be polished off either later tonight or tomorrow, so, all being well, we should have five finished books for January, which would be the same tally as this time last year.
Bit of a rant, though, before we go on to the book news, and this is not about spammers, unlike my previous rant, but about anything that gets hyped up. I guess I’ve never liked hype. I have always felt it spoiled things. Doesn’t mean I will always dislike something that gets hyped up, but maybe I will appreciate it more later on when the fuss has long died down.
Therefore, I’m not completely ruling out the prospect of reading a certain book by the Celebrity Formerly Known As a Prince, but I am in no rush to read it as it’s been on our news far too much in recent weeks – so many spoilers in the news that it makes you wonder if there’s actually any point in reading it as you know most of it already, lol!
Maybe, one day, I might get around to it, when I find it for 99p in a charity shop in 2027 or something like that, ha ha! Just to see what the fuss was about. A bit like when I bought Spycatcher from a charity shop a few years ago as that one had caused a fuss back when I was a teenager and was actually banned over here in the UK for a while! I’ve still not got around to reading Peter Wright’s book yet, though.
You may recall the above trophy from previous blogs – this was from last year. Well, Bashaw Public Library is aiming to retain that trophy and the Read for 15 event took place on Friday just gone, 27th January. I think readers had to notify the library the following day, so it might take a while before things are counted up, but I hope to hear some news soon from Liz as to whether they’ve retained the trophy or not.
Someone who has already won an award, however, is the poet Brian Bilston, as his current anthology, Days Like These, which is set to become an Ongoing Concern next Sunday, has been voted Overall Winner in the Indie Champions Awards run by Bookshop.Org, so well done to Brian!
Also, last weekend, I was at the donor centre in town to give a pint of my O positive to the Vampires! It was actually my 50th donation, so I should be getting a badge and a gold-coloured donor card in the post fairly soon. I got the text yesterday to inform me that my most recent armful has been given to Nottingham University Hospital. I love the fact that NHS Blood and Transplant send a text to tell you where your pint has gone, they’ve been doing this for a few years now.
As an added bonus, for the first time since the pandemic, I was able to sit down at the table and have a hot drink after my donation! I had a cup of tea, and also a packet of ginger nut biscuits (cookies). Definitely getting back to normal there, then. Always used to have a cuppa after giving blood before coronavirus came along, but it had been cold drinks only for a while, so it was good to get back to a brew!
Chief Bookworm’s got a brand new bag! Actually, I really should have shown you a bag I got in the run-up to Christmas but it’s a bit late for that one now, as it says Season’s Readings! Both that bag and the one in this photo were from Waterstone’s.
The main book news is that Northerners, by Brian Groom, is finished! My fourth book of the year, and The Wood Age, by Roland Ennos, is currently 88% read at time of typing, so that’s the one I aim to polish off either later tonight or tomorrow. Aiming for tonight, really, so I can get on with at least another book or two tomorrow! Then it’ll be time for the first monthly review blog on Tuesday as we finally reach the end of January! It’s such a long month, isn’t it?!
Really enjoying The Wood Age, and there have been bits in common with bits in Northerners. Also, with it being the history of wood, including its use in ships in the past, it kinda ties in with some of the stuff found by Lara Maiklem in Mudlarking, which was one of last year’s reads.
Was actually reading an article by Lara on Facebook earlier, about a boxwood comb that she had found which was now drying out nicely. She said that 82 such combs were found when the Mary Rose was raised in 1982 – something else I blogged about last year due to it being 40 years since the Tudor warship was raised – the Thames mud preserves a lot of stuff, so mudlarkers often find items in pretty good condition given how old some of them are!
The combs were quite fine-toothed and not unlike modern nit combs – indeed some head lice had been found on one of the combs! Reading about that took me back to the days when I was at primary school and the nit nurse would come in every now and then to check our heads for lice – she was always known as Nitty Nora, the Bug Explorer!
There are three other Ongoing Concerns that are at the halfway stage, so I plan to progress these further in the coming days… Dead Wake, by Erik Larson, is 51% read, with both Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf, and The Man Who Tasted Words, by Professor Guy Leschziner, both at 50% read at the moment. The other two OCs are Buzzin’, by Bez, and Charles: Heart of a King, by Catherine Mayer, which are 26% and 25% read respectively.
There are a couple of Premier League home games coming up for me in early February, so another two opportunities to read my Kindle on the way home from Old Trafford, although I don’t just read my Kindle when giving blood or coming home from the footy or ebooks would take even longer to read!
The book in the photo is Dark Tide, by Stephen Puleo, and it sounds fascinating. It’s about the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, quite possibly one of the most surreal disasters in history. It was an explosion in the molasses factory on 15th January 1919, causing a wave to flood through the streets at 35mph and resulted in 21 deaths and 150 injuries. For those of us on my side of the Atlantic, molasses are similar to black treacle, both are a byproduct of the sugar refining process. So, try imagining streets overrunning with treacle! I shall let you know when I start on the book.
The above photos are some of my journaling, my March setup in my book journal. I have given it a weather theme. I’d show my theme for the general journal but it might be a bit soon and give spoilers away. It is over a week since I got my Mini One with the “Be Lucky” theme, but given that Royal Mail got hacked the other week and it has affected post to people overseas, I will give more time before posting pictures of my theme made with the contents of that box.
I’ve got themes in mind for April and also some for May. Not setting them up yet, but decades will form my April themes, whereas I have the coronation and some refreshments in mind for May.
