September Review: Books, Bags, Pixels…

Hello again, fellow Bookworms!

Time once more for a monthly review of the stuff I’ve been getting up to, and it does include two books being finished off this month, one ebook and one paperback. It also includes a lot of loom knitting and a not inconsiderable amount of fiddly little pixels, lol! As you can see from the above photo! I am not sure when I last blogged, it might have been just before I went to the craft show, in which case you wouldn’t have known about the pixels as I discovered them by chance at the Creative Crafts Show on 8th September.

I had gone there looking for wool and for loom knitting stuff, and I certainly found some wool, but I chanced upon a stall run by The Craft Dookit, which was offering Pixelhobby kits and accessories and where you could do a make and take pixellated keyring! So, I paid the necessary and made a keyring, choosing a snowman design. I also bought some other kits while I was there, some keyrings and magnets, and the Planet Earth kit which you can see at the top. Yeah, before you ask, it did make me think of the Duran Duran song, but I guess you worked that out, knowing what an 80s girl I am, lol!

The Planet Earth kit does look very science fiction, doesn’t it?!

Not that there has been any science fiction read in September. Both the books I finished this month have been non-fiction, those being Your Eighties, by Sarah Lewis, on my Kindle, and Good As You, by Paul Flynn, in paperback, celebrating 30 years of Gay Britain and covering the three decades from 1984 and the release of both “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, to 2014 and the go-ahead for gay weddings here in the UK. Not only did I love all the 80s music references, but a lot of the book focused on events up here in Manchester, so there were plenty of mentions for places I know. As I think I may have mentioned in previous blogs, I had a work placement in the late 90s, where the office was on the edge of the Gay Village, so I am not unfamiliar with that part of town.

I really need to get on with Snap, by Belinda Bauer, as I need to get a decent amount of it read for 16th October, and have just over a fortnight. I also need to get on with What Does This Button Do? That’s the autobiography of Iron Maiden frontman, Bruce Dickinson, and it’s the one my friend Sarah has lent me, so I need to get it read before we go to see Madness in December at the Manchester Arena. Two months to get on with it. May have to do some each night. It’s a hardback, so I don’t really want to be lugging it around, and wouldn’t want anything to happen to it anyway, as it isn’t my book.

The next book for the book club at work is Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, by Paul Torday. I haven’t actually read that one before, although I’ve had a copy for some time now. All the previous work book club choices have been re-reads for me, but this one isn’t. On the Kindle, there’s a couple of books which I am reading, and may well be my post-match reading matter. I’m already reading them at lunchtime at work, though. The Eighties: One Day, One Decade, by Dylan Jones, is about the Live Aid gig on 13th July 1985, so that’s my 80s music fix sorted, and Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, by Lucy Mangan, is a book about books, so also right up my street! I was 12 when Live Aid took place, and was watching it on my telly. I still think, however cheesy it might sound, that “Rockin’ All Over The World” by Status Quo was the most appropriate song with which to open that gig! I have the DVD set of Live Aid. It has everything on it except Led Zeppelin, as they thought their performance was so bad that they didn’t want it on the box set because they were too embarrassed!

Sometimes I feel like I would be better off reading during the bloody match, though! Just keeping everything crossed that Jose gets the boot sooner rather than later! How can the board justify him remaining as manager when we’re losing?! It’s apparently our worst start to a Premier League season. Yes, that’s right. Even worse than under Moyesy in 2013-14! And Moyes was out of his depth as our manager, so the so-called “Special One” (more like the Boring One) being worse than Moyesy…

I know you can’t entertain ALL the time, but we can and should be able to expect our team to entertain MOST of the time! The style of play is shite, to use a technical term, and it’s not even as if it’s getting the results, is it?! It’s not even effective! The players hate it, the fans hate it… and if we don’t do well enough in the league, the business partners aren’t gonna like it either, so if that’s all the bloody directors think about, they need to wake up and smell the coffee because they NEED the performances on the pitch to be winning and attractive in order for the performances on the financial front to be good too! Whatever it costs to sack Jose and pay him off would be worth it if we can get a manager in who does things the right way! Get back to attack-minded football, give our forwards and midfielders free rein to entertain and bang in the goals, bring up a few more from the youth team, and only criticise players in private!

Defend in public, throw the teacups behind closed doors! That’s how you get players on board, that’s how you retain their trust! Then they know that even if they’ve had a total ‘mare and they know they’re going to get the hairdryer treatment, as it was known when Sir Alex was manager, they know that the gaffer will stick up for them in the press conference, and the kick up the arse will only happen either in the dressing room, or in the manager’s office at the training ground. That is the way things SHOULD be done! I wouldn’t mind if the manager came out with Arsene Wenger’s old catchphrase and told the press that he didn’t see the incident! Wenger, like Fergie, knew how to treat players. That’s why he was Arsenal’s manager for over 20 years.

Anyway, enough of that. Back to the crafts, I think. Obviously, the pixels have been a big part of this month’s creativity, especially as one of my orders arrived on Wednesday, from Crafter’s Cavern. I’m still awaiting an order from The Craft Dookit, though, with a couple of kits. As I have done cross-stitch, there is a similarity, although you’re putting diddy little pixels onto baseplates rather than threading some floss and stitching it onto aida or evenweave. The pixel shades all have colour codes, so in that respect it’s similar to stitching! There are keyrings, which are 11 pixels by 14, little squares which are 24 by 24, and standard baseplates, which are 40 by 50 pixels. You can also get XL pixels which cover 4 prongs on a baseplate (2 by 2) and are less fiddly – you can put those in by hand rather than needing tweezers!

That’s the latest finished bag, by the way! I have now started another, although the second picture shows an earlier picture of the scarf I have started. The cream wool is now being used for my latest bag, as I’m onto brown wool on the scarf – I have two huge balls of this stuff, one cream, one brown, it has a bit of a towelling feel to it, Bernat Blanket it’s called, and I’m alternating colours, about 12cm of one, then I change over to the other. On my second lot of brown now. I think of it as coffee and cream. As well as finishing  the bag, I also finished a purple snood.

