Twelve Years a Blog: The Anniversary Special!

Hello again, fellow Bookworms!

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 Devorgilla Days, 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
• Slow Rise – Robert Penn
• The Epic of Gilgamesh – Unknown
• Bring Me Sunshine – Charlie Connelly
• Seashaken Houses – Tom Nancollas
• Mudlarking – Lara Maiklem

Last Book Blog of the Decade!

Crossy Road Christmas: My nephew, mum, niece and myself on our iPads, lol!

Hello there, fellow Bookworms!

It has just dawned on me that this is not just the last blog of this year, but it is also the last blog of this decade as the 2020s start very soon! Tomorrow, I’ll be busy preparing for an upcoming event, and then I will be unavailable due to that, so I am blogging today for the final time this year and indeed for the 2010s. I started this book blog back in the summer of 2010, not long after I became an auntie, so you have been hearing from me on here for the best part of the decade, give or take a few months, and the occasional gap in blogging due to book slumps and stuff.

Thus I shall start by looking back on this year’s books that I’ve read, and then we can have a look at stuff from across the decade…

I have managed to read 20 books this year, which is not bad considering that I didn’t get a book finished until April, just before my birthday, as I didn’t feel like reading prior to that having lost my dad in January. I had already been in a book slump at the end of 2018, but bereavement added a few more months to that, before I felt ready to read again in April. The first one I finished was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson, which I really enjoyed. As I have said on here, many times, I am not a fan of self-help books in general, but I find the odd one or two which are relatable.

I then got into the Object Lessons books, a series of non-fiction books about various objects or things, so I am going to list those here, including my current one, Hotel, by Joanna Walsh, which I have started, although that may well be finished off in 2020 as my first book of next year.

• Souvenir – Rolf Potts
• Luggage – Susan Harlan
• Personal Stereo – Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
• Bookshelf – Lydia Pyne
• Sock – Kim Adrian
• Eye Chart – William Germano
• Hotel – Joanna Walsh

So, six Object Lessons books read during the course of this year, and a seventh one started. I don’t need to list the OL books at the end of this blog now, as I’ve done that up here. Gets those mentioned.

Some poetry was read in 2019, three anthologies made my list. You Took the Last Bus Home, by Brian Bilston, The Luckiest Guy Alive, by John Cooper Clarke, and One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, by Neil Tennant, as I am classing song lyrics as poetry for the benefit of this blog. Neil came to the Royal Northern College of Music in October as part of the Manchester Literary Festival, so me and my friend Sarah, fellow Pethead, went to see him. Brian Bilston is coming to Manchester in February, so I will have to sort that out and look at tickets for that. I think that is near the universities in town. Then I can take my books with me and have them signed. He’s the guy who often posts his poetry on social media -I’ve seen him on Facebook and Instagram regularly.

You Do You, by Sarah Knight, was next on the finished list after Brian Bilston and John Cooper Clarke. By the way, I particularly recommend the poem “Pies” by John Cooper Clarke. I think there’s even a YouTube clip available of him reading that poem out on TV quiz show, Countdown! Then came a couple of books on the disability/medical condition front. First up, The Girl With the Curly Hair, by Alis Rowe, which I read on my Kindle, and which deals with her autism. I have been following her posts on Facebook for some time now. Then came I’m Only In It For the Parking, the autobiography of Lee Ridley, the Lost Voice Guy who won Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago.

Ole, by Ian Macleay, was next, which I finished when I was on my jollies in Mauritius. A biography of our current manager, the Legend who put the ball in the Germans’ net in the Nou Camp on 26th May 1999. He scored against them again in May this year when we had the 20th anniversary match at Old Trafford and our old boys stuffed Bayern Munich’s old boys 5-0!

Four Object Lessons books followed, from Luggage through to Sock, then came The Prison Doctor, by Dr Amanda Brown, which I think I got from Asda if I’m not mistaken. That was a very interesting read. Then came the first of only two works of fiction I have read this year, Trinkets, by Kirsten Smith, a YA novel about a trio of teenage shoplifters who end up as unlikely friends because the cops send them on a course to try to stop them being a bunch of tea leaves!

Adam Kay‘s book, ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, was next. Very funny, my only complaint being that it was too short! Then I finished Pier Review, which was one of the books I bought in September when Mum and I went to the Lake District and then came home via Brockholes and Blackpool. I bought Pier Review, by Jon Bounds and Danny Smith, at Waterstone’s in Blackpool, as it seemed appropriate due to the town having three piers. Really enjoyed that book. I think my late Dad might even have enjoyed that one! Wish he was still here so I could tell him about it and lend him my copy.

I have added the Neil Tennant book around this point on my finished books list, as it was the autumn when I went to see him at the RNCM. It’s a book of song lyrics, so I’m classing it as poetry, and you can just dip into poetry books. After that comes Eye Chart, by William Germano, which I started around the time I needed new specs! As you may recall, I had an optical emergency at the end of July and had to take a day off work to go to the optician’s and have an eye test. I ended up with two pairs of specs, one for distance, one for reading. I’ve got my reading specs on at the moment as I type this blog.

So, we now come to my most recent reads, which are Me, by Sir Elton John, which I totally recommend, and A Man Walks Into a Kitchen, by Robert Graham, which is my work book club’s current reading matter. That one is really short, probably only really a novella or short story, so I was able to finish it pretty quickly and get a 20th book finished this year.

Right, so let’s now look back on the whole time I’ve been blogging! I started in August 2010, just after I’d become an auntie to Charlotte, Junior Bookworm. I currently have 93 followers, so thank you so much for reading my waffle!

I started off in 2010 looking at e-readers, of which I have since owned a few, including my current Kindle Paperwhite, and such themes as books set in different countries, and the fact that you always seem to find the same books in lots of charity shops. There are certain titles which always seem to be on the shelves in those places! Never did get round to the reading around the world thing that I mentioned back then, though, but I may have covered a fair few countries in the books I have read and mentioned on here since that summer.