Got myself a label maker when I was in town last Saturday – was quite busy and not just giving blood. Felt that I needed a new label maker so I got myself one from Ryman’s in the Arndale Centre, it’s a Brother P-Touch H200 and I’ve essentially got it to help me organise my stationery. I also paid a visit to a new bookshop in town, House of Books & Friends, which is a bookshop and café on King Street. If you know where Rosso is, the restaurant owned by Rio Ferdinand, then this bookshop is not too far from there.
I think that’s about it for now, but I will be back again fairly soon as I will need to do the monthly review blog on Tuesday! Until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Happy New Year! Welcome to the start of 2023’s helpings of utter random waffle, lol!
You won’t get any of that “new year, new me” crapola on here. I don’t do that b.s. – instead you will get the same familiar stuff to which you have become accustomed – book news, music, football, food & drink, travel, post box toppers, stationery supplies and the general randomness of things! No doubt some really odd things might crop up, as pomanders and carboys did last year, ha ha!
Apologies that it has taken a few days into 2023 to get the ball rolling with this year’s blogs, and to publish the List Challenges lists from last year, but I have had the lurgy over new year, the notorious Badger’s Arse struck again, and so I’ve been a bit run down and am only just about ready to blog again.
We still had La Turka on New Year’s Eve, but Mum went down and explained that I wasn’t well, so we had our meal as a takeaway instead of dining in, and they were so lovely and provided several bottles of wine and Prosecco to go with our food!
As you can tell, there have been some fab toppers to let in 2023, so there will be some amongst my photos on tonight’s blog.
Let’s get down to business though, on the book front, and first up, we have some sad news to report as Fay Weldon has passed away today. She was 91. Possibly her most famous work was The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, published in 1983, as it was adapted for TV in 1986, but she was also a scriptwriter, including the first episode of “Upstairs Downstairs” in 1971 – the “Downton Abbey” of its day, and in the 60s, she’d worked in advertising and had come up with the “Go To Work On an Egg” campaign!
Mind you, she’s not the only author who’s ever come up with a well-known advertising campaign, and I’m going to set you one of my little teasers for this blog – answer at the end of the blog… Which famous author came up with the “Naughty But Nice” campaign for fresh cream cakes in the 1980s? You can see how you got on later!
Despite my lurgy, which has included some of the worst catarrh I have had in quite a while, I have managed to get off the mark on the reading front. Given that the animated film has been on TV here a few times over Christmas and New Year, I figured that it would be good to have a re-read of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy, so we do at least have a book read already this year.
I have also got a year-long read for this year. Regular followers will recall that, in 2021, I spent the year reading The Wrong Kind of Snow, by Antony Woodward and Robert Penn. Well, this year it’s poetry, but it’s a book where there’s an entry for each day, so I will be reading it thoughout the year. This book is Days Like These, by the brilliant Brian Bilston, who many of you may know from Facebook and Instagram.
You may remember the above bookmark if you’re a regular follower, at least if you’ve been reading this blog since 2021 – I stitched it back then, and it is my name in Braille.
I am posting it again because today is World Braille Day – 4th January was Louis Braille’s birthday. At the time I stitched the bookmark, I was reading a book by a guy who went blind, so I was looking up Braille and figured that cross-stitched crosses would feel similar to the raised dots of Braille and worked out my name and surname initials in Braille, stitching them in a very pale cream floss.
It brings me on to one of my pet peeves on the book groups and pages of Farcebook – why is it that some people still question whether certain formats count as books or not? If it has an ISBN number, it counts as a book, and audiobooks have ISBN numbers! I’m not an audiobook listener, only ever listened to two books being read that way on a set of CDs, but I accept all formats as books, and feel that not doing so is discriminatory and counter-productive.
What if our eyes go wrong at some stage? What if we love books, but can’t enjoy them the way we do now due to visual problems? Yes, there is Braille, which we have been mentioning, but I’m not all that sure of the availability of popular book titles in Braille editions, or how much they might cost – I imagine it costs a bob or two to make a Braille edition of any given book. But audiobooks are quite widely available, and often available to borrow from libraries, so even if you can’t afford to buy an audiobook, you can still have access to them.
Also, the book is being read to you, you are not having to run your fingers along a page of raised dots and try to work out if the dots are a letter or a number. Braille is a brilliant invention, but I figure it must take some learning. I once saw a video with a blind flautist talking about music in Braille – basically, she really has to feel and learn that piece of music really thoroughly before picking up her flute to play it!
Anyway, as we are now into 2023, the time has come to wake the Ongoing Concerns from their nap, lol! You may recall that they were put to bed at the end of November, and had all reached at least 25% – so now it is a matter of waking them up again and making progress with them, so the first of them to have been resumed is The Wood Age, by Roland Ennos, and that is now 35% read, so just over a third of the way through it!
(The part I was reading earlier actually mentioned the Fertile Crescent, which is in modern day Turkey, and which links back to the books about bread that I was reading in 2021!)
Although I have started Days Like These, by Brian Bilston, due to the nature of the book, a poem for each day of the year, I won’t be reaching the 10% stage until around 5th February, so it won’t be an official Ongoing Concern until early next month. Therefore, there is a chance to get other OCs progressed and finished, and other new books started.