That’s the snood on the left. On the right is my niece, taking after me on the music front as well as being Junior Bookworm! I came home from work one night this week to be treated to a violin recital from Charlotte! She’s just got a new violin – gone from a quarter-sized one to a half-sized one now that she’s bigger. She’s really good at playing, really fluent with it, and played us a few tunes, including the Can Can! I will be busy this coming week getting a card and gift wrap – it’s nearly my nephew’s 2nd birthday, and we’ll be having the party next weekend! Reuben also likes books, as well as diggers and dinosaurs! I understand he is also partial to Thomas the Tank Engine! Anyway, Auntie Jo is going to be busy!

Oh, and Slimming World. Nearly forgot. I have now lost over 1 and a half stones! The Monday after the craft show, I reached that particular milestone exactly, and have dropped another 3lbs since then, so I’m only 4lbs off a 2 stone loss… that’s my next aim. I have changed my target weight. I may yet change again, but at the moment it is a weight that would give me a 2 and a half stone loss in total from what I started at when I first got on the scales on my sister’s birthday in June!

I think that’s about it for now. I’ve probably covered everything… Books, loom knitting, pixels, footy, music, Reuben’s birthday, Slimming World… yep, that’s pretty much it… Hopefully there will be a Waterstone’s book club to report on in October, everything crossed for 16th October and for a few people to turn up! Until the next time I blog, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Your Eighties – Sarah Lewis
• Good As You – Paul Flynn
• Snap – Belinda Bauer
• What Does This Button Do? – Bruce Dickinson
• Salmon Fishing In the Yemen – Paul Torday
• The Eighties: One Day One Decade – Dylan Jones
• Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading – Lucy Mangan

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Not Dead Yet!

Another book finished! This was a great read for me!

Hello again, fellow Bookworms!

Back again with another blog, and to paraphrase a bit of Mark Twain, reports of the death of the Waterstone’s Book Club have been greatly exaggerated! Well, possibly! Thanks to some of my council colleagues, it looks like things are back on, as I was receiving emails earlier this week from a lady who I met by chance at the gym yesterday evening after my post-work workout, and she and at least one other person expressed an interest in joining the book club because they might want to read something more recent than the library service can provide for the work book club.

To cut a long story short, as Spandau Ballet sang back in the early 80s, lol, I had communications both from work and from a lady called Charlotte at Waterstone’s Deansgate, and I am set to meet Vivienne and others at the usual place at 6pm on 16th October to discuss Snap, by Belinda Bauer!

Thus, the book club, which looked to be popping its clogs last month after I ended up as Billy No-Mates at Waterstone’s on meeting night, has somehow pulled through and come out of intensive care! Hence the blog title, Not Dead Yet, which is, coincidentally, the title of Phil Collins‘ brilliant autobiography which I read and loved at the start of this year! I had to give that copy back as my friend Sarah had lent it to me, and I returned it to her when we went to see Paul Young in February at the Preston Guild Hall, as you may recall. However, I did manage to pick up a paperback copy when I was in Wales the other week, for a mere quid in a charity shop in Conwy, so I now have one of my own, and I have let my dad borrow it. I thought he would enjoy it, but didn’t think it would be right to have lent him Sarah’s copy!

I have let Charlotte from Waterstone’s know about the date and the book for the meeting, and I have now emailed a few of the people who have been in the book club in the recent past to let them know it’s back on, and to give them details of the date, time and book. Keeping everything crossed, although maybe not eyes, lol, that people turn up! Personally, I don’t give a shit how much or how little of the book they’ve read, I don’t always get books finished so I can’t call others out on it, and anyway, it’s turning up that matters right now! I just want enough people to turn up to make it worth doing!

I think, if enough of us do turn up, that I will make a suggestion for the next book club, which would probably meet some time in November. I know this will be an old book, but with it being 100 years since the end of the First World War, I think I might suggest that we read All Quiet On the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, or something of that ilk. Talking of the centenary of the end of WWI, a large display of poppies is going to be outside the Imperial War Museum North on Salford Quays until late November, so anyone in my neck of the woods has a couple of months to go and see it.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of large items on display in my area, this brings me back to Bee In the City, which is currently still running until about 23rd of this month, so you’ve still got around another fortnight to do any more bee-spotting! That was me last weekend, when I was on my epic bee hunt – I got someone to take a photo of me with Bee United at Old Trafford. I’d been doing a lot of bee spotting with my mum on the Friday afternoon, which I mentioned in my August Review blog, and then I continued my quest the next day, albeit on my own, visiting Media City, the Lowry Outlet Mall (where there’s a lot of little bees, including one decorated by pupils from my former high school), Old Trafford and then into town.

I was getting about by tram and by foot, and as I was walking from Old Trafford football ground to the cricket ground and tram stop, I was thinking how I was now at least in a fit state to do all this walking around. If it’d been a couple of months ago, before I started at Slimming World, I would have been knackered and having to rest a lot more than I needed to last weekend! And, despite what I had to eat during my week off work, when I went to Wales, and the Lake District, and even had an ice cream on the Saturday while making my way from one Old Trafford to the other, I still managed to lose 4 and a half pounds on Monday when I weighed in after a week off! If I can get at least another pound off this coming Monday, I’ll have lost 1 and a half stone!

Right, anyway, I was back in work on Monday, and brought my colleagues some fudge from my trip to Wales. I had a lot of emails to catch up with after having been off for a week! I’d missed the August book club meeting, where Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine was discussed, but the next meeting is on 25th September, and it’s another re-read for me, as the book is Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen, which, ironically, was the first book I read for the Waterstone’s Deansgate book club when I joined that in October 2008! After that, the October book will be Salmon Fishing In the Yemen, by Paul Torday. This will be the first one which won’t be a re-read for me, lol! I own a copy of the book, had it for donkey’s years, but not got around to reading it yet.

So, I have Water For Elephants and Snap to get on with for book clubs, plus What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson, the Iron Maiden frontman, as Sarah has lent me that one and I need to get it read so I can give it back to her when we go to see Madness at the Manchester Arena in December. Not started Snap yet, but 15% of the way through Water For Elephants and 10% read of What Does This Button Do? at the mo. I can probably skim much of the elephants one, as I have read it before, I just need to refresh myself on the story. The other two books with deadlines are new to me.