2011 saw me, evetually, receiving my original Kindle, which I won as a result of finding a book at Barbakan Deli in Chorlton on my lunch hour one day. The book was How To Leave Twitter, by Grace Dent. I’ve seen her on Masterchef a few times, actually, as she’s a food critic and restaurant reviewer. I also blogged about growing up as a bookworm and the books I read as a kid, some of them being those I had to study at school and college, and then at uni in my early adult life. There’s also a blog about footballers’ autobiographies as I had met Paul Scholes at a book signing in the Trafford Centre and got my copy of My Story signed.

2012 marked 200 years since Charles Dickens was born, but I didn’t actually get around to reading any of his works that year. I have read Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol, but not in that particular year. Incidentally, I bought my niece a copy of A Christmas Carol – it was one of the books I bought her for Christmas just gone! She has seen an adaptation of it and talked about it at school, so I felt she was ready for a copy now.

It was also in 2012 that I took part in World Book Night, and spent the evening of my 39th birthday, 23rd April, giving out copies of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, in the Trafford Centre. I ended up giving them to various members of staff in shops. It was a Monday night that year, and things were pretty quiet, so I think people were quite pleased that they were getting a free book. I also had one of my rants about book snobbery in this year, and also about why some books have different titles in different countries, which just confuses people! I mentioned The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave, which is known as Little Bee in the USA and New Zealand. I am putting both editions on my List Challenges list. Feel free to tick off which one you’ve read. Or both, as it’s the same damn story anyway!

There are no blogs in 2013 or 2014. I was having something of a book slump at times, and at others, I was just so busy doing other stuff that I forgot to blog! I hit my Big 40 in the April of 2013, and Manchester United won their 20th league title. In fact, the title was declared the night before my birthday thanks to Robin van Persie’s hat-trick at home to Aston Villa, so the title celebrations and my birthday kinda merged into one! In the October of that year, Mum and I went to Mexico – one of the best holidays I’ve ever had! That’s where I discovered Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly, which I have mentioned on a great number of occasions since, lol! I had read I Am the Secret Footballer, by The Secret Footballer, while I was in Mexico, but finished that while I was over there. I hadn’t finished Attention All Shipping, so I brought it home with me.

I think it was in 2013 that Hannah Kent came to one of our book club meetings – pretty sure it was around that time. Burial Rites had just been published and she was promoting it, so she came to our meeting and she was lovely. Told us all about the background behind it. She’s Australian, but had gone on this one year exchange programme to Iceland. While she was in Iceland, she found out about the last woman to be executed in that country, and that’s what formed the basis of her historical fiction novel. We read it for our book club and loved it.

So, the next time I blogged, we were in 2015, and I was not enamoured with Elizabeth Smart, as I had had to read By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept for my book club, and I thought it was just a pity party in writing! I just wanted to slap her and tell her to stop sulking like an overgrown teenager! That book may have been short, but it really wasn’t short enough! I didn’t understand at all why it got such rave reviews. All you need to do is listen to “Love’s Unkind” by Donna Summer, and it would tell a pretty similar story in a 3 to 4 minute pop song, and spare you having to read Ms Smart’s book!

On a better note, though, I did read some good books at that time, including Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, and Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, all of which I definitely would recommend to my followers! There was another book slump, but then I enjoyed Why the Dutch Are Different, by Ben Coates, and The Art of Racing In the Rain, by Garth Stein at the end of 2015, and I was back in reading mode.

2016 saw a glossary on the blogs, and the introduction of the concept of Handbag Books! I also came up with Chunky Monkeys, I think, for some of my large books, particularly anything with 500 or more pages. A lot of historical fiction novels are chunky monkeys, although not all of them. Tracy Chevalier writes historical fiction and her books are not bulky.

I had a massive rant about self-help books at one point in 2016, and about how ableist they are. Too many of them seem to be written by some top sports coach or some sergeant in the armed forces or whatever, and they are used to dealing with super-fit people on a day to day basis, so I don’t think it occurs to them that there are people out there whose bodies are not as capable as those of the people the writers deal with! There are plenty of bookworms out there with various medical conditions and/or disabilities and I don’t think self-help books really take any of that into account.

Plus, of course, there was the notorious Duplicate Books List! Yep, over the course of several blogs, particularly around 2016 and 2017, I blogged on a number of occasions about the fact that there were several books of which I owned two copies! I think it got to the stage where there were 19 books on that list! I ended up giving one set of them away to various charity shops in the area.

There were some photos of my cross-stitched bookmarks, including one which was a tribute to David Bowie who had died in the January of that year, and a Blind Date With A Book was unwrapped on the blog for Valentine’s Day. It was also in 2016 that an Oxfam bookshop hit the news – their bookstore in Swansea, South Wales, had been donated so many copies of the Fifty Shades trilogy that they’d been able to build a fort out of them in their back room! They were saying that they were happy to receive donations of any other books, but please, pretty please with a cherry on top, no more Fifty Shades books!

I had a go on an accordion at Forsyth’s in March 2016 as part of their Learn To Play Day. Seriously? That was 2016? Wow! Longer ago than I thought. I actually took part in Learn To Play Day again this year, although this time I had a lesson on the cello. I have played quite a lot of musical instruments over the years, as regular followers will know, lol! I don’t just read books, I also read music! That’s for another blog another day, though. When the topic gets back round to music again, which it often does with me, I will no doubt blog about all the instruments I’ve ever had a go of, whether they’re ones I’ve had a one-off go at, or those that I have played frequently and attained a decent level of proficiency on.

I took some books and the Kindle down to Wembley in May 2016 to see United beat Crystal Palace 2-1 in extra-time in the FA Cup Final. On my Kindle, I had downloaded A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, as I was not willing to lug my paperback edition to Wembley and back!

Talking of Manchester United…

Burnley 0 Manchester United 1. Anthony Martial 44 minutes. Woohoo! Get in!