I have started one on my Kindle at the end of last year, and was reading a bit more of it last night – regular blog followers will know that I have a post-match e-book for when I’m in my sister’s car and on the way home from Old Trafford – if it takes a while to get out of the car park where we park, and it does sometimes, I get a bit of reading done!
So, on 27th December, after our 3-0 home victory against Nottingham Forest, I started The Man Who Tasted Words, by Professor Guy Leschziner, and got a bit more read last night after our 3-0 victory over Bournemouth. I don’t reserve my Kindle purely for after football matches, but that is one of the common times for me to read an ebook. The other times are on my jollies or if I’m giving a pint of my finest O positive to the “Vampires”! It’s much easier to tap the screen of my Kindle when giving blood than trying to turn the pages of a physical book.
That is my book journal for the start of this year, by the way! I may have shown it to you before, but this one starts 2023 as the book journal. I have learned from last year, though. You don’t have to cram 12 months into one book, so there will be journals coming off the “subs’ bench” so to speak, lol, when the current ones are full. The fountain pen character on the front goes by the name of Penny Doodles. January’s theme is the pun-tastic “Now is the Winter of our Discount Tents!” – I couldn’t resist, plus there was an “Into the Wild” themed box from Oops a Daisy at the end of last year which practically lent itself to the discount tents theme perfectly!
I think that’s probably about all for now news-wise. I have set up a new list on List Challenges for all books mentioned on here during the course of 2023, and one for all the books I get read this year, but I am no longer bothering with either the monthly lists or part-year lists.
The only thing remaining is to give you the answer to that little teaser I set at the start of the blog. I asked which famous author was responsible for the “Naughty But Nice” advertising campaign for fresh cream cakes back in the 80s when I was a kid. The correct answer is Sir Salman Rushdie! How did you do?
So, with all that wrapped up, it brings us to the end of the blog for tonight, so don’t forget to switch off your sets, lol! Oops! Sorry, this is not a television close down, it’s just me saying, until next time, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil – Fay Weldon
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – Charlie Mackesy
The Wrong Kind of Snow – Antony Woodward & Robert Penn
Days Like These – Brian Bilston
The Wood Age – Roland Ennos
The Man Who Tasted Words – Professor Guy Leschziner
We have to have some cake, it’s the blog’s anniversary today, hence the pile of books cake above! Twelve years ago today, I published my first book blog entry, wiffling on about whether I should get an e-reader device. Here we now are at 14th August 2022 and I have had a Sony E-Reader and three Kindles since then, lol!
Not only are they very handy for taking on my jollies, they’re also handy for reading in the car on the way home from a match, and for reading when you’re giving blood – if one arm is outstretched as the vampires collect a pint of my O positive, it is much easier to read a Kindle one-handed and tap to turn pages than it is to faff about with a physical book!
I still generally prefer physical books and there’s nothing better than a good browse in a book shop, but there are some times when the e-reader is the more logical and practical option.
As I go through the last twelve years, we will recall how I actually won the first of the Kindles thanks to a chance discovery of a book in a deli in Chorlton!
2010-11 The Early Years. First started blogging in August 2010, not long after I had become an auntie to my gorgeous little niece, Charlotte. The first book I actually mentioned on my blog was Howards End is On the Landing, by Susan Hill, and I think I have remarked at times that this book has been on our landing, lol!
Not at the moment, though, as we’ve had the house decorated and the book cases have not been returned to the landing yet. One of them needs painting to fit the colour scheme anyway.
I was working in Chorlton at the time my blog started and was there until the summer of 2012, so I had easy access to the Chorlton Bookshop and the Oxfam Bookshop on Wilbraham Road, plus a number of other charity shops – it was pretty good for bookworms even if it was a bit of a trek from where I live – used to take me around 50 minutes to an hour on the bus to get to work or back home again.
One lunchtime in 2011, I was at the Barbakan Deli and I found this free book lying around, How to Leave Twitter, by Grace Dent. It was actually this book which led to me getting the first of my Kindles eventually – needed a few emails to sort out, but around November 2011, I had the device in my hands! I did leave Twitter, but not until around 2015-16 when I felt it was becoming a bit toxic on there. Back in 2011, it was still fun.
2012 World Book Night. In the early months, I was considering a Charles Dickens novel as it was a special anniversary, but couldn’t make up my mind which to read, so it didn’t happen. I have read two of his books, though, those being A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. The big book-related event for me in 2012 was World Book Night as I applied and was accepted to be a Book Giver! I therefore spent the evening of my 39th birthday at the Trafford Centre, giving out copies of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.
2012 was a difficult year personally, though, due to losing my maternal grandad in the April in the run-up to my birthday, and then my redundancy from the civil service in the June. My last blogs in 2012 were in the August and then I think I got distracted by the Olympics and United signing a certain Dutch centre-forward from Arsenal… Then there is a bit of a gap…
2013-14 The Missing Years. I was blogging, but mostly on my football blog, In Off My Chest, so the book blog got a bit neglected at the time. I did still find the time for some reading, though as I hit my Big 40 in 2013 and Robin van Persie helped United win their 20th league title.
I was still very much in the Waterstone’s Deansgate book club at that time, and it was in 2013 that an author came to one of our meetings! The lady was Hannah Kent, and the book was her début novel, Burial Rites, which was inspired by the time she had spent in Iceland on an exchange programme. We decided to read it for our book club choice, and it was one of those rare occasions when we all loved the book!