Now on to the non-deadline books, and, as you can see from the top of the blog, I’ve already finished one book this month, as I polished off Your Eighties, by Sarah Lewis, on my Kindle in the early hours of today! Not sure how I came about it – it may well have been either free or 99p on a Kindle offer, and you know what I’m like when it comes to the 1980s, so it had to be downloaded and read! This means I’m now on 26/30 on my Goodreads Challenge, only 4 more books to go to meet my target, which is pretty good considering I’ve been working a whole year now, full-time, and I got bugger all read in June and only one book either side of that in May and in July. Getting six read in August was a big help!

My current Handbag Book, besides all the ebooks on my Kindle, is Good As You, by Paul Flynn, which is a 30 year history of gay Britain from 1984 to 2014 taking in the three decades from the release of “Relax” and “Smalltown Boy” to the go-ahead for gay weddings in the UK. It’s probably the book I am most enjoying right now, and not just because of all the 80s disco music, but also because a lot of it centres around Manchester, and the writer is a Manc and not much older than me, so I know, or at least know of, many of the places in town that he mentions! I actually went to the gay village last weekend on my bee hunt, as there is a big bee in a park near Sackville Street and Canal Street. A rainbow-coloured bee, needless to say! The LGBTQ+ Queen Bee. It was moved temporarily, as I believe it was on a float during the Pride parade at the end of August, but it has returned to the park. Years ago, back in the late 90s, I had a work placement at a housing association, and the office where I was based was on the edge of the gay village.

The guy in the bee’s eye is Alan Turing, the guy who cracked the Enigma Code, therefore played a major part in helping the Allies defeat the Nazis and win the Second World War. Thus, to any decent person, this guy is a hero. Unfortunately, not to our politicians, certainly not those around at the time, who had a big problem with the fact that he was gay. Some people are just ungrateful bastards, aren’t they?! One of the many reasons why I dislike politicians, especially right-wing ones.

I’ve never been bothered as to whether a couple is a man and a woman, two men, or two women. What I think is important is that people are loyal to one another in relationships. Whether that’s a straight one or a gay one is unimportant, the important thing is to be faithful and not go seeing anyone else behind your partner’s back.

Anyway, back to the books, and Good As You is 37% read, so that’s currently leading in the Ongoing Concerns list, closely followed by The Antidote, by Oliver Burkeman at 35% read. There are some other partially-read books, but they’ll have to take a back seat to some of the books with deadlines. I can return to less urgent reads later.

I’m off to the Creative Craft Show tomorrow, at Event City, near the Trafford Centre, so I’ll be taking a bit of my loom knitting with me and looking for tips, particularly regarding different stitches, and with casting off, and on Sunday I might be going to see those poppies I mentioned earlier, which are on display outside the Imperial War Museum North. I will be back with another blog entry soon enough though, but until then, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Snap – Belinda Bauer
• Not Dead Yet – Phil Collins
• All Quiet On the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
• Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
• Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen
• Salmon Fishing In the Yemen – Paul Torday
• What Does This Button Do?  – Bruce Dickinson
• Your Eighties – Sarah Lewis
• Good As You – Paul Flynn
• The Antidote – Oliver Burkeman

August Review – Books, Bees, and a Bag

Me in Hinton’s of Conwy, when I was in Wales on Wednesday.

Hello again, fellow Bookworms! Or should that be Book Dragons, given that I was in Wales a couple of days ago?!

Have had a very nice week off work to finish August. Monday was a bank holiday here, and then I have been using up annual leave for the rest of the week as I can only carry 5 days or fewer over into my new leave year which starts in September. Hence I have been out and about this week and the weather has been great! You can have some really good days out here in the UK if the weather’s not too shite (which is a technical term, as you know by now)! We’ve actually been having a decent summer this year, helped by that heatwave in July! Usually we have to go abroad for that sort of weather! Actually needing sun lotion and after-sun in this country is something of a novelty, hence many of us still go on about the Summer of 1976!

Anyway, never mind me waffling on about the weather, another month has come to an end, and therefore it’s time for the monthly review blog, and the most successful month so far this year for finishing books off, as I have finished SIX books in August! Yay! I’ve also finished off a couple of items I’ve been making on my knitting looms, so I can show you those as well! Right, all aboard for August’s Review of the Month blog… Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for books, bees, bara brith, a bag and a baby hat…

Well, August’s first two finishes were both early in the month and they were two I loved and gave 5 stars to, although they were both very different to one another. The first was Notes On a Nervous Planet, by Matt Haig, and that was followed very closely by The Man I Think I Know, by Mike Gayle, both of them finished off within the space of 24 hours! I had discovered the Mike Gayle novel thanks to the Zoe Ball Book Club on her Sunday morning show on ITV, and gave it a go on the strength of that, so thank you, Zoe, for choosing that one as one of your ten books!

Back in the 90s, I used to think she was a bit annoying, actually, probably as she’d jumped on the football bandwagon without knowing her stuff and thus not helping the cause of female supporters, especially the likes of myself who want to be seen and respected as clued-up knowledgeable fans just as much as male supporters, but in recent times, with running this book club on telly, I’ve seen a different side of her. She’s a couple of years older than me, so I guess it’s that difference between being some annoying mid 20s bimbo back in the 90s, and now being middle aged, as I am myself, and obviously matured a lot!

Anyway, enough waffling on about Zoe Ball, and back to the books. Book club at Waterstone’s seems to be either dead or in intensive care, lol, although I do have one at work, despite missing the most recent meeting because I’ve been on leave all this week, but I did eventually finish Wigs On the Green, by Nancy Mitford, which I’d been up to around 75% of the way through when it was supposed to be the meeting night, only to end up sitting in the coffee shop area of Waterstone’s Deansgate for around 45 minutes on my own like Billy No-Mates, and then realising that no bugger else was going to turn up, so I might as well have a shufty, buy some books to cheer myself off, because I was a bit pissed-off to say the least, and then go for a Cheeky Nando’s before getting a tram home! As one does!

For a quick read, and I mean quick, my next finish was probably the shortest adult-orientated book I’ll have read all year, the 100 page Alan Bennett quickie, The Lady In the Van. OK, so Fantastic Mr Fox, by Roald Dahl, is probably the shortest book I’ve read this year, but that is a children’s book, so this is the shortest I’ve read which is aimed at an adult readership, and is a biography of the cantankerous old bat who lived in her clapped-out van in Alan’s front yard for quite a number of years! I guess he was a bit too kind to her in the first place and she took advantage of that and spent the rest of her life there.