Tony Martial came from France

English press said he had no chance

Fifty million down the drain…

Tony Martial scores again!!!

Sorry, not sorry! Just getting a bit excited as my lads have scored just before half time at Turf Moor in tonight’s evening fixture. I’m a Stretford Ender as well as a bookworm! Half-time now and it’s 1-0 to Manchester United. So far so good.

Anyway, I was on about A Little Life, wasn’t I? Oh, blimey! That was a book and a half, wasn’t it?! 720 pages! I really enjoyed it, but it was such a big pull emotionally that I ended up with a massive Book Hangover afterwards and really couldn’t bring myself to read any more works of fiction for the rest of 2016! Good job I also like non-fiction books! Spent the remainder of that year reading factual stuff, including Faster Than Lightning, by Usain Bolt, which my friend Sarah had lent me, and The Rules of the Game, by Pierluigi Collina, the former referee, the guy who reffed the 1999 European Cup Final in the Nou Camp when United did the Treble.

Before we move on to 2017, must mention that I gained a nephew in 2016 when Reuben was born that October, Junior Bookworm’s baby brother! Charlotte has been reading to her brother from the start, thus ensuring he also likes a good book! If the book is about dinosaurs or diggers, better still! He LOVES dinosaurs. He has so many of them that you could easily recreate a model version of Jurassic Park at my sister’s house! Charlotte is very much into Harry Potter, I am proud to announce! She is also into her music, she sings, and also learns violin and piano. She has just had a violin exam before Christmas, although I think we will get to hear how she’s done in her Grade 1 some time in the new year.

OK, on to 2017 in our book blog review… A year in which some of my books got rather over-excited at a United goal and fell over, lol, and I went down to Wembley again, this time for the League Cup Final, which we won 3-2 against Southampton. We also won the Europa League that season, although I didn’t go to that final in Stockholm. As for the toppling books, it was early February, United were away to Leicester City and when we got our first goal, two piles of books fell over! We ended up winning 3-0 as I recall.

There was also some literary time travel in 2017 after I got an idea from Facebook. I went back in time to 1985 with 12 books for my 12 year old self. This is also the year I finish off Pet Shop Boys, Literally, by Chris Heath, ahead of seeing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe in concert twice that year! I saw them in the February at the Manchester Arena, and then in the June at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, Chris Lowe’s home town. I also saw Billy Ocean in concert that year, that was in the April at the Lowry Theatre on Salford Quays.

And, of course, 2017 saw me back in work! Yay! In September 2017, I started my current job as an administration officer for my local council. At first it was 6 months, but my manager kept extending it, and then it became permanent. So I’ve been there two and a bit years now. Reading time is often lunchtime or after work these days. And on my jollies, obviously. Being back in work, I have the pleasure of annual leave once again.

Couple of notable author events in 2017 at Waterstone’s on Deansgate. Stuart Maconie was there to talk about Long Road From Jarrow, so I met him and he also signed my copy of The Pie At Night as well as the aforementioned book. I still need to read Long Road From Jarrow, actually. Anyway, the other event was Adam Kay promoting This Is Going To Hurt, so I was able to meet him and get my copy signed. That was my favourite book of 2017! Very moving in parts, hilarious in others!

OK, what did 2018 bring on the book front? Another autobiography lent to me by my friend Sarah, this time Not Dead Yet, by Phil Collins, which was a really good read. I also read some science fiction classics, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds, both by H. G. Wells. Science fiction was probably created with that novel – certainly the idea of alien invasion as a theme. I also enjoyed Russian Winters, by Andrei Kanchelskis, our former winger. It covered his whole career in football and pretty much brought me up to date on what happened after he left United in 1995. He was one of my favourite players back in the day.

And on the subject of football…

Burnley 0 Manchester United 2. Marcus Rashford scored 5 minutes into stoppage time and that is now a full-time score, so we end 2019 with a nice away win! Yay!

Right, OK, back to books again, lol! This is what it’s like when I am blogging and there’s footy on… blogs get interrupted by goals! At least none of my books fell over this time, ha ha, unlike that time in 2017 when we won away to Leicester, lol!

We were on for 2018, which was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Space Invaders, and I cross stitched some bookmarks with space invaders on them to mark the occasion. I also finished off Twisting My Melon, Shaun Ryder‘s autobiography, which was on my Kindle. I had started it some years ago, but got that finished. At one point it was my match-day read, and I would read it in the car coming home from Old Trafford when we would be stuck in the inevitable traffic trying to make our way out of the ground and through Trafford Park after the game…

I also got a new Kindle in 2018, a Paperwhite, and got it from a colleague at work through Yammer, which is like an internal social media thing for council staff with noticeboards so there are buying and selling notices on there. I got that in time for my jollies that summer, as we took advantage of me being back in work by going off to the Cape Verde Islands for a week at the Riu Karamboa on the island of Boa Vista. While I was over there, I got Mum to take a photo of me reading Dune on a sand dune, although I still actually need to read the Frank Herbert novel.

2018 was the summer when the giant bees were in town, so I was bee spotting on a number of occasions, and there was also a heatwave, and a fire on Saddleworth Moor. Even though we don’t live near there, the smoke carried on the wind, and you could smell it in the air even where we lived – I could smell it in Swinton while waiting for a bus home after work…

Oh, and England amazed me at the World Cup. Prior to the tournament, my expectations of my national football team were pretty low to say the least! I would tell anyone that we would be rubbish and that the Three Lions would be home from Russia before the proverbial postcards! I was not expecting them to get past the group stage, as they had been utter shite in previous tournaments! (Shite is a technical term, by the way!) However, inspired by Gareth Southgate and his magic waistcoats from M&S, lol, England actually made it to the semi-finals! Football wasn’t coming home, though, and we lost the semi and the playoff. Still, we came 4th which equals our performance at Italia 90 under the late great Sir Bobby Robson as the two best World Cup performances in my lifetime for the England team! Sadly, I’m not old enough to have seen them win the World Cup – 1966 was before I was born!