The other significant book of 2013 was one I discovered in the autumn when I was on my jollies in Mexico, and it was the excellent Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly, a journey around the Shipping Forecast, which I found on a bookshelf at our hotel, and hadn’t finished it when we were flying home, so I brought it home with me to finish off and keep as a souvenir of an amazing holiday.
2015 The Bookworm’s Return. Yep, in the May and June of 2015, there was a return to book blogging, and this is where I mention my Token Annoying Book, lol! Just to prove to you that I don’t always get on with everything I read, this book that was a book club choice… let’s just say I wanted to slap Elizabeth Smart and tell her to stop acting like a sulky teenager! I really did not get why By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept got good reviews as I thought it was awful and whiny! It was like a pity party in writing!
The only good thing was that it was a short book, but I said at the time that you can save time by listening to “Love’s Unkind” by the late great Donna Summer and that would tell a pretty similar story in a 3 minute pop song! Better than wasting your time with Smart’s book and then thinking “there’s a couple of hours I’ll never get back”!
Mind you, it wasn’t all pity parties and wanting to slap authors in the summer of 2015, as there were some good books that I read and loved around that time, including Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, and Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier.
There was then another book slump later in 2015, but I ended that slump by enjoying Why the Dutch are Different, by Ben Coates, closely followed by The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. It was the book about the Dutch that actually got me back reading again, and I have found that non-fiction helps get me out of slumps. I just have to find a subject matter that interests me enough.
2016-17 Duplicate Books Saga and Trips to Wembley. So, back on track with reading, but this was around the time that I noticed that I seemed to have acquired two copies of certain books, hence the Duplicate Books Saga, and it came to a point in 2017 when I had 19 pairs of books, lol! One set of them eventually went to charity shops after offering them on this blog at one stage, lol!
The other concept around this time was Handbag Books, in other words, books that I would take around with me in my handbag. This was particularly pertinent when deciding which books to take with me on the coach to Wembley and back to see United in the FA Cup Final in 2016 and the League Cup Final in 2017 as well as taking my Kindle on both occasions.
At the time of the FA Cup Final in May 2016, I was partway through A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, which is a right chunky monkey of a book, so I got it for my Kindle as well so I could read it on the way to Wembley – there was no way I was taking that bulky paperback with me! I also need to mention that, when I finished A Little Life, I had an absolutely massive Book Hangover, and couldn’t read any fiction for the rest of 2016! How could anything follow what I had just read? So, it was factual stuff for the rest of that year.
One of the books I read when it was the League Cup Final in 2017 was The Pie at Night, by Stuart Maconie, which he signed for me later that year when I met him at Waterstone’s on Deansgate – he was there to promote Long Road from Jarrow, a signed copy of which I also own, but still need to get around to reading that one.
Adam Kay signing my copy of This is Going to Hurt. 2017 was pretty good on the book front, especially for meeting both Stuart Maconie and Adam Kay.
Other stuff in my life in 2016-17 included a couple of months at Marks & Spencer’s in 2016 and the arrival of my baby nephew, Reuben. In 2017, of course, I was on jury service and some of my blogs at the time reflect that with titles which were song titles on a legal theme… we had “All Rise” by Blue, “Love in the First Degree” by Bananarama, and “Good Morning Judge” by 10CC!
I also went to see the Pet Shop Boys twice during 2017, with a Billy Ocean gig in the middle of those occasions! At the second PSB gig, in the June, we were at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, Chris Lowe’s home town, and part way through the gig, this bloke spotted Sarah and I and led us to the front, so we got an unimpeded view of Neil and Chris for the rest of the concert!
Then, in the September of 2017, I was back in work! I started my current job at that time, so we are approaching my 5th work anniversary early next month!
I also got the magnetic noticeboard in 2017 – the one I use for the Ongoing Concerns. I had a work placement at The Range early in 2017 and I spotted it then, in the stationery section, and had to buy one.
2018-2019 Crafts and Another Book Slump. 2018 had been going reasonably OK. I was in work, made permanent, and went on holiday to Boa Vista on the Cape Verde Islands. Went to see Paul Young at the Preston Guild Hall with Sarah (although the less said about getting home from that gig the better, lol, as they’d shut off a lot of exits to the motorway and it took bloody ages!) Also went to Lapland in the run-in to Christmas and had great fun tobogganing in the snow!
I also discovered Pixelhobby at a craft show, and had a go at loom knitting as well, so it was towards the end of 2018 that I was so engrossed in crafts that I went into a book slump again. At the time, I wasn’t too worried, I thought things would pick up in 2019…
However, 12 days into the new year Dad died. I know he’d looked a bit off colour when we were in Lapland, but didn’t think it was anything that couldn’t be sorted out, so this was sudden and unexpected, and meant that the book slump continued for a while longer as I just didn’t feel like reading. I went back too soon to work and then ended up being off longer due to my bereavement.
So, it was April 2019, after we’d been to Disneyland Paris, when I returned to work and also felt like reading again. As per usual, it was non-fiction that got me out of the slump, this time the book was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, by Mark Manson which helped me find my reading mojo.
The photo was taken in Mauritius when Mum and I were on our jollies that summer. Shortly after we returned home, Mum celebrated her 70th birthday and we were off down to London for afternoon tea at Claridge’s, travelling there and back by train, in the first-class section with talking loos, lol!