It was also around this time that I finished my bag. Having acquired some actual knitting looms from Abakhan Fabrics in town, I set about making some stuff, and this was my first creation. The bag itself is made on that long rectangular loom, and the handle was made by using the “knitting fork” or lucet, which you also see in the photo – that two-pronged wooden thing with the hole in it. The variegated purple bits give a bit of a contrast to the sparkly white main bit of the bag.

Bee In the City – Manchester, 23rd July to 23rd September 2018

I’d gone into town to do a bit of bee-spotting, because, as I have mentioned before, Bee In the City is on in Manchester, and the surrounding area, at the moment, and runs up until 23rd September, I think, so there’s still around 3 weeks left to go bee hunting, and I’ve been doing a lot of that today, and will be doing more of it over the weekend. Certainly tomorrow. I have the app on my phone, so as well as taking photos of the bees, I’m also entering the codes on my mobile to unlock the bees and count how many I’ve seen. In terms of book-related stuff, there are bees in some of the libraries in town, certainly in Central Library, and I think there’s a bee in the John Rylands Library on Deansgate, so I will have to investigate that!

On Sunday, just before my Big Week Off, lol, I finished off the utterly brilliant French Revolutions, by Tim Moore, which has now been added to the roll of honour featuring books which have made me laugh my arse off over the years! If you like travel writing, sports writing, and/or you are in need of a damn good laugh, you should definitely read French Revolutions! It’s up there with Penguins Stopped Play, by Harry Thompson! I read that one some years ago now, and that was hilarious! You don’t even have to be into cricket to enjoy Penguins Stopped Play! Just read it!

Bara brith and a cup of coffee, Conwy, North Wales

That’s in case you were wondering what the hell bara brith is when I listed it with all the B words at the start of the blog, lol! It’s a kind of tea loaf from Wales, and Mum and I had a slice each when we were in Conwy on Wednesday. I am well aware that many of my followers are not from the UK, so I guess you would’t have known about certain items of food and drink from these shores! If I’ve got any Welsh book dragons following this blog, they’ve probably known for donkey’s years, but I know that quite a few of you are more far-flung, including the USA and Canada. The last time I recall knowing my follower count, I had either 77 or 78 followers, I think, so thank you for deciding to follow this mad blog and I hope you’re enjoying this entry!

By the way, the book I am holding in the photo at the top of the blog is not one that I actually bought, but I did purchase The Pebbles On the Beach, by Clarence Ellis, when I was in Hinton’s of Conwy.

I was in the Lake District yesterday, but was spending time in the holiday park with my sister, her partner and my niece and nephew, including sitting in a hot tub, which was lovely, and I definitely want to do that again! Therefore, I didn’t get out and about near the Lakes and didn’t get to go in any shops, so no books were purchased. However, I did get to finish off one of my ebooks during the journey there and back! Twisting My Melon, by Shaun Ryder, became my sixth finish for August, and my 25th finish for 2018 so far, thus meaning I have 5 more books to go to meet my Goodreads Challenge for this year! Woohoo!

Bringing you right up to date, as this blog draws to its close, this is the little hat I finished earlier, although it would only be big enough for a new baby. It will probably go on the stall at the church Christmas fair later this year. The size of the circle determines the size of the hat. I bought a set of four, and the biggest one would be too big, and would probably make a snood, but the next biggest one would probably make a good adult-sized hat. The third one might make a kid’s hat or at least an older baby or toddler, but that small one would be for a newborn, probably.

I’ve also been taking some books to charity shops in Monton and Eccles while I’ve been off. Occasionally, I need to do this to make way for newer purchases. Sometimes I just have to figure out “Am I going to read this?” or “Am I going to finish this?” If not, then I might as well give it away, especially if I’m likely to get a cheap copy from a charity shop in the future should I ever decide I do wish to read it! Some books crop up in charity shops all the time, so there’s a good shout that I’d get hold of it again if I do want to read it, but I’ve given away my previous copy.

Well, that’s about it for now, so I’d better get this published while we’re still just about in August, lol! Until the next blog entry, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Notes On a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig
• The Man I Think I Know – Mike Gayle
• Wigs On the Green – Nancy Mitford
• The Lady In the Van – Alan Bennett
• Fantastic Mr Fox – Roald Dahl
• French Revolutions – Tim Moore
• Penguins Stopped Play – Harry Thompson
• The Pebbles On the Beach – Clarence Ellis
• Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder

Mixed Bag on the Book Front

Hello there, fellow Bookworms!

As the title suggests, there’s been mixed news on the book front, and in the photo above, you will see two of the four books I have finished so far this month! Yep, August has been good thus far when it comes to finishing books, and I loved both Notes On a Nervous Planet, by Matt Haig, and The Man I Think I Know, by Mike Gayle – indeed, I have commented on Instagram to let him know I loved the book and would like a sequel! I have to say that there were times when I thought James DeWitt’s parents needed to go on the Literary Slap List, though! Probably a spoiler alert here, but I was chuffed for James when I got to the bit where he stood up to them and essentially told them to stop patronising him! Would definitely recommend either or both books to anyone!

Yesterday, I got two more polished off, finishing Wigs On the Green, by Nancy Mitford, and then a nice quick, short read, that being The Lady In the Van, by Alan Bennett. Enjoyed both of those as well, although more 3-4 stars rather than the Matt Haig and Mike Gayle books which would get 5 stars each from me.

So, we’re now at 23 out of 30 on the Goodreads Challenge for this year, and hopefully I will be able to make it at least to target. I didn’t want to set a ridiculous amount of books, bearing in mind that I’m working full-time and have to fit reading in at lunchtimes, evenings and weekends, when I’m not doing other stuff, such as getting weighed, going to the gym, or going to matches – although don’t start me on that! Not until the Boring Bus-Parking Pillock gets sacked! Please keep your fingers crossed for me that this happens sooner rather than later, and that we go for a proper manager – you know, one who encourages attack-minded football, promotes more players from the youth team, and who doesn’t criticise players in public! Someone who’s rather more like that nice Scottish bloke we had for 26 and a half years from November 1986 to May 2013 would be good… hint hint!