Besides cross-stitch, there was some loom knitting and some Pixelhobby on the crafting front, so I was getting creative, particularly towards the end of 2018. Sadly, the former book club at Waterstone’s petered out. However, a book club did form at work, and they have the benefit of being loaned sets of books by the library service! I haven’t always been able to make it, but it’s up and running and quite well attended.

So, that’s pretty much up to date, really, as we then go into 2019, but I’ve been through this year’s events and books already.  The photo at the top was taken by my sister just before Christmas as my nephew, mum, niece and I all sit on our settee, playing Crossy Road on our iPads! Charlotte has introduced us to this game! One of my fave characters in it is the Thesaurus – a dinosaur with a book, who goes along letting words out! When he eventually gets run over, the words are usually those such as stomped, or flat, lol!

Well, I think that is about all for now, and therefore for the year and the decade! I will get the lists published shortly on List Challenges, and wish all my followers all the best, and plenty of good books, for the coming year!

Have a Happy and Book-filled New Year!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry (other than the Object Lessons ones)

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
• You Took the Last Bus Home – Brian Bilston
• The Luckiest Guy Alive – John Cooper Clarke
• One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem – Neil Tennant
• You Do You – Sarah Knight
• The Girl With the Curly Hair – Alis Rowe
• I’m Only In It For the Parking – Lee Ridley
• Ole – Ian Macleay
• The Prison Doctor – Dr Amanda Brown
• Trinkets – Kirsten Smith
• ‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas – Adam Kay
• Pier Review – Jon Bounds and Danny Smith
• Me – Sir Elton John
• A Man Walks Into a Kitchen – Robert Graham
• How To Leave Twitter – Grace Dent
• My Story – Paul Scholes
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
• A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
• The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
• The Other Hand – Chris Cleave
• Little Bee – Chris Cleave (US and NZ editions)
• Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
• I Am the Secret Footballer – The Secret Footballer
• Burial Rites – Hannah Kent
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – Elizabeth Smart
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette? – Maria Semple
• The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry – Gabrielle Zevin
• Girl With a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
• Why the Dutch Are Different – Ben Coates
• The Art of Racing In the Rain – Garth Stein
• A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
• Faster Than Lightning – Usain Bolt
• The Rules of the Game – Pierluigi Collina
• Pet Shop Boys, Literally – Chris Heath
• Long Road From Jarrow – Stuart Maconie
• The Pie At Night – Stuart Maconie
• This Is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
• Not Dead Yet – Phil Collins
• The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
• The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
• Russian Winters – Andrei Kanchelskis
• Twisting My Melon – Shaun Ryder
• Dune – Frank Herbert

 

 

 

O.U. Pretty Things!

Recent Pixelhobby designs completed – I scanned the photo of King Eric into my software for that kit and just ordered the necessary pixels.

Good evening, fellow Bookworms!

Well, I did say in my last blog entry that I’d show you some of my completed Pixelhobby kits, so there you have it! I’ve made some keyrings and magnets, too, but those are for another time. This time, enjoy Sydney Harbour, “Amber” the fairy, and King Eric! I have the software on my laptop, so I scanned a suitable Cantona photo into it and then printed off the charts and ordered the pixels I needed. Those other two designs, though, were kits I bought.

Hope  you can all see that and watch the ident. Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the start of the Open University! Yep, the OU has been going since 1969. Even though various members of my family, including my dad and I, have done our degrees at actual physical universities, the OU has had an indirect part in my education, and has certainly been a constant in the background when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, because Dad was ALWAYS watching OU programmes!

Dad graduated when I was a toddler, with his Bachelor’s degree. He was on day release from work to go to Manchester Polytechnic, as it was in those days – it’s now MMU – Manchester Metropolitan University. A bit more about MMU later, but anyway, Dad did his chemistry degree alongside working, and then later also did his Master’s in conjunction with work – when he graduated from the University of Sheffield with his Master’s, I was at university myself, halfway through my degree in Bolton, although I was studying history and literature, rather than chemistry! I was at Bolton Institute, now the University of Bolton, and this summer it will be 25 years since my graduation – the ceremony was in the October, though, so this autumn will be a quarter of a century since I fulfilled my childhood ambition of wearing a cap and gown! That made Dad and I the Three Degrees, lol!

Partial credit for this ambition has to go to comic books, The Dandy and The Beano, which I read in the waiting room at our dental surgery while awaiting a check-up! I guess our former dentist, Norman Hoy, has long since gone to that great dental surgery in the sky, but he was our dentist for absolutely donkey’s years, and when I was waiting for my dental checkup, and usually those of my mum and sister in the same visit, I would be reading these comics and noticing that the teachers in comic strips such as The Bash Street Kids all wore gowns and mortar boards! I was about four years old. If I had started school, I would have been in the reception class at primary school, so I would only just have been starting my formal education, but I thought caps and gowns looked ace! I decided I wanted in on that!

So, the next thing that would have happened, probably around the same time, would have been to see actual people on the telly wearing caps and gowns, which happened one day when I was still around this young age, still only about 4… I am guessing that this might have been an Open University programme about people graduating from the courses that they ran, having watched a lot of the programmes that my dad seemed to watch for his entertainment! I guess, because he already had a degree, and worked for a chemical firm, and actually worked in the labs when I was little, the science programmes were of particular interest to him. I asked Dad if the people wearing caps and gowns were teachers. This is when he explained to me that wearing a cap and gown didn’t necessarily mean you were a teacher, although some of those graduates may well have gone on to become teachers – it simply meant they’d been to university and got a degree. So, that’s basically what started my childhood ambition!