I had an Optical Emergency at the end of July, when an arm came off my specs late at night and I ended up going for an eye test at Boots in the Trafford Centre and this is when I went over to having two pairs of glasses – reading specs and distance specs. I wear my reading ones most of the time, though. Appropriately enough, I started reading Eye Chart, by William Germano, which is one of the Object Lessons books that I discovered in 2019.
Went to the Lake District in the September of 2019 around the time it would have been Dad’s birthday – I knew I would have found it too hard to be in work as I was going through the firsts without him and still having some bad days. Went home via Brockholes nature reserve and then Blackpool, and it was there that I bought Pier Review, by Jon Bounds and Danny Smith, where they go round England and Wales in a fortnight to visit all the piers around the coast! Blackpool has three piers, so it was apt.
We ended 2019 with Mum and I jetting off to Madeira for the new year and some winter sun.
2020-21 Madeira, Ireland and the Coronavirus Years. So, probably a good job we got some overseas travel in at the start of that year as we wouldn’t be doing that again until this present year! After having our heads messed with in a nice way by enjoying hot weather and Christmas decorations in Madeira, we went over to Ireland in the February to see family and visit where Dad’s ashes have been interred.
It was while we were over in Ireland that our Ellie spotted the now legendary Economics for Babies, by Jonathan Litton in the library in Dun Laoghaire!
When lockdown hit in the March, it knocked my mental health quite badly, not knowing when things would be open again really didn’t help, so I went into a bit of a book slump for a couple of months until mid-May when In the Pleasure Groove, by John Taylor, got me out of the slump, so non-fiction to the rescue yet again, this time the autobiography of Duran Duran’s bass player. May was also the time when announcements were made about reopening, so that helped as I felt there were things to look forward to again.
The rest of 2020 and then 2021 meant short breaks at home, here in the UK. When we were able to, between lockdowns, we did get out and about in our own country, with me rocking matching mask and top combos, lol! 2020 saw Mum and I visit St Anne’s on Sea (the Fylde Coast Book Spree of 2020 yielded 22 books), Chester and then Bowness on Windermere in the autumn.
2021 saw Mum and I able to go to Cheshire Oaks on my birthday and have al fresco McDonald’s! We’d started the year in lockdown, but things started opening up again by the end of March and the shops opened on 12th April and also outdoor dining. Indoor dining reopened in the May.
The above photo is of me reading my belated pressie from Ellie for my 2020 birthday – originally, she’d got me a ticket for a show which had initially been postponed due to the pandemic, but was cancelled altogether, so she ordered me a book box with a teabag and block of chocolate. The book was The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell.
There was also the short break to Llandudno (the North Wales Book Buying Spree saw us return with 30 books in the boot of the car, lol), and in the August we went down to Watford and London for the Harry Potter trip, then Mum and I had a two centre short break – first up a trip to Bowness on Windermere, and from there up over the border into Scotland to stay in Gretna Green and also visit Wigtown, Scotland’s national Book Town.
That’s me with Shaun Bythell, who runs The Book Shop, and has also written a book or two, including The Diary of a Bookseller. He was lovely and signed my books for me, as well as posing for that photo, lol! Another of the books I bought in Wigtown was DevorgillaDays, by Kathleen Hart, which was one of my reads last year.
I also need to mention some of the weather and bread related books that were amongst my 70 books finished during 2021, including The Wrong Kind of Snow, by Antony Woodward and Robert Penn, Slow Rise, by Robert Penn, and The Epic of Gilgamesh, writer unknown. I also read eight of Charlie Connelly’s books, starting with Bring Me Sunshine about the history of weather forecasting in the UK.
2022 Getting Back to Normal… And so, we get to the current year with 39 books read so far this year which is pretty good when you consider that the usual distractions are back… Been to see Fascinating Aida with Mum in February, the Pet Shop Boys at the Manchester Arena in May with Sarah, and then Mum and I went to Gran Canaria in June – all events that should’ve been in 2020 originally, lol! I finished Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas, while I was on my jollies.
Also been to the Lakes again in late July, an overnight stay in Bowness and a chance to stock up on fudge and Kendal Mint Cake, lol! We also enjoyed a complimentary room upgrade, so we had a hot tub!
So, that’s about it, we have covered a lot of ground – had to as there’s been twelve years to blog about! My niece and nephew love books too, particularly Charlotte who takes after me in a lot of ways. I’m about ready to publish this and go and get on with Mudlarking, by Lara Maiklem, but I hope you’ve enjoyed this anniversary special!
I will be back again before August is over, before things get busy, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!
Joanne x x x
Books mentioned in this blog entry…
Howards End is On the Landing – Susan Hill
How to Leave Twitter – Grace Dent
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – Elizabeth Smart
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? – Maria Semple
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
The Pie at Night – Stuart Maconie
Long Road from Jarrow – Stuart Maconie
This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
Eye Chart – William Germano
Pier Review – Jon Bounds and Danny Smith
Economics for Babies – Jonathan Litton
In the Pleasure Groove – John Taylor
The Last Wilderness – Neil Ansell
The Diary of a Bookseller – Shaun Bythell
Devorgilla Days – Kathleen Hart
The Wrong Kind of Snow – Antony Woodward and Robert Penn
Good evening and welcome to another helping of the random waffle that constitutes my book blog, lol! I last blogged around a fortnight ago, so I’ve got a bit of news to bring you since then, including two more finishes and some new Ongoing Concerns, plus some happy mail – stationery supplies. So, let’s get on with it, shall we?