Returning to Wigs On the Green for a moment, as I need to mention the less than wonderful news on the book front – that there was only me at book club on Wednesday! I didn’t get Stephanie’s message until after the event that she wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I didn’t get to discuss Nancy Mitford with her, unfortunately. I was left feeling very upset and very angry on Wednesday and into Thursday. I have given Waterstone’s Deansgate a piece of my mind via Messenger, but they haven’t got back to me yet. I told them that I felt they’d abandoned us, and that the dwindling numbers of people attending in the last year or so since Emma stepped down and no-one took over from her proved that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way!

You’d think a bookstore would WANT to have a book club and be proud of it, and promote it as a regular event at that branch, wouldn’t you? Indeed, they used to, which makes it all the more baffling that they stopped doing so. Also, what makes it worse, is that it seems to have fallen on me to try to keep things going, and I am obviously crap at persuading people! I’ve emailed, I’ve put it on our social media platform at work to try to drum up interest, and I get one or two hinting that they’re interested, but then they don’t bloody turn up… Beyond pissed-off! This book club needs someone who is GOOD at persuading people, and that person is NOT me! I am good at a lot of things, but that is not one of them! To use a technical term, I am shite at that sort of thing! I need someone else on board to do that! (Firm believer that everyone should play to their strengths, and persuasion is not really one of mine. Persuasion is, however, a novel by Jane Austen, and one which I read some years ago – for book club, ironically enough, lol!)

I don’t even see how it’s such a problem to maintain a book club and provide a member of staff to run it. They were doing it for a good 8 years or so, and it’s not as though it was that frequent a pull on their resources! All they need to do is make ONE member of staff available for ONE hour from 6pm to 7pm for ONE evening roughly every month! Is that really too much of a demand?! Every 4 to 5 weeks, we would need one person to run a book club meeting for one hour! We don’t need the shop shutting to everyone else, we meet up in the coffee shop area, anyone is welcome to join, and we are hardly asking for some all-day event! It takes more members of staff to assist with an author event when someone comes in to read from and sign copies of their book, for crying out loud!

Waterstone’s Deansgate management – you should be ASHAMED of yourselves!

(They still haven’t got back to me yet. Not even with a shitload of flimsy excuses for no longer providing a member of staff to run our book club!)

Anyway, back to more pleasant things on the book front, and you know that I do List Challenges and see how many books on other people’s lists I’ve managed to read, or at least half-read in my uni days, lol, plus I also create lists of my own, such as the one which goes with these blogs and lists all the books I mention on here for a year! I feel a bit “late” for those lists of Books You Should Read Before You Turn 30 or even 40, as I’m 45 now, lol, but I’ve just been through one of Books You Should Read Before You’re 80, and I’d read or at least half-read 67 of them, which isn’t too shabby! It always depends on whether that other person has the same tastes in books, doesn’t it?! It was quite a long list, and did contain quite a few of my favourites, such as The Book Thief, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and The Art of Racing In the Rain, though, so whoever compiled that list has got good taste in books! As for the actual list for this blog, the current one is at 247 books, although there will be more by the time I’m finished with this blog entry, as I will be mentioning a few more books that I’m pretty certain haven’t featured on the 2018 list so far… Anyway, another challenge for you, and I’m posting a blank one for you to fill in, plus my list of answers…

Right, OK… French Revolutions is now 68% read, and Twisting My Melon is on 55% as I recall, but now that the Mike Gayle book has been finished, which I was reading in both paperback and ebook formats, I can return to Shaun Ryder on my way home from matches. Rather tempted to get the Kindle app on my mobile and actually read during matches given the bus-parking we Reds are subjected to under the current manager…

I am going to be focusing more on What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson, especially as there may not be a book club any more and I might as well focus on the one deadline I do have – to get a book read before I give it back to my friend Sarah when she comes in December to see Madness with me at the Manchester Arena! It’s a hardback, so it will be for reading at home, really.

I picked these up on Wednesday, after hanging around for 45 minutes in the coffee shop area hoping I would have a book club meeting… I think The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is short stories. The Antidote, by Oliver Burkeman, is non-fiction, possibly psychology, and appealed to me due to my oft-stated dislike of many of the self-help books available on the grounds of them being unrealistic. Some peoples’ idea of positive thinking is my idea of delusion and fantasy! If these books were realistic, if they encouraged positive thinking within the constraints of the world we live in, that would be fair enough, but all they do is get people’s hopes up, that something is going to happen which is at best a flying pig situation, and then people just end up disappointed. Personally, I think getting people’s hopes up is a shitty thing to do to people!

They are the book equivalent of sports “journalists” coming out with all that bollocks about Cristiano Ronaldo returning to United, which happened every damn transfer window for years! In other words, just a con to get money out of people and get their hopes up over something which would probably only happen once Hell had frozen over and hosted the Winter Olympics!

Cynicism is your friend! Trust me on this! If you lean towards cynicism, and tend not to believe much of what you hear or read, you are much less likely to be taken for a ride, and thus much less likely to end up feeling disappointed! A good level of education also helps. The more you use your brain, the less likely you are to be conned.

Right, OK, and another batch of books, but be fair – three of them were only £3 each! The bargains were The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown, ostensibly a kid’s book, but you know I do not give an airborne copulation about that, The German Girl, by Armando Lucas Correa, and The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter, which is a sequel to The War of The Worlds, by H. G. Wells, which I read earlier this year. The less cheap one is Good As You, by Paul Flynn, which seemed apt with Pride coming up here in Manchester next weekend, and as many of my fave singers are gay, or were in the case of Freddie Mercury and George Michael, I figured there would be a lot of mention of some of my favourite music! It covers the time from 1984, the year of both “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, up to 2014, and the start of gay weddings here in the UK (although civil partnerships had already got the go ahead some years previously and Sir Elton John was one of the first celebs to have one.) Should be a good read!

These are hats, in case you were wondering! Well, they will be, all being well, when they’re finished! One of my other things besides reading. Chunky wool for both of them, and circular looms. Craft show coming up at Event City, near the Trafford Centre, in September, so I might go to that, even if only to get some advice on casting off. I’m still pretty new to this, and I watch YouTube videos to see how to do stuff, but there are times I think I could do with someone showing me in person. Some things I don’t always “get” without someone there to show me.