I had no idea at that time what, if anything, I would be good at! As I said, I might not even have started school at that point, so I had no idea about school subjects. I did know that I liked books, and I was a fluent reader by the time I started school in the autumn of 1977, but I just knew I had to be brainy, and the more subjects I turned out to be good at, the more choice I would have of what I could feasibly study up to the age of 21 or more! It was indeed up to 21, and I graduated 25 years ago with a BA (Hons) Combined Studies degree in history and literature (joint). I got a “Desmond” – a 2:2, lol!

I’d better actually write something about books, hadn’t I?! However, I couldn’t go without mentioning the Open University’s birthday, as the TV programmes are part of the soundtrack of my life, part of growing up. Especially that ident and that fanfare. It is also a huge reminder of Dad.

I also suspect that it’s the OU that’s responsible for broadcasting the programme which got me into volcanoes! By that time, I think I would have been around 7 or 8, I was certainly in the first year juniors at primary school, what is now known as year 3 in the national curriculum. It was a programme which was on telly late at night, on BBC2, which makes me suspect it was the Open University, so it was probably shown for a geology degree or something. Anyway, Dad thought it would be of interest to me, and he knew I was a night owl, lol, so he let me come down to watch this programme with him. I had never seen an erupting volcano before, and I was fascinated!

There aren’t any volcanoes where I’m going on holiday (vacation) this year, which will come as a relief to many who suspect that I’m some sort of volcano goddess who goes around standing on them and causing them to erupt! Look, just because that happened when I stood on Mount Etna in 2001, that does NOT make me Volcano Woman! Reunion does have an active volcano, Piton de la Fournaise, but, as far as I’m aware, Mauritius doesn’t. Anyway, surely a volcano goddess would actually hail from a part of the world which does have at least one active volcano? That would rule out the United Kingdom, then!

Anyway, this talk of jollies, does bring me on to a book at last, you’ll be pleased to hear! I don’t know if you’re aware of Bloomsbury’s non-fiction Object Lessons series or not, but this is a series of small, short books which take ordinary, everyday objects, and delve into the history of them and popular mythology around them. The book I am reading is Souvenir, by Rolf Potts. It has an Eiffel Tower keyring on the cover. Keyrings are one of the items I tend to seek out when I’m on my travels, along with magnets and postcards. There are other items as well, but those three things usually top my list of holiday artefacts to purchase and bring home as a reminder of my jollies!

The book by Rolf Potts is most likely to be my second finish of the year. As I said in the last blog, just before my birthday, I am not doing the Goodreads Challenge this year. I hadn’t started it when 2019 started as I was in a reading slump anyway since the end of 2018. Then, twelve days into the new year, I lost my dad, so add bereavement to a book slump and it’s a recipe for not getting much read! This is why I’m only just feeling like reading a bit again now, and as with several previous slumps, it seems to be factual books which are helping me back to reading. It always seems to be non-fiction with me, although in 2015, there were two books which helped me, and one of those was fiction, that being The Art of Racing In the Rain, by Garth Stein. The non-fiction book was Why the Dutch Are Different, by Ben Coates. I actually have another book by Mr Coates, which I did start just before I went into the book slump. The Rhine, as the title suggests, is about the river which runs through a large swathe of Europe and passes through several countries, actually more countries than I suspected! We lived on the banks of the Rhine way back in 1978 when we lived in Basel, Switzerland, for six months because of Dad’s job, so I really should read that book, although it might make me sad as Dad’s not here for me to lend it to once I’ve read it, and I know he would probably have been interested.

I did mention, earlier, that I would return to the matter of Manchester Metropolitan University, and I do so now with some news from the literary world this past week. Although some posts on social media called it a sequel, the writing of Anthony Burgess which has been found at MMU is NOT a sequel to A Clockwork Orange, but more a non-fiction explanation of the novel, including how the title came about. It is not known, as yet, whether this stuff will be published, but it has at least been found, having previously been thought lost. The film version was released in 1971, but then withdrawn in 1973 at the director’s request when Stanley Kubrick heard about cases where violent incidents in the film had been copied. It was re-released in 1999 after Kubrick died.

Anyway, back to the book situation, and I will obviously have to think about what I am taking on holiday with me when I jet off, as it won’t be too long now. I will be taking my Kindle Paperwhite, so I have plenty of ebooks on that, but I’m sure there might be one or two paperbacks coming with me, and who knows what books I might find while I’m away?! It’s not unusual, as Sir Tom Jones would put it, lol, to acquire a book on my jollies! The best instance of this, so far, was in 2013 when I was in Mexico, and I found the brilliant Attention All Shipping, by Charlie Connelly, at the resort! This is a journey around the Shipping Forecast and it is very funny as well as informative, especially a certain part towards the end which mentions Faroese puffins! No more spoilers, I promise – just read it! I have actually seen it in charity shops in the past, so you might even be able to nab yourself a cheap copy of this book and help some good cause or other at the same time!

One book which probably won’t be coming on any holiday any time soon is The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon, due to its extreme chunkiness! It is a true chunky monkey, that one! Beautiful cover, though! Over 700 pages of novel, over 800 pages in total given the glossaries and maps, and it’s a hardback, so, no, it’s probably not going to be going in the suitcase despite the generous weight allowance and the fact I’ll be away for a fortnight! It’s just not practical! I know I took Dune, by Frank Herbert, to Cape Verde with me last summer, but even that one was not as large and bulky as the Samantha Shannon novel! I took Dune so that I could read it on a dune in June! I suppose I could take Dune again… I’m away for quite some time this time, travelling time and actual holiday time… and the resort where we’ll be staying boasts three beaches, so there’s scope to read Dune on a dune in June, and maybe read more of it this time round…

By the way, if any of you read The Priory of the Orange Tree either at a priory, or even underneath an orange tree, feel free to post photographic evidence! I will give a mention for anyone’s Relevant Reads! Perhaps you’ve read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in a tailor’s shop? Maybe you’ve been reading Kitchen Confidential in a kitchen? Please do feel free to join in and interact with this blog! I couldn’t care less if it’s fiction or non-fiction. Maybe it’s a children’s book? Maybe it’s a poetry anthology? Perhaps you’ve read You Took the Last Bus Home on the last bus home?! I can recommend that anthology, by the way – you’ll probably recognise some of the poems, as they’ve appeared on social media in the past few years, written by a guy called Brian Bilston. If you like the poetry of Roger McGough and or John Cooper Clarke, you might like Brian Bilston. I happen to like all those poets! I’d recommend The Luckiest Guy Alive by John Cooper Clarke, and Watch Words by Roger McGough, which is a book of my dad’s that I bagsied when I was a kid. I discovered it by chance when I was around 10 or 11, I think, in our dining room cabinet, and that was that!