When I last blogged, we were a couple of days away from my friend’s birthday – my mate Sarah, who I go to gigs with, hit her Big 50 the weekend after that blog, so I can now tell you that one of her pressies from me was Revolution, the autobiography of synthesizer legend, Gary Numan. I also got myself a copy when I bought one for her, so I will get around to that eventually. I do have a music autobiography on the go, but we’ll deal with that in the OC updates.
Before we get on to current reads, however, I need to deal with some that are finished books as I have now read 31 books so far this year, three this month. Good Pop Bad Pop, by Jarvis Cocker was my 30th finish for 2022 and I can definitely recommend it. This was followed, a day later, by Atlas of Improbable Places, by Travis Elborough.
I enjoyed Atlas of Improbable Places, and if you like travel writing, especially about more unusual locations, it’s a good book to start with before going on to something like Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, or Underland, by Robert MacFarlane.
Ooh! A box! In fact, a Rowan Berry Box. What’s in it? Well, I shall reveal more as we go on. What I will say is that the theme of this box is absolutely perfect for this blog…
Before we go much further, as I have been mentioning some finished books, I need to let you know that Mum finished Windswept & Interesting, by Sir Billy Connolly, while we were on our jollies in Gran Canaria last month. I should have mentioned this a blog or two ago but forgot, so I have finally remembered to tell you, lol!
Right, well, we need to get on to some stuff that I am currently reading, and it was high time I gave some thought to some of the books that had been on the Ongoing Concerns list for a bit, so I have returned to It’s a Love Story, by Shirlie & Martin Kemp. You may recall this was a Christmas pressie from my friend Sarah not too long ago. At time of blogging, this book is now 61% read, so we are making good progress and I aim to get it finished fairly soon.
You may recall that there is a bit of a sequence with these, as I had already read True, which is Martin Kemp’s solo autobiography, and I have got a book by Pepsi & Shirlie to move onto after It’s a Love Story, and then a book by Andrew Ridgeley, so there’s that whole Spandau Ballet, Pepsi & Shirlie and Wham connection going on over four books, ha ha! You know my love of 80s music, so this was inevitable.
Ooh, I am teasing you with this box, aren’t I?! Ha ha! So, it is now open and you can see purple tissue paper and stuff from the company, Under the Rowan Trees, a small business based in Northumberland selling a wide range of stationery. You may get to see what’s in the tissue paper next, but I need to give more book news first…
With some books having come off the OCs list this month, more needed to go on it, I think I may have already mentioned Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf – yes I did, I’ve just checked my previous blog entry. That one is 10% read, but there are a couple of other new additions to tell you about. One is The End of the Road, by Jack Cooke, which is 11% read, and the other is Northerners, by Brian Groom, which is currently 12% read, so they are at the early stages. Currently focusing on some OCs that have been hanging round for a while, so will return to newer OCs later.
Talking of The End of the Road, that reminds me of the song “End of the Road” which was a UK number 1 nearly 30 years ago now, in the autumn of 1992, but can you remember which vocal group performed this chart-topper? Answer at the end of this blog entry.
Aha! That was the secret being hidden in the Rowan Berry Box! Not just stationery, but BOOK-RELATED stationery! Two kinds of pens, 3 postcards, a bookmark (naturally, lol), a book tracker notepad, bookshelf washi tape and a pin badge that says “Sleep is good but books are better”! So, you can see why I had to share this purchase with you! I kinda knew about Under the Rowan Trees as they have sometimes had a collaboration with Oops a Daisy, and you already know about my journalling and the supplies I get from them.
That’s the books and tea pin badge and the washi tape…
I am awaiting more from Under the Rowan Trees, a Rowan Berry “After Dark” box. While that one is not book-themed, it is on the theme of something to which Chief Bookworm is quite partial, particularly on her jollies. To try to guess, see if you can solve this little quiz. If you guess all the answers correctly, the first letter of each answer should spell out what the box is all about…
He wins the final Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory
Master Twist who wanted more in the Dickens novel and Lionel Bart musical…
Surname of Holden from The Catcher in the Rye.
Original Star Trek captain, played by William Shatner.
The Day of the ————, science fiction novel by John Wyndham.
First name of Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts.
Round ———— With a Fridge, very funny travel writing from Tony Hawks…
She’s in the sky with diamonds according to the Beatles song.
Singer and bassist from The Police, real name Gordon Sumner.
I will give the answers to this quiz in my next blog. I will say that the name of this after dark box is “On the Rocks” so that may well be a very big clue…
A book bench! You may remember these from a few years ago when there were some dotted around Manchester. Well, now it’s Salford’s turn! The Salford Literacy Trail started on 14th July and runs up to 9th September and my nephew’s primary school have taken part and designed one of the benches. Not sure if it’s the one above, but there are 20 book benches dotted around Salford, and I will have to get a map of the trail and have a shufty at them…
That is probably about all for now, you have had most of my news. Oh, hang on, do you want a really really REALLY bad pun before I finish? Courtesy of some of my happy mail from Oops a Daisy…
I ink therefore I am! Oh dear! I did warn you it was a very bad, groanworthy pun, though, didn’t I?!
The answers to the quiz, as I said, will be in the next blog, but I did set you a question earlier in the blog, asking you which vocal group had a UK number 1 in the autumn of 1992 with “End of the Road”, and the correct answer is Boyz II Men. How did you get on?