Well, I think that’s about it for now, so until the next time I’m back with another blog entry, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Notes On a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig
• The Man I Think I Know – Mike Gayle
• Wigs On the Green – Nancy Mitford
• The Lady In the Van – Alan Bennett
• Persuasion – Jane Austen
• The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
• Girl With a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
• The Art of Racing In the Rain – Garth Stein
• French Revolutions – Tim Moore
• Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder
• What Does This Button Do? – Bruce Dickinson
• The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
• The Antidote – Oliver Burkeman
• The Wild Robot – Peter Brown
• The German Girl – Armando Lucas Correa
• The Massacre of Mankind – Stephen Baxter
• The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
• Good As You – Paul Flynn

Always Know Where Your Towel Is!

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

Me again! Chief Bookworm is back, although this is probably going to be a minor update and a fair bit of random drivel, so fasten your seatbelts for this blog! Personally, I don’t see dog ears as a benefit of books – I think you should use a bookmark! And I have a Kindle, indeed I have two, my old one and my Paperwhite, and can confirm I have never had adverts pop up when I’ve been reading. That just tends to happen when you’re on Facebook and you click on some article to read, and you get stupid ads on that website getting in the way of the writing, but that’s not a book problem, that’s an internet problem!

There are also some perks to ebooks, though, such as being able to store shitloads of books on one device, and the ability to change font size, which you can’t do with a paperback or hardback, and which comes in handy for anyone with visual impairment who needs large print, or if your eyes are simply a bit tired and maybe you want a larger font temporarily. There’s also some good offers on with ebooks, daily deals and suchlike, and many of the classics of literature are often free as they were written so long ago that they are out of copyright. So, if you fancy some Austen, Dickens or one of the Brontë sisters, and you have a Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or other electronic reading device, you should be able to download them for absolutely nought pounds and nought pence, or zero dollars and zero cents if you’re across the Atlantic from me!

Right, other various bits and bobs of news…

Chief Bookworm has lost a stone! I think I did mention, in my last blog entry, that I needed to lose 2lbs at tonight’s weigh-in to have shifted my first stone, and I actually lost 2 and a half pounds, so I’ve lost a stone and half a pound since I started 6 weeks ago on my sister’s birthday! I’ll probably have a few pairs of baggy trousers soon, and that’s well before I go to see Madness in December with my friend Sarah, lol!

As we’re on 6th August, many happy returns to one of my favourite footballers of recent times, as Robin van Persie is 35 today! RvP, along with Carrick, was hugely responsible for helping my lads win their 20th league title in 2013, particularly as Robin scored a hat-trick at home to Aston Villa the night before my 40th birthday to get the title race wrapped up with 4 games to spare that season! I just wish the bus-parking eejit currently in the managerial hot seat would park his damn bus as far away from Old Trafford as possible, and that we could get a manager who will deliver our 21st title! You do NOT win the league over here by being a cure for insomnia!

Oh, and, sort of loosely related, as it does pertain to sport and exercise, I have finally got around to joining the local leisure centres – I say that as a plural because if you purchase membership, there are 8 centres located around the Salford area and you can go to any of them to make use of their facilities! I went a couple of times last week for workouts after I had joined and had my induction, and I will be going tomorrow after work. Got some kit together, including a big pink IN Salford towel! As it says in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by the late great Douglas Adams, you should always know where your towel is! If you do, that makes you a frood!

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a brush but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

So, there’s just a section of what the Guide says about towels! Actually, I have a biography of the late Douglas Adams, by Jem Roberts, entitled The Frood, so I might get around to reading that eventually, lol! Not right now, though, as I’ve got plenty on my Ongoing Concerns list and I really need to get a few books off the list!

Wigs On the Green is a priority, need to try to get that read by next Wednesday, so going to have to push that on a bit. Maybe I could read while having a workout? OK, not on a treadmill, I don’t think that would be safe if I got so engrossed in a book I forgot to keep walking, but I reckon I could get away with it on an exercise bike! After all, you just sit there and you’re in control of the speed on those… it’s up to you how fast or how slowly you pedal, so you could feasibly set a workout time, listen to your workout playlist on your phone and have a good read as you cycle away on your stationary bike! Actually, the most appropriate read would be French Revolutions, by Tim Moore, as that’s about cycling the route of the Tour de France! I have Sir Bradley Wiggins‘ autobiography, My Time, lurking somewhere, I’m pretty sure, so that could be a future read while on an exercise bike, lol!

Right, I’ve found Wiggo’s book, and also Unbelievable, by Jessica Ennis-Hill, and some books about the Olympics, lol! The First London Olympics 1908, by Rebecca Jenkins, and The Games, by David Goldblatt. Also, lurking on my bass amp, is Twin Ambitions, by Sir Mo Farah, and I also have the autobiography of Greg Rutherford, Team GB’s Olympic long jump champion from London 2012. Unexpected is in my book chest in the garage, I think. A fair few sports books to be getting on with when I finish laughing my arse off over Tim Moore‘s attempts to cycle the route of the Tour de France and deal with other French road-users, actually, come to think of it, French people in general… This book is definitely going to join the list of books I’ve laughed my arse off while reading! I thought Nul Points was funny, but this is just bloody hilarious! If you want a damn good laugh, read French Revolutions!

That’s a template for you all, by the way! Save it to your computers, print it out and use it for your book journals – I found it the other day and that page has 30 books, so perhaps you could do your all-time top 30 favourite books? Or a genre, such as your top 30 fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, romance, horror, crime, Young Adult, etc… You might want to do your Top 30 books about music or about sport, or travel… or your top 30 books that made you laugh, or that made you cry! All entirely up to you, but see what you can do with it! I could probably fill a page with books which made me laugh! One of the reasons I read is to be amused! I like to be entertained, and I like to learn new stuff, but I do have a thing for books which promise a damn good laugh!

It was probably around this time in 2010 that I first started this blog, so consider the template a treat from me to celebrate my 8th Book Blog Anniversary! It has grown quite a bit in these eight years – I now have over 70 followers who subscribe to my random waffle which also happens to mention book-related stuff, ha ha!