He did have an appreciation for literature, even though his degrees were scientific. He studied chemistry because that was his job, and it did obviously interest him, hence all the Open University science and maths programmes he watched, which I mentioned earlier in this blog, but Dad also had a love for poetry. I bagsied the rest of his poetry books back when he and Mum split up, back in 2004, so I have had those for a long time now, it wasn’t a case of reclaiming them after he died earlier this year.

One book of my dad’s I would have liked to have reclaimed, but it wasn’t amongst his stuff when we picked up several crates of his belongings, was the book I bought him for his 70th birthday, which was John le Carré: the Biography, by Adam Sisman. It would, however, have had to have been that copy, as I wrote in it at the front for the occasion of his Big 70 in 2017. If it’s been given away and is in some charity shop, probably in the Macclesfield area of Cheshire, could someone please alert me? Ta! Pretty unlikely that I’ll get it now, but if there is a chance, I might as well have back what I got for my dad as another reminder of him. I would have written my birthday dedication to him somewhere near the front of the book, probably inside the front cover, and it’d be dated September 2017 and wishing my dad a happy 70th birthday.

Well, I think that’s about all for now. Plenty to be getting on with, lol! So, until the next blog entry, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Souvenir – Rolf Potts
• The Art of Racing In the Rain – Garth Stein
• Why the Dutch Are Different – Ben Coates
• The Rhine – Ben Coates
• A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
• Attention All Shipping – Charlie Connelly
• The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
• Dune – Frank Herbert
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – John le Carré
• Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
• You Took the Last Bus Home – Brian Bilston
• The Luckiest Guy Alive – John Cooper Clarke
• Watch Words – Roger McGough
• John le Carre: the Biography – Adam Sisman

April, blog she will…

 

Me last year on my birthday – nearly that time again…

Hello, fellow bookworms!

Long time no blog, I know! Regulars will know this has happened before in the history of my blogs, but I’m here now. I see I have 82 people following this blog now, so thank you very much! Especially given that you’ve had bugger all to read from me since November! Got some catching up to do, fill you in on the missing months. I think you had sussed out, though, towards the end of last year, that the reading had kinda dried up a bit and that I’d gone into a book slump again. You probably won’t be terribly surprised to learn that I didn’t meet my Goodreads Challenge last year. I was two books short, having managed 28 books during the course of 2018, whereas I’d set the target at 30. I have not bothered this year.

The List Challenges lists that I promised have now, finally, been published, so if you want to go through what I read in 2018, or the Handbag Books list, or even the list of books I’ve mentioned on here during the course of last year, you can now do so. Very sorry for the delay.

So, as I said, I’d been having Reader’s Block since the end of last year. I had hoped, as we let in 2019, that my reading mojo would return but, it certainly didn’t do so in time for the new year. In fact, things got worse. When you’re already a bookworm going through a book slump, the last bloody thing you need is bereavement, but that’s what happened. On the evening of Saturday 12th January 2019, my sister came round to inform Mum and I that Dad had died. He was 71, same age as his dad had been when he died, back when I was a teenager. We knew he’d had his health issues, but didn’t think, at the time, that it was something that couldn’t be put right if he got some medical advice.

However, as I’ve probably said before on here about my dad, he was a pretty stubborn bloke, not the sort to take advice from other people, and definitely the sort who, if he did go and see a medical practitioner, would tell them a few tales and would not be honest with them about the fact that he was a couch potato and that he liked a drink or three… His second wife, Gill, had found him dead in their bathroom, she had been away. She had phoned one of Dad’s sisters, and she in turn had phoned Ellie. Then Ellie came round to tell us.

Obviously, one or two people reading this will already know, some who are friends on FB, but for the rest of you, I’m fairly sure it will explain why I’m only just blogging now for the first time in 2019. I’ve not been reading much, if anything, and finally had my first book finish of the year last night! We’re in April, a few days away from my 46th birthday, and I have actually got a finish under my belt for this year at last! Regulars won’t be terribly surprised to learn that it was a non-fiction book which did the trick! Factual stuff gets me out of slumps! I have Mark Manson to thank, as the book was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and I really enjoyed it! You know my opinion of most so-called “self help” books, but occasionally something comes along in that genre which I actually find I can relate to, rather than finding it patronising and ableist like I do with so many others of that ilk!

You may recall that I read a similar book in 2017, that would have been Sarah Knight‘s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, so I would recommend both books to anyone who is not struck on the usual bog-standard self-help books and wants something a bit different, a book that does look at things in a different way to most books of that variety. Back to the Mark Manson book, however, and I certainly found that a lot of stuff was very relatable, particularly dealing with people who were very like that ex-friend of mine – you know the one, initials HLA. Reading Mark’s book made me feel vindicated that I’d kicked that toxic bitch out of my life.

I can’t even recall what was on my Ongoing Concerns back in November. All of that kinda fell by the wayside, and I don’t even know where my magnetic wipe board is at the moment, although probably in the garage. You did know about the loom knitting and Pixelhobby, though, as I’d started those activities before I went into the book slump, and had mentioned them in blogs in the autumn. I will give you a catch-up some time on the Pixelhobby projects. I don’t currently have a project on the go, although I’ve got something in mind. Recently completed a couple of 4 baseplate kits, my largest ones so far, and it would be another of that size that I have in mind and have got some of my pixels put aside so that I know what I’ve already got.