All that, and I have only just mentioned the weather of the past two days! I know I have done “Greetings from the Costa del Salford” blogs before now, but it was absolutely roasting on Monday and again yesterday! I had the fan on and doors open, but it was still absolutely BOILING in our conservatory, which is my office these days! It was far more pleasant today, a much lower temperature and a nice breeze.
I don’t mind it being roasting hot if I am on my jollies somewhere overseas and I’m on a sun lounger by the pool, like I was in Gran Canaria, but it’s an absolute bugger if it’s roasting hot at home and you need to work!
Anyway, enough typical British grumbling about the weather, time to bring this blog entry to a close. I will be back soon enough with the quiz answers and more of the usual waffle, but until then take care and Happy Reading!
Back again with more waffle as I have news on both the book front and the bookmark front! Plus, the usual sort of mad and random waffle you’ve come to expect from me over the years, lol!
I think I did mention, recently, that I might get a paperback copy of Britain By the Book so that I could have a physical copy to annotate for when I want to bring little gems of literary quirkiness into this blog, so I have done exactly that and have started the penciling-in and page-marking process. I have, however, now finished the book on my Kindle, so I have read 12 books so far this year, 2 this month and this is my first finished ebook for 2022.
This means I now need to find something else on my Kindle to read, at least for when United are at home and I’m in our Ellie’s car on the way home, after the match, and it’s taking a while to get away due to post-match traffic… There might not be all that many games left now this season, but there’s still a few home fixtures left and I need some reading matter just in case!
This is a little teaser in regard to something I have been up to in the last few days… I thought I would show this as it is the first of the squares I stitched and it does involve books!
One of the groups I belong to on Farcebook is Cross Stitch Friends in the UK, and this guy, Chris Gore, had been making a sampler of some of his favourite things, and was doing it by stitching these 18×18 squares representing his likes and interests… he has actually now finished it off today.
Anyway, it gave me the idea to give it a go, albeit in bookmark form, and I have come up with my first bookmark of four squares, although it still needs a border and a tassel…
The triangular house some of you may remember if you’ve been following my blog since at least the start of 2020 as it was one of the sights I saw when I was in Madeira – the triangular houses are in a town called Santana. Although it doesn’t show up as well as I like, it says Madeira in white backstitch – the background of that bit is taken from Madeiran traditional costume.
Mount Etna is on because she is my favourite volcano and the first one I ever visited and set foot on – Mum and I stood on her slopes in June 2001 when we were on our jollies. We were actually holidaying in Malta, but we had a day trip to Sicily and that involved visiting Mt Etna, and enabled us to collect some lava lumps.
Some volcanoes don’t mind, some do, and at others it’s unlucky, so check first depending on the volcano you’re visiting! With Etna, I think there’s the feeling of “she’ll always produce more of those” – which she did a fortnight after our visit when she started erupting big time!
With Etna and the Madeiran house, I sensed a holiday theme. I do read on my jollies, too, so I felt books loosely tied in with that, and then decided that the bookmark should be completed with a square depicting cocktails as I usually always enjoy some of those on my hols!
So, one more book read, one more bookmark near completion… how are the other Ongoing Concerns doing? Well, the bookmark had taken centre stage, but been making progress today with a couple of the Ongoing Concerns…
My Mess is a Bit of a Life is now 67% read, so that one is hopefully going to be finished before the month is out, and there is a decent shout of finishing I Named My Dog Pushkin, which is currently 59% read, so I may well focus on those two so we have three or four books finished by the time it comes to do my March review next week.
Tomorrow will actually mark the second anniversary of my first day working from home! Sunday 20th March was two years since I last did a day’s work in the office – I have been in the office on occasions since, but only to drop off notes to go in confidential waste and pick up fresh stationery. Yes, my pass still works, by the way, which is quite remarkable given that I’ve needed it for work only about two or three times since the original lockdown in March 2020!
Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, hot Vimto, gin and tonic, wine… pretty much any drink goes with a book!
Let’s have a shufty on my Kindle to see if there’s anything I might want to have as my next ebook given that I’ve finished Britain By the Book. I am not in a mad rush to start, though as our next home game is on 2nd April, so I’ve got a week and a bit to give it some serious thought before United play Leicester City at Old Trafford…
Ooh, got one here called Word Play, by Gyles Brandreth – I love a bit of word play, hence reading The Pun Also Rises last year. That one was by John Pollack. There’s Fire Woman, by Josephine Reynolds, which I actually started a few years ago – that one is 25% read so I could resume it. Ooh, and we have Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach – the curious science of life in space. That sounds good, and I’ve enjoyed a couple of her books already, Stiff and Gulp.
Yeah, let’s go for the Mary Roach book for my Kindle.
Well, that’s probably about it for now. Not entirely sure when I will be back, but certainly expect to be back next week for the monthly review even if I don’t blog before then. Things are busier now that we are getting back to something resembling normal here. Anyway, until the next time my blog pops up in your notifications, take care and Happy Reading!
Welcome to yet another book blog as we reach the halfway stage of March, and significant progress has been made with most of the Ongoing Concerns! With the exception of one book which has been at the 51% read stage for a while, all the others have been progressed to some extent, to the point where even my least-read book is now at the 25% read stage and my most-read book is at 75% read so heading for a finish shortly!
Yes, Britain By the Book, by Oliver Tearle, is now three quarters of the way through and thus it shouldn’t be long before that becomes my second finish for March and my 12th for the year. That one is on my Kindle, so it’ll be my first ebook finish of the year, although I wouldn’t mind getting a paperback edition so I can underline stuff and put little markers in on the pages where some of the really good bits are, as there are a lot of them!
For example, the part about Fleet Street in London – Fleet Street isn’t just about where the newspapers are printed. Did you know you could have gone for a Cheeky Nando’s on Fleet Street back in the late 1600s? Mind you, in those days, a Cheeky Nando’s would have involved having a coffee, reading the papers and discussing current affairs with the other clientele, rather than filling your face with peri peri chicken, as the location was Nando’s Coffee House!
Before we plod on with the other progress reports for the OCs, I thought I would post the above which I saw on Farcebook recently. I feel there is too much fixation on authors. It’s all very well to take an interest, but it feels like some people are obsessed with those who write books rather than focusing on the content of the books themselves!
I know what some authors look like, and I have met a few, but I don’t know what others look like. Do I care? Nope! Their gender, colour, nationality, belief system and choice of partner are an irrelevance to me. I’m interested in what they have written about!
If it’s fiction, is it a genre I like? Does the plot sound good? Is it a story I’d want to read? Is it a real page-turner that I would resent having to put down to do other stuff?! If it’s non-fiction, is it an interesting subject matter? Is it factually accurate and as up to date as possible? If I didn’t previously know about that topic, does it make me want to find out more about it? Those are the things I want to know when it comes to books!
Quite a lot of books interest me, usually at the same time as each other, which explains why I have a few Ongoing Concerns on the go at any given time! It means I can usually find one that suits my mood!
Anyway, the above photo kinda relates to the previous blog as I was wittering on about Berlin on Friday because I’d bought a book about the Stasi, the former East German secret police, and was talking about my city break in Berlin in 2012, and how the parts of the city that were in East Germany still looked Communist, as though they were still on the other side of the “Iron Curtain” and funnily enough, in one of the games of Kryss I was playing on my iPad at the time, and finished later that night, what a coincidence… the words IRON and CURTAIN right next to each other! You couldn’t make this up…
Also, I realised, after I had blogged, that I had my Berlin t-shirt on that day, and one of my magnets on the OCs board is of the Brandenburg Gate! Still think it’s totally mad that one of my word games decided to get in on the act with Iron Curtain, lol!
Back to the Ongoing Concerns now, though, as we have dealt with the 75% read book, but we have three which are at the halfway line – although I doubt they’re gonna score a goal from there like a certain Mr Beckham did against Wimbledon at the start of the 1996-97 season!
We currently have two books in joint second place, both of which are 52% read. Those are My Mess is a Bit of a Life, by Georgia Pritchett, and I Named My Dog Pushkin, by Margarita Gokun Silver. I feel those won’t be too far away from being finished soon, hopefully before March is over. Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief, by Maurice Leblanc, is at 51%, and has been for a bit, but now that I’ve made progress with some of the other books and helped them along, I may resume that one again soon.
Thing is, apart from my ebook, I have spent the last day or two focusing on the books that had not been read much, they were only at 10% or perhaps 13% read at one point not too many days ago, and I figured they needed some assistance, so these next three have made significant progress..
It’s a Love Story, by Shirlie and Martin Kemp, is now 35% read. That was a Christmas pressie from my friend Sarah the other year, as some of you may recall if you’ve been reading my blogs for a while. I have acquired some more new followers of late, though, and now have 160 followers in total, so thank you very much for subscribing to this waffle!
This leaves two more books to mention, with Elementary, by James M. Russell, at 26% read and Seashaken Houses, by Tom Nancollas, at 25% read, so none of the Ongoing Concerns are less than a quarter of the way through now, which is a great position to be in, book-wise, when you have quite a few books on the go at any one time as I do, lol!
So, those are all the Ongoing Concerns, the Seven OCs of Rhye, as it were, to amend a Queen song title a little, lol! Actually, at the end of that particular Queen song, I love how you hear “Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside”!
This blog has been an update regarding the OCs, so that’s pretty much it for now, except that my iPad has now gone onto the next song in alpha order and thus I am listening to “Seven Tears” by the Goombay Dance Band, which was a UK number one 40 years ago in 1982, pop pickers!
No, I still can’t believe 1982 is that long ago, before you ask, lol! It is, though. Especially given that I was just a 9 year old kid back then, in the juniors at primary school. Now, I’m a middle-aged old fart in my late 40s, working for my local council, and wondering where the time went and how could the 80s possibly be so long ago?!
Even the 90s aren’t all that recent anymore, which is an even more shocking fact to get my head around! I also realised I’ve been going to footy matches now for just over 30 years, and I’ve seen some dodgy referees in that time, but last night’s man in the middle… let’s just say that even the visually-impaired skiers in the recent Paralympics had better eyesight than that numpty! Ronny very helpfully indicated that perhaps the ref ought to book an appointment at his nearest optician’s…
Don’t get me started on the away team, though… falling over every 3 minutes. These are supposed to be fully-fit professional sportsmen, and yet they were displaying a ridiculous lack of balance! I didn’t fall over that much even when I was little and I have a genuine medical condition which meant my balance was pretty shite when I was young, so what’s their excuse for it?! They were diving more than Tom Daley!
Anyway, that’s about it for now! I will be back again with more waffle and more book updates soon enough, but until the next blog, take care and Happy Reading!
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
Joanne's Bookshelf 