Anyway, I think that’s about enough utter drivel for now, and let’s be fair – I have mentioned a few books on here tonight after all, lol! When I’ve made some more progress on the OC List, I’ll probably be back again with a further report… Until the next blog entry, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books read in this blog entry…

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (The Trilogy of Four) – Douglas Adams
• The Frood – Jem Roberts
• Wigs On the Green – Nancy Mitford
• French Revolutions – Tim Moore
• My Time – Sir Bradley Wiggins
• Unbelievable – Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill
• The First London Olympics 1908 – Rebecca Jenkins
• The Games – David Goldblatt
• Twin Ambitions – Sir Mo Farah
• Unexpected – Greg Rutherford

July Review – Out of the Slump

Hello there, fellow Bookworms!

Last day of July, so it’s review time, and this makes it a 3rd blog for the month! Yay! Plus a book finished and a bookmark made – that being the red woolly one I made on my afro comb, which you saw with my copy of Wigs On the Green, by Nancy Mitford, in my previous blog! That book, as I mentioned recently, is a third of the way through, 34% read, and there are two weeks to go to my book club at Waterstone’s on Deansgate, or there will be tomorrow, anyway! Next aim for that one is to get it to 50% read.

Anyway, I finished Ego Is the Enemy, by Ryan Holiday, so for the first time since early May, I’ve had an addition to my Goodreads Challenge list, now at 19/30, and it has been worth doing some Bookstagramming! I have also had to update unpublished lists on List Challenges, besides the one I do for this blog, which you will get to see either at the end of December or the start of 2019! The list is already over 200 books long, 227 as I type this part, but I will be adding to that with this blog, probably.

Yesterday, 30th July, Emily Brontë would have been 200! I studied Wuthering Heights when I was at uni, way back in the early to mid 90s, but have to admit I found it a struggle, and when it comes to works by the Brontë sisters that I have read, I must say I found Jane Eyre, by her sister Charlotte, an easier read. I read that one way back when I was in the 3rd year at high school, what would now be known as Year 9. When it comes to Wuthering Heights, I do like the song by Kate Bush, lol! Kate herself had a special birthday yesterday, too – her Big 60!

Right, anyway, never mind all that, time to get on with the book review for July… I’m thinking of taking Hawksmoor off the OC List or only mentioning it if I make any further progress with it. It’s been stuck at 58% read for ages now, so unless I move it on a bit, is it really worth mentioning? With the new footy season almost upon us, there’s every likelihood that I’ll be returning to Twisting My Melon, by Shaun Ryder, which was at 55% after the last time I read some of it, but if we have to wait ages in the car to get out of the Old Trafford car park after a match, then I can see Shaun getting off my OC list by the end of the calendar year, and another ebook being finished. As I mentioned in my previous blog, my season ticket arrived last week – a sure sign that another Premier League campaign is on the horizon!

Talking of United, Shaun Ryder and all things Manc, the bees are in town! I know I have mentioned this earlier this year, but now town is a hive of activity due to Bee In the City! I know we often say that town is “buzzin'” but it really is at the moment, and the giant bees are here until around 23rd September. I shall have to go into town and have a shufty! Perhaps this weekend.

Returning to ebooks for a moment, Fire Woman by Josephine Reynolds is on 25% read, that being the account of Britain’s first female firefighter. The other book that I’ve got ongoing as an ebook is one where I’m doing it part ebook part paperback as I have both formats for this novel – that book being The Man I Think I Know, by Mike Gayle, which I discovered recently thanks to the Zoe Ball Book Club on telly (Sunday mornings on ITV – I record it on Sky+ as I’m usually having a lie-in, lol!). The Mike Gayle novel is at 18% at the mo, although I’m thinking that’s what I’m going to read once I’ve finished this blog! I am giving books a bit of a push… how much of a particular book I can read in half an hour, that sort of thing…

I mentioned Notes on a Nervous Planet, by Matt Haig, in my last blog, and I started reading that last night, getting 22% of it read in the wee small hours, and improving slightly on that before starting this blog, by getting it to the 26% mark! Also at 26% is French Revolutions, by Tim Moore. This is the guy whose book, Nul Points, about the acts which failed to register any votes in the Eurovision Song Contest, I read and enjoyed last year, and in this one, which had been knocking around my room for a while, he gets the mad idea to cycle the Tour de France route! As we’ve just had the Tour de France, won by Welshman, Geraint Thomas, I thought it would be an appropriate read.

As well as my red bookmark, this is some of my other stuff – ongoing items on my improvised looms. This just gives you an idea of some of the other things I get up to when I’m not reading! One of the other things I’m up to is making some attempt at shifting the pounds, and I had lost two and a half pounds yesterday evening at Slimming World, and need only two more pounds off to have lost my first stone!

Some recent purchases there, which I forgot to mention in the previous blog, apart from the Mike Gayle book. As with Gayle‘s novel, Dark Pines, by Will Dean, is also one of the books which has been reviewed on Zoe Ball’s TV programme. That one is in the “Scandi crime” genre, and features a deaf protagonist, which is an unusual angle. Three Things About Elsie is the second novel by Joanna Cannon, who I met a couple of years ago when she was signing copies of her début novel, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep. You might also be familiar with the name of Mohsin Hamid, as he has had a few novels published, most notably, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which I read and enjoyed some years ago now. Exit West piqued my interest because of its plot, in which black doors are rumoured to appear and people who walk through them leave one city and enter a different one! Sounds intriguing!

Technically, we’re now on for 1st August, but this is still the July Review, and I still have a few more books to mention before I get this published. I think I may have listed a book called The Note not too long ago, a novel by Zoë Folbigg. Anyway, The Distance, also by the same author, was one of my purchases last week, along with The 1,000 Year Old Boy, by Ross Welford, and The Boy At the Back of the Class, by Onjali Q Rauf. Those two are essentially children’s books, but you probably already figured out how many shits I give about stuff like that! If it sounds like a good read, I’m up for it! The only books which need an age restriction are ones containing adult material – erotic novels, in other words, but unless there’s a lot of sex involved, the beauty of most books is that they’re open to all ages!