The one thing that has been good, though, came the week before Christmas, when the Bus Parking One was sacked after our 3-1 defeat away to Liverpool. Personally, I think he should have been sacked at the end of last season. I would have preferred it if he hadn’t been appointed in the first place, as I’ve never liked him and I have made that quite clear over the  years, but anyway, United finally had enough of his crap and booted him out on 18th December, replacing him, the following day, with the Treble-winning Legend that is Ole Gunnar Solskjaer! So, Ole’s been at the wheel since just before Christmas, and the immediate response at the time was for the lads to thrash Cardiff 5-1 away! Then, on Boxing Day, we had our first home game with Ole in charge, a 3-1 win against Huddersfield Town, and that was the last time I saw my dad. At least Dad got to see a match under Ole and know that United were playing the proper way again before he died.

Ole was made permanent at the end of last month, so it should be interesting to see who he buys in the summer. He has certainly got the best out of most of the lads he inherited from the Portuguese Pillock, though! That’s what the second half of this season has been about – believing in the current players, encouraging them to attack and score goals, and to be a good man-manager and keep the hairdryer treatment behind closed doors. Ole learned from Sir Alex, though, so this comes as standard. This is why we’re back to the United way. Even when results haven’t gone our way, you still see the effort, which is what you weren’t always seeing in the previous five and a half seasons, especially the two and a half under the Tax-Fiddling One!

It also brings me neatly onto one of my current Ongoing Concerns, which is the biography Ole, by Ian MacLeay, a book which first came out in 2007, apparently, which would have been when he retired as a player, but has now been updated this year to take in his return to United as our manager. While we’re on the subject of football-related books, I got Michael Carrick‘s autobiography, Between the Lines, for Christmas, so I’ve still got that to read yet. It’s Carrick, you know. Hard to believe it’s not Scholes, lol!

Sort of still footy related, although the book isn’t, my next mention is for a book which was mentioned by Juan Mata not long ago. I love reading Juan’s blogs, One Hour Behind, but this was actually an interview with Guillem Balague, and Juan mentioned that he’d been reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. One of the many things I love and admire about Juan is that he’s not just a great player on the pitch, but a really lovely, and very interesting, bloke away from footy! The sort of person I’d love to have a cuppa and a chat with – a natter with Mata! I would definitely love to have a chat with Juan about books!

Sales of Notre Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo have rocketed following the devastating fire which has destroyed the roof of the famous cathedral earlier this week. I purchased a copy from Waterstone’s at the Trafford Centre on Wednesday night, and it said, in the introduction, that the cathedral had been in disrepair before, particularly after the French Revolution, but that when Hugo’s novel was published, its popularity led to necessary repairs being made back then! Hopefully sales might help once again.

I already had one of Hugo’s works, but that’s Les Misérables, and I’ve not got round to reading that yet! I would probably end up singing songs from the musical if I did, lol!

Victor Hugo always reminds me of when I was at high school, learning French… whatever textbook you use, and we used French For Today at the time, there’s usually a unit about asking for and giving directions, and so there’ll be this map of some made-up French town with various buildings on it so you can practice asking «Pour aller à la bibliothèque, s’il vous plâit?» and other similar questions. You will note that I’ve used the example of asking how to get to the library – have to keep it book-related, lol! Anyway, when you get these pretend French towns and their maps, it doesn’t seem to matter which damn text book it’s in, you can guarantee at least two of the street names! I shit you not! There will always be an Avenue Charles de Gaulle, and there will always be a Rue Victor Hugo! I would be absolutely gobsmacked if there wasn’t!

Recently been in France, actually, as we were in Disneyland Paris at the start of April, but no Rue Victor Hugo there, even though Disney did do a film of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, so Quasimodo did become a Disney character some time ago. Not really a holiday where I could get much, if any, reading done, though. Not that sort of holiday, unlike the one Mum and I are going on in the summer. That will be a more relaxing, chilled-out holiday, and some lengthy flights, so I should get some reading done!

The blog title, by the way, is based on April Come She Will, by Simon and Garfunkel, as I saw Art Garfunkel at the Lowry Theatre last Sunday. Just in case you were wondering. Yes he sang a few of the old ones from when he and Paul Simon were a duo – I pretty much grew up with their music. Mum and Dad had the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, and also I performed a fair few of their songs in the orchestra and choir when I was at high school. He also sung Bright Eyes, which was a solo number 1 for him here in the UK 40 years ago in April 1979 when I was 6! It was used in the film Watership Down at the time, which was about rabbits. As my Dad used to say… You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film, you’ve heard the song… now eat the pie!

He’s going on the piss with Georgie Best, my dad. That’s how I see it now. As in our terrace version of Spirit In the Sky… “Goin’ on up to the spirit in the sky. That’s where I’m gonna go when I die. When I die an’ they lay me to rest I’m gonna go on the piss with Georgie Best!”

Anyway, I think that’s about it for now. I’m back and I’ve mentioned a few books, so we’re up and running for this year. I’ve started the blog-related list on List Challenges. This is the one where I mention them whether I’ve read them or not, so there should be a decent amount of books there by the end of the year, I hope! Dunno which ones I will actually have read by the end of 2019, but hopefully a few! Trying to decide whether to try a nice big chunky bit of historical fiction, perhaps Paris by Edward Rutherfurd. I have been looking at my copy of The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Yeah, it is over 1000 pages long, but, as I’ve said before, if a book is readable, size shouldn’t be a turn-off! World Without End, which is the sequel, has been moved to a higher position on the Bass Amp Book Tower. Just in case, lol!

Oh, and before I go, some news re Adam Kay. You may remember the brilliant This is Going to Hurt, which I read in 2017, my favourite book that year, and indeed I met the author that autumn when he came to Waterstone’s on Deansgate (see photo above)… Anyway, he’s just announced that he’s got a new book, also about his time in the medical profession before he became a comedian, and it’s due to be published in October. So I will probably be looking to pre-order Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas.

I think that definitely is all there is for now! That’s all folks, as they used to say at the end of Looney Tunes cartoons! Until the next time I blog, take care, Happy Easter and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
• The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k – Sarah Knight
• Ole – Ian MacLeay
• Between the Lines – Michael Carrick
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
• Notre Dame de Paris – Victor Hugo
• Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
• French For Today – P J Downes & E A Griffith
• Watership Down – Richard Adams
• Paris – Edward Rutherfurd
• The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
• World Without End – Ken Follett
• This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
• Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas – Adam Kay (due October 2019)

October Review – All Quiet on the Reading Front

Hello there, fellow Bookworms,

Probably going to be a short blog, this, as there’s not an awful lot to report this month. Not in terms of books, anyway. It’s not that nothing has been read, I have read some books, but I haven’t finished any off this month. I have read at lunchtimes at work, and in the car on the way home from matches sometimes, especially if we’ve been stuck in the car park at Old Trafford for bloody ages after the game – the home match against Juventus, for instance, but it’s not been all that good on the reading front.

I didn’t finish Snap, by Belinda Bauer, although I did start it, and got some of it read, and there were actually four of us at Waterstone’s on 16th October, I’m pleased to report! The book club has been revived, lol! I put my idea to the others about the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I and perhaps reading something set during the First World War, but in the end, we decided not to. As with the Bauer novel, my colleagues are influenced by what’s on offer at Asda, and so our current book is Why Mummy Swears, by Gill Sims, which we’re reading for our next meeting on 16th November, which will be a Friday night on this occasion! I have to say that Why Mummy Swears is definitely far more my kind of book! I’m about a third of the way through it so far, and have laughed my arse off on a number of occasions! It’s actually the sequel to Why Mummy Drinks, which I also bought at Asda as it was on offer in the £4 each or two for £7 deal, so I thought I might as well get both, even if I’m reading them out of chronological order!

We head into November tomorrow, need to get a poppy soon. Maybe this weekend. Might still read something WWI related anyway.

Only thing is, that it’s been balls of wool that have caught my eye more than books of late. There has been a lot of loom-knitting going on! Bags, scarves and hats. There’s also been some Pixelhobby done, as I finished my Christmas Candle kit, plus made some magnets and some keyrings. I might start on my snowglobe kit shortly. Like the candle design, it’s just a one baseplate kit. The Sydney Harbour kit can wait until the seasonal stuff is done, as that’s not Christmassy.

The Eighties: One Day, One Decade, by Dylan Jones, is still being read on my Kindle, so that’s just under half-way by now, around 45 or 46% read, so I’ve got things on the go, and there has been some reading done, but just not the finishing off of anything. I have also taken the precaution of acquiring my own copy of What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson, so that I can give Sarah her copy back in December when we go to see Madness, even if I haven’t finished reading the book yet.

I’ve finished 27 books so far this year, so I do want to get to 30 before the end of the year. Only three to go, doesn’t seem a lot, but it does when you feel more in the mood for other stuff than you feel for reading. Juggling hobbies can be tricky! What I need to remember is, though, that this year, I’ve been in work all year. I have spent all of 2018 in full-time employment, whereas, in 2017, I started the job I am doing in the September, and before that, I had got a fair bit more reading done, so I was over my Goodreads target and seeing how much more I could fit in. This year, reading has always had to be something which I’ve had to fit in around working, eating, sleeping, and doing other stuff.

So, yes, this is probably a pretty short blog just to get something published in October, lol, but I hope to be back in a reading mood sooner rather than later and raving about some books that I come close to calling must-reads! And you know I don’t call anything a must-read, I’m not into forcing anything! I figure we all have more than enough stuff rammed down our throats by other people, you must do this, you must read that, you must eat this, blah, blah bloody blah! Inevitably, a lot of those recommendations end up being disappointments after other people have raved about them only for you to think they’re not all that great! The nearest I will come is that I might strongly recommend that as many people as possible would do well to read a certain book, like with The Angry Chef last year, but I’m not a fan of force, unless it’s in the Star Wars sense of using the Force, lol! May the Force be with you!

Some book news before I go – there is now a SEVENTH book in the Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom! Tombland was published recently, and it’s seriously chunky! As I’m only on for the second book in that series, it will be a while before I’m tackling that one! I have read Dissolution, so I’m on for Dark Fire.

This next one is probably a slimmer volume, but significant to me and other Petheads… 1st November sees the publication of One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys. I actually thought it was already out the other week, and then found, to my disappointment, that it wasn’t out yet, which would explain why the hell I couldn’t find it when I was searching all the possible shelves at Waterstone’s in the Trafford Centre! This has happened to me too many times, lol! Seems like I’m forever thinking books are available before they are! There’s been plenty of times I’ve heard about a book and really fancied it, only to discover that it’s not published yet! Usually after I have scoured at least one branch of Waterstone’s looking in vain for the damn book!

With Neil Tennant‘s book, I was like… “Is it in poetry? Is it in music? Is it in autobiography? * looks it up on her phone * Bugger! It’s not even bloody published yet!”

Ah, the ups and downs of being a bookworm, eh?!

Well, that’s about it for now, so until next time, take care and Happy Reading!

Joanne x x x

Books mentioned in this blog entry…

• Snap – Belinda Bauer
• Why Mummy Swears – Gill Sims
• Why Mummy Drinks – Gill Sims
• The Eighties: One Day, One Decade – Dylan Jones
• What Does This Button Do? – Bruce Dickinson
• The Angry Chef – Anthony Warner
• Tombland – C. J. Sansom
• Dissolution – C. J. Sansom
• Dark Fire – C. J. Sansom
• One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem – Neil Tennant

 

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