That’s about it now for the July Review, I’ve mentioned a lot of books, and given progress updates, so until the next blog entry, take care and Happy Reading! Oh, and keep cool, as the heatwave’s supposed to be returning!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Wigs On the Green – Nancy Mitford
• Ego Is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday
• Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
• Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
• Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder
• Fire Woman – Josephine Reynolds
• The Man I Think I Know – Mike Gayle
• Notes On a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig
• French Revolutions – Tim Moore
• Nul Points – Tim Moore
• Dark Pines – Will Dean
• Three Things About Elsie – Joanna Cannon
• The Trouble With Goats and Sheep – Joanna Cannon
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
• Exit West – Mohsin Hamid
• The Note – Zoë Folbigg
• The Distance – Zoë Folbigg
• The 1,000 Year Old Boy – Ross Welford
• The Boy At the Back of the Class – Onjali Q. Rauf

June Review and Relevant Reading…

Hello, fellow Bookworms!

This might be short. June has not been a good month on the book front, as nothing has been finished off. However, some reading was done on my holidays, and I did acquire a book while I was in Boa Vista, Cape Verde Islands!

I took my new Kindle Paperwhite on my jollies, and certainly read some more of Twisting My Melon, Shaun Ryder‘s autobiography, while I was on the plane, on the way to my holiday destination, and got that up to 55%, so that is over the halfway mark. Probably the best result on the reading front last month, as we are now in July.

Oops, as we are now on 1st July, before I go any further, it’s time to wish my Canadian followers a very Happy Canada Day! Hope you’re enjoying your long weekend!

For my American followers, advanced wishes for a Happy Independence Day this coming Wednesday!

Right then, on with the books and the bit of reading that I have managed last month. I didn’t end up reading Spirals In Time, the book about seashells, but did find a book at the hotel, which I started and then brought home with me, Islander, by Patrick Barkham. This is a journey around the UK archipelago, visiting little islands around the British Isles, and I read around the first 15% of it, so it joins the Ongoing Concerns. Even it’s about my own set of islands, I was on an island from another set of islands when I started reading it, so it still seemed apt. Plus, it’s a holiday souvenir, lol, just like Attention All Shipping was when I brought it home from Mexico five years ago!

Relevant Reads – Dune on a dune!

So, as you can see above, I did it! I read Dune on a dune! Well, I did read a page or two of it. Only just started, so it can’t go on the OCs just yet, I would have to read more of it for it to go on that, but I got the Relevant Reads photo opportunity, so I want to see yours! Doesn’t have to be exotic! Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye sitting in a field of rye? Kitchen Confidential in a kitchen? Alone in Berlin while alone in the German capital city?! I want your “relevant reads” stories and evidence! I’ve been writing these book blogs for nearly 8 years now, and I’d like to hear from those of you who have been kind enough to decide to follow my blogs!

Spain v Russia is in extra time… is it going to be won in extra time, or am I going to have to shuffle off and watch a penalty shoot-out? Come on, Spain!

Anyway, May’s lack of reading has continued into June. I had only finished off one book at the start of May, and that was the last one I added to my Goodreads Challenge list, Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, by David Seed. I’ve done some cross-stitch, I’ve been on my jollies, come back, gone back to work, had family birthdays and some seriously boiling weather, and joined Slimming World, but there’s not really an awful lot to report on the book front!

The other thing is that the current heatwave makes me feel tired at times. I just want a siesta, lol! I don’t really feel like reading. I might nod off, especially if the book wasn’t really grabbing me! Even if I was enjoying it, I might still be too sleepy.

Spain and Russia is going to a penalty shoot out…

Russia won on penalties. Not what I wanted. Croatia v Denmark at the moment, which is still 1-1 after both teams scored very early! Right now, that looks like heading for extra time. I don’t really mind who wins. Slight preference for Denmark, as United have had a few Danish players in the past, (Jesper Olsen, Peter Schmeichel and Anders Lindegaard), but I wouldn’t be upset if Croatia won, especially after they stuffed Argentina 3-0 in that group game! I have harboured an immense dislike of the Argentinian national side since Mexico ’86! I was 13 when that World Cup was on, so it’s 32 years now!

Book club on Wednesday. I have read a little bit, and I mean a LITTLE bit of Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, and I have liked what I have read, but I just haven’t been up for reading anything at the mo. So, I won’t discard the book. Even if I haven’t read much of it by Wednesday, which I won’t have, it may be something I return to at a later date. A few years ago, during a reading slump, there were books I read a bit of and liked, so I have not completely given up on those, I might return to The Sisters Brothers some day, amongst others. I do like the cover of that one, it’s very clever!

At least I will have another fortnight for what will be a re-read, as a book club has been started at work, and the first meeting is on 18th July, at lunchtime, and we’ll be reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer. As I have mentioned on here before, this book was a book club read some years ago for the Waterstone’s Deansgate book club, but it’s quite a while since I read it, so I don’t mind that my council colleagues have chosen something I’ve already read.

The other thing I need to mention is that there is now even a TV book club here in the UK, on Zoe Ball’s programme on Sunday mornings. I have set the series to record, which is a wise move as I was on holiday when the series started, and I am usually having a lie-in on a Sunday anyway, so I can catch up later. Well, I can when the footy’s over, but Denmark v Croatia has gone into extra time…

Not sure which books have been discussed since the first one, but Zoe started with the book which was my favourite read from last year, the excellent This is Going to Hurt, by Adam Kay! I think it has recently come out in paperback, but I bought the hardback last year and then got it signed when Adam came to Waterstone’s Deansgate in the autumn! I think as many people as possible should read it, although maybe doing so in public might not be a good idea as you’ll get some funny looks when you laugh your head off at certain bits! The photo above is from when Adam was signing my copy of his book.

Well, that’s about it for now, although the Danes and Croatians are still playing at the moment, so no result as yet. Still 1-1 from right at the start of the match. Until the next blog, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder
• Spirals In Time – Helen Scales
• Islander – Patrick Barkham
• Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
• Dune – Frank Herbert
• The Catcher In the Rye – J. D. Salinger
• Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
• Alone In Berlin – Hans Fallada
• Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction – David Seed
• Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
• The Sisters Brothers – Patrick DeWitt
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer
• This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay