August's Book - Hard To Swallow

August's been a lean month for reading: just Daine Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale".  This was a book I'd apparently given to my Mum, which she hadn't managed to get through!  I have no memory of that, so it must have been a while ago but I was up for a challenge!  However, I could quite see why she got bored with it, as the first half is uphill all the way with too many hints at secrets, too much atmospheric description and very little actually happening!  In the end it did acquire a bit more pace, but left me cold, despite a twist at the end.  Two narrators, two time-lines, two authors (Diane Setterfield and her character Vida Winter) ... to be expected in a book featuring twins I suppose.

Here's hoping that September's books are a little lot livelier!

July's Books - Just Two!

Just two books read this month ... and both are my Book Club selections: one for July's and one for next month's meeting.

The first was 2013 Man Booker prize-winner "The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton.  I've diverted from my normal front cover images because this was a beast of a hardback to hold ... all 832 pages of it!  Set in the 1860s New Zealand gold-rush, it's a Victorian-style novel, full of wordy descriptions and lengthy character developments, where the action unfolds quite slowly but gathers pace once you have been introduced to the twelve main characters, an unexpected interloper and the unsolved crimes that concern them.  Unfortunately that takes over half the book ... which is constructed around astrological charts with twelve "chapters", each half the length of the previous one.  Not an easy read, but a cleverly constructed puzzle book which I would quite like to have another go at now that I know what's what (just not for a while).

Thankfully next month's book is a lot shorter.  "Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet" by Jamie Ford covered another period of history that I knew nothing about.  The novel switches between 1986 and 1942 to describe Chinese and  Japanese communities in Seattle and the anti-Japanese sentiments that led to thousands of Americans (of Japanese descent) being imprisoned for the duration of WWII.  Shocking in parts, it was also a tale of family relationships and a forbidden friendship between a young Chinese-American boy and a Japanese-American girl.  Another slow starter for me, but again it gathered pace and I admit to crying towards the end.

June's Books - Strange Ladies

One of my all time favourite books is "Room" by Emma Donaghue and when one of my blog friends recommended her latest, "Frog Music" I knew I'd be in for a treat.  Set in smallpox-ridden San Francisco, bathed in the heat-wave of 1876 it flashes back and forth telling and re-telling the real-life story of murdered, cross-dressing Jenny Bonnet from the perspective of her friend and exotic "dancer" Blanche Beunon.  It's not only the climate that is steamy; Blanche's life-style is described in fairly explicit detail as we try to puzzle out who killed Jenny and the whereabouts of Blanche's young baby.  I certainly learnt a LOT about the period, but needed a cold bath afterwards!

In stark contrast to the underbelly of 1870s San Francisco, my next read and this month's Book Club choice, "The Last Runaway" by Tracy Chevalier featured Quakers in Ohio and lots of quilting!  Chevalier has a gift for including interesting research without overwhelming her readers.  Contrasts were drawn between English and American Quakers, the theory of abolition versus the practicality of helping runaway slaves, and the unbalanced opportunities for single men and women.  However, I was frustrated by the central character's self-centred daze as she was buffeted by events beyond her understanding and control - I would have given her a good slap!!  The lack of a "u" in said English heroine's name meant that Honor annoyed me twice over on every page!

Our "alternative" novel at Book Club was "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson.  Now this was a great read with recognisable and appealing characters and setting in the heart of the English countryside.  Major Pettigrew's village, lifestyle and values are under threat - which will he champion and will he prevail?  A charming comedy of modern (and old-fashioned) manners as the Major gets to know and appreciate the village shop's exotic Mrs Jasmina Ali and her family, whilst resisting his self-centred son Roger's efforts to pre-inherit some funds!

Another book recommendation that I grabbed from the library and loved - thank you!!  "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn is a tale full of twists and turns told (in turns) by Nick & Amy Dunne following Amy's mysterious disappearance on the morning of their 5th wedding anniversary.  You are kept guessing whether Nick knows more than he's telling, or perhaps Amy's diary entries will help the police catch her killer?!  A brilliant thriller, shortly to be made into a movie - read it first!

M. J. Arlidge has apparently worked in high end TV drama production for the last 15 years and to a certain extent that shows in his debut novel, "Eeeny Meeny", which has 117(!) short, pacey chapters a bit like scenes in a TV series.  This was a rather gorey thriller with scenes of torture, sado-masochism, rape and worse as Detective Inspector Helen Grace battles with her own demons whilst chasing down what turns out to be a serial killer by proxy ... a kidnapper of couples who are then faced with the choice of killing their partner or being killed.  It was certainly a page turner, but the ending seemed very rushed and rather under-developed whilst a glaring continuity error about half way through really took the shine off!! 

I'm not a very forgiving reader ... are you?

May's Books - Tales of The Unexpected

This month's Book Club choice was down to me and I put forward a couple of recommendations from my (blog) friends - many thanks and keep them coming please.  I'm restricted in that my 3 suggestions have to be available from the library - and in sufficient quantities that we aren't queueing to read the same copy.  The vote actually went to a book that I alone was responsible for choosing: "The Woman In Black" by Susan Hill.  I'd watched the recent film, starring Daniel Radcliffe and was really looking forward to seeing how scary the original book would be because the movie made me jump in several places.  Oh dear, oh dear!  I obviously don't understand what makes a classic piece of literature because I found it turgid and far from scary.  The novel may have suffered because I knew the bones of the story from the film (not that close a rendition of the book) but I am left wondering quite why anyone would have been inspired to make a film from it.  There's a play with the same name coming to my theatre later this year ... I wonder if that will be better?

I'd picked up another Susan Hill novel, "The Small Hand", from the library at the same time and was mightily relieved to find that this story did have some chills and creepy surprises.  A much better plot, involving creepy houses, gloomy lakes, Trappist monks and ghostly children ... this one could make an interesting movie.

I needed to read something totally different after a run of Susan Hill novels and grabbed "Blind Faith" by Ben Elton from the 50p charity shelf in the village bakery.  This was a completely gripping, satirical vision of a sweaty London, half submerged following the effects of global warming: privacy is forbidden; everything is shared on social media; blogging is compulsory; neighbours have 24/7 video access to each other's tiny flats; laws are made by popular vote; mob violence is unpredictably swift to erupt; political correctness has been taken to ridiculous extremes; heretics are burned at the stake!  Shades of 20-84 perhaps?  It quite put me off using the internet for a few days!

Finally this month I whizzed through another random choice from the charity shelf: "Rough Weather" by Robert B. Parker (the "Dean" of American crime fiction" apparently).  It's probably my own fault for starting with book 36 in a 40 (!) book series of private eye thrillers, but I was not impressed.  Short chapters full of dialogue rather than description and a rather contrived plot just did not float my boat at all.  Perhaps readers familiar with Spenser, Hawk and Susan would get more out of it, assuming the earlier 35 books make more of an effort to develop the characters?

April's Books - Time Travel

Last month I grabbed a trio of books from the "new" shelf in my local library and reviewed the first two here.  The final book was "Oryx & Crake" by Margaret Atwood where she gives us a view into an all too possible dystopian future: scientists engineering new species of animal, new sources of food, new cures for diseases, new diseases needing cures ... society is divided into the haves who can afford the latest, greatest therapies and eat real food and the have-nots who die young on rations of genetically engineered look-a-like consumables.  Except that society has gone - wiped out by an unexplained catastrophe, leaving just one lone survivor living near a group of grass-eating humanoids.  The novel gradually reveals some of what has happened in fascinating flashbacks but, told from just one viewpoint, there is a lot left unexplained.  The ending left me spluttering in indignation until I realised that this book is the first of a parallel trilogy!  Far from "new", it was originally published in 2003 and the companion books are already available.  The question is ... do I care what happened?

To compensate for a bleak future, my next choice was a glimpse of the past.  Andrea Levy's "Small Island" describes the experiences of four characters before, during and after WWII.  There's Hortense and Gilbert from Jamaica and Queenie and Bernard from England whose lives are intertwined more than they know.  Both Hortense and Gilbert had a rude awakening when they came to England and the unequal relationship of Jamaica and the Mother Country is well described.  Thankfully, attitudes to colour have changed a lot in the last 60 years, but it was interesting to read about how things were in Jamaica, England and in the US military training bases where the Jamaican volunteers received basic training.



"The Blasphemer" by Nigel Farndale was my Book Club's March pick.  Even further back in time to WW1, but with several parallel stories linking generations of soldiers and exploring the meaning of courage and cowardice.  In the present day, a scientist struggles to make sense of his survival after the crash of a seaplane whilst in the past, his great grandfather faces the firing squad just days before the end of hostilities.  I enjoyed the discussions of faith vs. science and there was enough happening to keep me turning the pages, but parts of the book didn't work for me at all.  Too many characters that weren't fleshed out enough perhaps?  Opinions were mixed at our meeting too: not a resounding success as a book choice, but a lively discussion instead which is always a good thing!

Daniel Mason's "The Piano Tuner" was passed on to me by a fellow Bookclub member (we often recycle our books around the group in parallel to the monthly choice). Again it was set in the past: colonial Burma this time with a short period of smog-laden London before hitting the steaming, sultry jungles of the far East.  This book was certainly atmospheric; I got the sense of impending doom, the oppressive climate, the encroaching jungle and the confusion of political games and double dealing were all well described.  What I didn't find was any empathy with a single character or a true understanding of what actually happened in the story.  This book has had some great reviews but I don't understand why.  It's actually stopped me from starting a new book as I'm trying to claw back the time I wasted reading it! 

Do you ever read a book that stops you from wanting to pick up another for a while?  For good reasons ... or bad?

March Books - A Mixed Bag

Last month I wrote that I was half way through our Book Club choice: Louisa Young's "My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You" and I am happy to report that the second half was as beautifully written as the first.  Young gives an appallingly clear insight into the experiences of the soldiers both on the front line and on leave.  Equally movingly described is the strain of waiting at home on the soldiers' wives and girlfriends.  Some tried to cope with housework and shopping: in a constant, numbing state of readiness for their loved one's return.  Others found that work was a welcome distraction, paying forward nursing care to soldiers.  Soldiers' injuries were often appalling and the book describes pioneering facial reconstruction techniques in heart-rending yet interesting detail.  The characters and plot kept me engaged right to the end; a thoroughly good read.

My sister in law knows that we are big scandi-drama fans here and insisted on lending me her copy of "The Killing" by David Hewson: a novel written from the screenplay ?!?!?  Luckily I had forgotten much of the plot of the series which was shown on BBC4 in 2011, although I could remember who did it!  The novel explained the political shenanigans better than I remembered from the TV series. Both lead you up the garden path on the trail of red herrings (mixed metaphors, sorry) but there is an extra, very clever twist at the end of the novel that went beyond the televised finale.  I was pleasantly surprised in the end and may have to borrow the novelised sequel from my sister in law to see if Hewson can pull it off again.


I grabbed my next book from our shelf of ex-library/bargain bin/gifted books: Robert Goddard's "Sight Unseen" promised a thrilling mystery set around Avebury.  Having visited the ancient stones just last year, I was initially immersed in the description of a child's sudden kidnap and the efforts of a retired policeman and a witness to find motive, perpetrator and victim.  However I became less and less enamoured of the story as the action flitted from Avebury to Prague to London and Jersey and the originally impecunious witness paid for plane tickets, car hire and hotels as if money was no object.  Overly large amounts of historical research and improbable plot developments left me bored and frustrated respectively.  In fact I'm convinced that I've come across at least part of the plot before in an episode of Bergerac or some other TV series/film ... I wonder which came first?

My nearest library didn't have a copy of our March book club choice so I grabbed randomly from the "new" books shelf.  John Grisham's  "The Brethren" looked like an interesting read: prisoners working a blackmail scam from inside a prison hook the wrong fish.  It started well with an engaging account of a prisoners' court dealing with internal grievances, introducing the scammers.  However, after successfully blackmailing a few unfortunates, they target a man being groomed by the CIA to be the next president of the United States.  What might have been an exciting will they, won't they story was overwhelmed by the machinations of presidential campaigning mixed with unpleasant activities involving the CIA.  There were several odd interludes that had no purpose that I could fathom and the ending left me pretty cold.  The first Grisham novel to let me down :-(

Oh dear - after a great start, March's books were getting increasingly disappointing.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I started on another random library choice: "I'm The King Of The Castle" by Susan Hill.  Although it was on the "new" shelf, the book was originally published in 1970.  The story describes the unhealthy relationship between two ten year old boys forced into companionship by their parents during their summer holiday from boarding school.  I was entranced by Hill's depiction of the psychological bullying perpetrated by one boy on the other and appalled at the inability of the parents to notice their unhealthy relationship.  Packed with symbolism, the novel is a real page-turner as the victim's torment ebbs and flows but steadily increases towards the tragic climax.  A very unsettling read; I can fully understand why it has been republished as a classic of its decade.

February Books - Group Reading

A shorter month and fewer books read too.  Thank goodness my Book Club deadlines keep me focussed and force me to make time for reading or some months I might not read at all!

Each month, a member suggests a choice of books for the monthly read and then we vote.  While I waited to get hold of the February "winner" I grabbed one of the "rejects" from the library: Rachel Joyce's "Perfect".  Right from the start I knew I was reading a book that would haunt me. Like many of last month's books it had different narrative voices and times, alternating between present day Jim and a young schoolboy Byron growing up 40 years earlier.  Byrons's schoolboy view of the world is naive and confused.  Reading between the lines of clipped conversations, the reader has a better idea of the potential chain of events spiralling out of control.  Recently released back into the community, modern day Jim is equally lost and confused following the closure of the psychiatric home where he's lived for many years.  Again the reader watches with a greater understanding, uncomfortably anticipating the reactions of Jim's co-workers as he struggles to cope in the "real" world, relying on OCD rituals to soothe his fears.  The alternating narratives intertwine and gradually reveal their connections ... with a final surprise twist for the unwary.

February's Book Club "winner" was "The Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K.Rowling).  This book had its flaws, not least the ridiculous choice of name for the private eye hired to re-investigate the death of model Lula Landry: every mention of Cormoran Strike set my teeth on edge!  However the plot raced along with plenty of red herrings to keep me guessing and, despite some heavy sign-posting revealing the murderer, I couldn't work out the motivation.  I was reminded of the Agatha Christie novels I loved as a teenager - we even had a Poirot-esque big reveal in the final pages.  Galbraith/Rowling is planning to write another few (six?) books featuring Strike and his female sidekick Robin.  As there were plenty of unanswered questions about the characters' pasts and several intriguing hints about future developments, I'll probably read on.

Finally I am currently reading March's "winner" in plenty of time for our next meeting.  Louisa Young's "My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You" was chosen because the centenary of the outbreak of the "Great" War is being celebrated commemorated this year.  Riley is a working class lad in love with upper class Nadine and she with him.  When she is removed from his life, he volunteers to serve in the army for the duration of the war (he viewed the alternative of enlisting for a year as an excessive commitment).  Riley's descriptions of life on the front line, the field hospitals and his periods of leave back in Blighty have had me in tears several times. Whilst there are some graphic descriptions of the effects of warfare on the common man, it is the emotional impact on Riley and his fellows that really hits home.  The book also recounts the lives of several women left behind who, under normal circumstances, would have been content to live out their wifely/motherly/spinsterly lives but are forced into  new roles thanks to the lack of men and the straits of wartime.  The novel is so well crafted that I have no idea how the main characters' stories will develop and I cannot wait to continue reading.  Highly recommended (so far)!

Do you belong to a reading group?  How do you choose which books to read?

January Books - Different Points Of View

Back in 2012 I managed to keep a pretty good record of all the books I read thanks, in part, to playing along with Julie's Month in Numbers.  MiN fell by the wayside in 2013 and I'm sad that I have no proper reading log for the year.  So I'm going to try and post some book reviews at the end of each month.

The first book of the year was from a batch of 10p novels that I picked up at  the library sale last year:  Margaret Forster's "Shadow Baby". A strange parallel tale of two baby girls born out of wedlock nearly a century apart who eventually seek out their natural mothers.  Back in the late 19th century, life in an orphanage was hard, life with distant relatives harder still and searching for your mother was nigh on impossible.  Public records mean that the modern-day birth mother is easier for her daughter to track down, but her fear of discovery and the emotions awakened are just as painful as the earlier mother's.  Forster explores the emotions of the four women in great detail as they each tell a part of their (shared) histories.  Quite an emotional and thought-provoking start to the year.

I had two books to read for my first Book Club meeting (December's discussion is replaced by a party in the bakery café where we meet), the first of which was "A Week In December" by Sebastian Faulks.  This was not my cup of tea at all: a large number of  unsympathetic (selfish, opinionated, unpleasant,over-privileged) London folk whose paths criss-cross during a seven day period just before Christmas.  There is also much to much information about hedge funds - pages and pages and pages of the stuff!  Combine this with some literary in-jokes and I had the feeling that I was not the intended audience for the book.  A potential suicide bomber and a drug overdose victim added a tiny bit of tension but it was seven days I really had no interest in!

M.L.Stedman's "The Light Between Oceans" was much better with engaging characters, an interesting dilemma and the western Australian setting made a refreshing change.  The story (of the consequences of the discovery of a tiny baby and a dead man by an island lighthouse-keeper and his wife) takes place shortly after the WWII and also explores the effects of the conflict on the Australian population.  This book taught me a lot about the eponymous lighthouse but, in contrast to the ins and outs of futures and derivatives, by drip feeding the details in digestible amounts, I was able to enjoy the process.  Several characters took turns to tell the tale, allowing me to focus on different aspects of their dilemmas.  A wonderful debut novel!


I haven't read any of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole novels since last January so it took me a while to get into the swing of "Phantom" and get to grips with some of the characters' relationships.  This was another novel that was told from several viewpoints - including a dead junkie and a mother rat separated from her babies!  On top of that there was real-time action interspersed with historical recounts; not the clearest of storylines to follow.  Fast paced, slightly confusing with a shock ending!

I'm still on the look-out for the first Harry Hole adventure "The Bat" on the my library shelves - it was translated from the original Norwegian long after the third book in the series!

Another detective series I've been enjoying is Mo Hayders Jack Caffery books ("Birdman"was the first) but in my haste at the library, I'd grabbed a stand-alone book of hers: "Hanging Hill".  This time we have a female police detective on the hunt following a brutal murder of a teenage girl - who happened to be friends with the daughter of the detective's estranged sister!  The twists and turns come thick and fast as you follow the sisters in their separate struggles with evil deeds.  No sooner do you think you've understood what's happening than the turn of the page confounds your expectations.  Again, the ending was a total shock and left me wondering just what might happen next.

What are you reading right now?  Do you enjoy books with several narrative voices or do you find them confusing?  What's the weirdest fictional point of view that you've come across?

Zoom In Zoom Out #2

I'm keeping up with Helena's Zoom In Zoom Out this year ( OK, yes it's only week #2, but that's good going for me :-D )

I've stayed on the theme of books this week, with a shot of my book club getting going without me (I was purposely 5 minutes late so that I could secretly snap this).  We meet up after hours in my local bakery café, pushing the tables together to catch-up over a cup of tea or coffee with  some delicious cake.  You can see a pile of recycled books in the corner, 50p each, with all the money going towards schemes supporting the elderly folk in the village.  There's also a basket with a selection of the day's bread for us to take home at the end of the meeting.

This month I had peppermint tea, chocolate fudge cake and we discussed M.L. Steadman's "The Light Between Oceans": an interesting tale of a lighthouse keeper and his wife off the west coast of Australia in the 20s and the consequences of their decisions when a baby is washed ashore on the lighthouse island.  Many of us admitted to needing tissues for the ending and all of us appreciated the dilemmas posed in the book for the couple, the birth mother, the grandparents and the child herself.  This in turn sparked a feisty discussion about Madeleine McCann and just what she and her parents have gone through.  That's one of the things I love about reading with a group, you never know what you'll end up talking about.

That's probably true of ZIZO as well ... a simple idea to Zoom In & Zoom Out with your camera ... but who knows what subjects people will pick?  There's a weekly link-up on Helena's blog - are you joining in too?

Zoom In Zoom Out #1

In 2013 Helena ran a meme called Look Up Look Down and I enjoyed seeing contrasting photos appearing on my friends' blogs, giving me glimpses into their lives throughout the year.  To ring the changes, Helena has chosen Zoom In Zoom Out as her meme for the year and I'm going to try to join in myself.  (My record for year-long projects is not good, but we'll see what 2014 brings).

My local library was refurbished last year.  Not an entirely popular way of spending public money as the computerised booking system was confusing and reduces interaction with the librarians.  The beautiful new modern shelves had no labels for a couple of months which did give the librarians something to do as they led us more or less directly to the correct section.  The shelf units are also ⅔ the height they used to be and more creatively arranged meaning that there are fewer books on display?!?!? Not a huge step forward for a lending library.  The carpets are a pretty colour though ;-D

The close-up shot is of the two books I borrowed this week.  Having started mid-series with "The Snowman" for my bookclub in 2011, I've been reading Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole novels in sequence and am relieved to find that "Phantom" IS the follow-on from "The Leopard" which was coincidentally also a bookclub choice in January 2013.  Upon hearing that I was a police thriller fan, a fellow reader recommended Mo Hayder and I've been happily squirming at the body counts in her series of books featuring English policeman Jack Caffery. "Hanging Hill", however, appears to be a stand-alone novel.  I really should do more research on my book choices rather than picking randomly from the bookshelves!

Will you be joining in with ZIZO as well?  What other memes would you recommend?

Pass The Book - Lifted Winner

Congratulations

Missus Wookie

Your name was drawn by random.org and I will shortly be "passing "Lifted" by Michelle Miesenbach on to you.  For the curious, details of "Pass The Book Year 2" are here.

I do hope you gain some inspiration from it (and don't hang on to it quite as long as I did before "passing" it on to someone else). 

Pass The Book Two - Lifted

What better way to celebrate my 300th post than with a Giveaway?  A very late Giveaway, I'm ashamed to say ... as it's actually really just me passing on a "Pass The Book" book!  Alison in Spain kindly drew me when she was passing it on back in September? so it has been with me far too long, thanks in part to Christmas.  Apologies to Melissa in Texas who is hosting this arm of "Pass The Book", hopefully the next person in the chain won't be as big a procrastinator as me.  Anyone without a clue what "Pass The Book" is, please check it out here.  If you would like to be in with a chance of having temporary ownership of the book, please add a comment indicating that you'd like to be in the draw (and promising not to keep it as long as I did before passing it on to someone else).

The book is "Lifted" by Michelle Miesenbach and is chock full of lovely pages to scraplift.  Michelle and her team of designers have then taken various elements (colours, embellies, title, format, subject) from the example pages to produce new ones - you can see where the inspiration has been drawn, yet each finished page is totally new - my kind of scraplifting!  Six chapters deal with each aspect of partial and full scraplifting and I particularly like the chapter on title-lifting as I'm a sucker for typography as well as wanting to steal lift other people's great page headers.  The only possible proviso with this book's appeal is that the pages are perhaps slightly dated: the book was published in 2008.  However, as I'm sick to death of seeing trendy ink splatters and tiny instagrammed photos all over the web, I really loved the book's clean graphic style.  Even if you are a fan of modern trends I reckon the book will still have plenty of lift-able ideas to offer.

We all know that trends come and trends go ... and return again ... so before too long eyelets will be making a BIG comeback ... and when they do, I'll be ready, Silent Setter in hand!

I have made a page using a couple of ideas I lifted from the book: spacing a title out with dots between the letters (p93) and cutting up patterned papers into strips and putting them back together (p29).

The page design is from a sketch posted on UKScrappers' Weekly Challenge and the choice of papers is inspired by the "Ombre" challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.  I inked two of the strips to add to the range of colour graduation and used the counterfeited Flair Buttons that were in my January Counterfeit Kit.
You can't see it too well in the photos but I also added increasingly dense (over-) stitching on each row and inked the lower part of the pink photo mat more heavily than the top.

Do you like to scraplift?  Are you interested in passing this book?  Let me know and I'll make the draw next Monday (28th).

P.S. "Pass The Book" is international - happy to post world-wide!

November's Number News

Eek - what happened there?  November's End crept up on me very suddenly!  Part of the reason was a scare with my Mum which has distracted me all week.  My CKCB projects didn't get any attention and there was no question of blogging creatively.  Hopefully things will be calmer for a day or two before the Christmas panic ramps up!

So here are my Numbers for November (joining in with Julie's Month In Numbers as a way of recording the year's activities):

4 = books read, bringing my total so far this year to 44, which neatly means that my monthly average is also 4

"Star Of The Sea" by Joseph O'Connor was October's book club choice and proved to be a very interesting and educational novel set in the time of the Irish famine.  Quite an eye-opener about conditions on the ships taking people from Ireland across the Atlantic, the awful straits that Irish tenants struggled under and the disgusting racism that many Irish endured.  Based around a murder on the ship, the book was written from several people's points of view, with songs, newspaper articles, letters and diary entries interspersed with narrative passages.
Jeffery Deaver's "Death Of a Blue Movie Star" and James Patterson's "Toys" were random picks from the library shelves and both were readable, but ultimately I learnt too much about bomb disposal from the former and too little about character development from the latter!

Jo Nesbø's "The Leopard" was November's book club choice, but I haven't got hold of it yet.  Instead I thought I'd compromise by reading "The Redbreast" which seems to be the first translation for the UK market.  I found this quite heavy going but considerably less gory than Nesbø's "The Snowman" and "Headhunters" which I read earlier in the year.  Lots of flashbacks, different voices and Norwegian names added to my confusion, but by the end I had learnt quite a lot about Norway's experiences in WWII and was keen enough to grab the sequel "Nemesis" from the library straight away!  This was pacier (perhaps I was also more familiar with the main characters in Inspector Harry Hole's police department) and I was desperate to read more, yet also sad to reach the end of the book; while the case might be closed, there are enough threads running from book to book to make me want to grab the next in the series a.s.a.p.

5 = days course on "Advanced Employability" attended by No.2 Son at the Job Centre {I don't think there's actually a "Basic Employability" course}.  He has given up on university and now needs to find his first job.  I'm hoping that he's now motivated enough to send out his new CV, that his role-played interview skills are effective and that satisfying employment is quickly found.

½ = size of our family Christmas fund compared to last year!  Hubby's family is HUGE and, rather than each family unit buy 40+ small gifts for various siblings, their partners and offspring, each one contributes to a central fund which pays for one larger gift each. Belts have been tightened this year and the whole thing was under threat, but we have managed to prune it back a little and cope.

2 = friends I met for a belated {August} birthday lunch; my turn for a belated {October}birthday lunch will have to wait until after Christmas now!

3 = alternate destinations that Child No.3 was given when her forthcoming 2013 expedition to Madagascar was withdrawn due to potential political unrest next summer.  We now have to start researching inoculations for Costa Rica/Nicaragua!

5 = shifts at work for Child No.3 - she was successful in getting an out-of-school job as usherette in our local theatre back in August, but the wheels of local government (who own the theatre) run very slowly it took ages to get the paperwork and forms done!  She's discovered that Ken Dodd certainly does carry on and on and on telling jokes (well past midnight), but that she doesn't mind when she's being paid time and a half for working on a Saturday!  Potentially plenty of money to pay for her share of the expedition costs!

4 = free tickets to see the preview performance of "Cinderella" at the theatre: great fun, lots of cheesy laughs, brilliant costumes for the Ugly Sisters and a wonderful start to the festive season.

125 = cubic centimetres of engine capacity of the motorbike just bought by No.1 Son who is determined to turn his mother's hair grey!

If you want to see what else has been happening in November then pop over to see Julie at Notes On Paper here.

August's Activities - a little late!

Welcome to my August Month in Numbers - in October!  Oops!
Check out Julie's blog here if you have no idea what I'm talking about :o)

4321 (approximately) = minutes spent watching the London 2012 Olympics  Having been hooked by the opening ceremony, we were captivated by cycling, beach volleyball, swimming, horse-riding, tae-kwon-do, diving, and all manner of athletics.   Olympic fever was not even interrupted by a visit to my Step-mother's, where we introduced her to the delights of rhythmic gymnastics (the arm-chair variety) and mountain biking (the sofa strain)

2 = number of afternoons spent (unsuccessfully) trying to teach
Step-mother's puppy to hand the ball back in a game of fetch

Books read = 7 (but a shorter and more varied set than last month): "Twisted Wing" by Ruth Newman was a thriller set in Cambridge with a confusing start because two murders have already been committed and it takes a while to sort out what has been going on.  Gradually things fall into place only to fall out again as you realise that the murderer is far cleverer than their pursuers.  Cambridge was also the setting for "Lasting Damage" by Sophie Hannah and, like her other psychological thrillers, had me guessing almost to the (slightly disappointing) ending.
"Full Dark, No Stars" was next - by Stephen King, the US master of spooky short stories.  Having seen the film I picked up "Water For Elephants" by Sara Gruen and was amazed how close it had kept to the book.
My reading group's choice was "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett which was an eye-opener because I hadn't realised how much discrimination and segregation had persisted in America in the 60s - I had thought that Rosa Parks had put a stop to it all in the 50s.  At the group, my friend lent me two books to read "The Evil Seed", the first novel by Joanne Harris and "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro.  The former is an atmospheric gothic horror about vampires in Cambridge (again) and the latter a beautiful study of life in service in the 30s - I must get around to catching the film on TV soon.

11 = the number of people we squeezed around our dining table during the weekend No.1 Son brought his friends to stay for the weekend.  They were visiting Chester Zoo - the weather was really kind and they enjoyed the picnic we provided.

There should be a PHOTO here of the happy hordes, but despite weeks of promises No.1 Son has failed to come up with the goods.  So I'll add a picture Child No.3 drew for him that weekend instead:

20 = minutes of interview which proved to be successful for No.3 Child in obtaining a pocket-money job so she is happily looking forward to some spending money after July's disappointment in her previous interviews.

0 = the number of A-grade GCSEs that she achieved - because the majority were A* and the rest were B; it seems there is no middle ground between the subjects she likes and those that she doesn't! 

6 = days spent away by No.2 Son attending a 3 day music festival ... maths never was his strong point!

Part of the reason why I have finally published my belated numbers is that I have a weekend scrappy retreat coming up and I'm hoping to get the scrapping of my months up-to-date!  I have February, April, May and June, August still to complete ... all I need to do is add the words to the pages from my MIN blog posts.  Oh and of course there's still September - eek!!

If you a) want to join in with your Month in Numbers and b) are as late as I am, then other Augusts can be found here.

June In Numbers

Yes, I know it's August and July's numbers are already out there, but I've just discovered that this post was still half-written in draft!  I've been working on the scrapbook page for it so I thought I'd better hit publish!

Welcome to my June in Numbers - check out Julie's blog here if you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you do and you want to join in with your Month in Numbers then other Junes can be found here.

June has been a bit of a wash-out - both literally and in terms of activities.  There have been sunny days in between, but torrential rain, flash floods and lightening strikes are a bit extreme even for a British summer.

1 = Birthday celebrated very quietly by Hubby as it was a working day, Child No.3 was out gallivanting, I was recuperating from my surgery and the boys were still away at university.  We'll have to have a proper family meal out together once we are reunited next month.

25 = pounds spent on his birthday present - a Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized computer, developed to encourage school children to learn about computer programming proper (as opposed to using Microsoft packages or writing html).  Of course, Hubby isn't a school child but he is an old-school programmer.

60 = years on the throne for Queen Elizabeth, resulting in a 4 day weekend for much of the UK.  Rain didn't stop play (we Brits will party on through anything).  It was not much better 10 years ago - I wonder if there will be a Platinum Jubilee and whether our weather will be better?

Books read = 14 (5 reviewed here and 5 more here) and 4 more:

"The Elephant Whisperer" by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence is not the kind of book I normally read.  It's non fiction and it's about animals!  However after some very positive reviews I thought I'd give it a go. I'm so glad I did - it was full of accessible, humorous and touching stories about life in and around a nature reserve in South Africa.  Anthony's struggles with local politics, regulations, poachers, wild animals, domestic animals and the weather were all there along with his triumphs containing a troubled herd of elephants, rescuing rhinos and connecting with the beautiful flora and fauna on the reserve.

C J Sansom's "Winter in Madrid" was my Reading Group choice - a fascinating account of a part of
aspects of the Spanish Civil War about which I knew very little.  There were glimpses of British boarding school life, diplomatic machinations and covert operations. Beautifully written, it left me wanting to know more about the period.

"The Pilot's Wife" by Anita Shreve was one of the books I took to and from Las Vegas without opening.  Possibly just as well as it described the aftermath of a mid-air explosion that killed the pilot!  The grief and confusion of his wife was beautifully described as doubts arose about just how the bomb had got aboard.

Jo Nesbø's thrilling "Headhunters" was full of as many twists and turns as it had unlikeable characters.  Was anybody what they seemed to be? Would anyone get away with their ill deeds?  Would you want them to?

20 = CVs handed out by Child No.3 in her search for a holiday/weekend job.  Despite several positive responses during the day, not one has followed up (yet).  1 on-line application with a local supermarket has resulted in a telephone interview and the group interview is set for next month.  Fingers crossed!

10 = types of vegetables growing in our veg patch - they are all rather behind in their growing due to the lack of sun.

4 = years of study for No.1 Son resulting in a Masters of Chemistry qualification - we are so proud - the graduation ceremony is in a fortnight - watch this space to see how well a mortar board fits on top of his dreadlocks!

Well, we never did get to see him in a mortar board as he wouldn't (let us) pay the extra for an official photograph.  You can see how smart he looked in his suit and gown on my layout here though!

This 'n' That - A Month Misspent

Has it really been 20 days since I last blogged?????

Life does that to you sometimes doesn't it?  Either getting busily in the way or sucking the motivation out of you ... or in my case both!

First there was a visit up north (should that have a capital letter?) where I managed to get photo #2 and item #8 in Rinda's Scavenger Hunt:  the lovely Angel of the North, with No.1 Son to give it some scale.  He's the one on the right!

I'll tell you why we were in the neighbourhood on Sunday when I'll be joining in with Siân's Storytelling.

Disappointingly, my recently-operated-upon elbow flared up which meant that I had to limit my activities again.  It's hard to scrap or blog (or chop vegetables or even clean surfaces) when your write right arm needs elevating and ice-packs!  This did however give me LOTS of time to read books ... and I have just finished wading through the entire series so far of "A Song Of Ice And Fire" by George R.R. Martin - a mind boggling 12½ inches of paperbacks.  At first I was bewildered by the enormous cast of characters in the first book, "A Game Of Thrones", and the switching of viewpoints between them.  Apparently there are 31 different viewpoints and over 1000 different named characters - not that I've checked!  However, I was soon completely hooked and wanting to read more - to the extent that I couldn't wait for Hubby to finish the 4th book of the series, so we shared for while, before I sneakily overtook him while he was out at work!!!
If only reading were an Olympic sport :o)

We finally had some summer sun too which meant I could tackle some garden jobs and tend to the vegetables that we planted this year.  We've even harvested a young lettuce or two.

{ These are not the lettuces - can you guess what they are? }

Thanks to this 'n' that (and some other stuff) I have been very neglectful of my July Counterfeit Kit and managed just 2 pages with it - neither of which I can share yet.  They did involve a lot of machine stitching though.
I'm hoping to be inspired to use other forms of stitchery soon by hanging out over at Obstinate Pursuit: Clair is about to host a FREE class about stitching on paper - it starts on Saturday (August 4th) and runs each weekend throughout August (sneaky peeks here).

I guess there are enough numbers in this post to qualify me to play along with Julie's Month In Numbers - providing I also include that No.1 Son spent only 10 days at home messing up our house before departing and thankfully leaving the mess marginally more contained.  Oh and that Child No.3 had to endure 3 interviews (phone, group and individual) before being turned down for a weekend job in a local supermarket.  As for No.2 Son ... he did help by mowing the our 3 lawns 4 times this month which is something I suppose.
Ooops!  I haven't actually shared June's Month In Numbers yet ... hopefully I'll do that when I scrap it - possibly with next month's kit from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog!

How has your month been?

Five On Friday #6 (MORE (!) Recent Reading)

Well regular readers will have noticed the complete lack of scrapping here following my operation.  My elbow flared up a bit as I was doing too much, despite doing less than normal and so scrapping has had to take a definite back seat.  Even surfing has to be done in short sessions - hence the limited commenting I've been doing - sorry!  Turning the pages of a book does seem to be within the limits of my abilities so here are another 5 of this month's novels:

Michael Crichton's "Next" was a very thought-provoking novel about the consequences of patenting genes.  Lots of scientific research and data is put into context as the fall-out from scientists cutting corners, judges making ill-informed decisions and company CEOs putting profits before people all hits home.  A thrilling and unfortunately all too believable read.

"Hornet's Nest" by Patricia Cornwell - I have to say I prefer her Kay Scarpetta series, this was a bit 2 dimensional and completely unbelievable in places.  I know most police thrillers generally get their man (or woman) at the end, but it helps if you care about the characters doing the chasing or getting killed and dislike the perpetrators or their motives ... not the case here I'm afraid.

The third of the Hunger Games books, "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins was better; I enjoyed a look at life outside Panem but felt that the storming of the Capitol was overly long and complicated.  Still not as gripping as the first book but plenty to keep the pages turning.

I then raided the local library to get more supplies: Having tried out Ian M. Banks at the beginning of the month, I thought I'd better read one of his non-sci-fi books, written without the middle initial, and picked out "The Wasp Factory".  What a twisted and complicated book - various shades of madness in the main characters, murky secrets, jaw-dropping, eye-watering violence - fabulously written, drip-feeding clues that gradually make some sense, culminating in a shocking twist in the final chapter.  Definitely a good read, but not for the faint-hearted!

"Cold Earth" by Sarah Moss was very interesting - six people working on an archaeological dig in an isolated corner of Greenland, coping with inner (and outer?) demons as a flu pandemic sweeps across the rest of the world.  Beautifully written final(?) journal entries/letters from each of the characters tell the tale - I can imagine this being a very spooky and atmospheric film.

Do you enjoy films of books?  Do films of books make you want to check out the book too?

Five On Friday #5 (Recent Reading)

Whenever a book grips me I find it hard to put it down and get on with housework, cooking, gardening or other commitments.  TV programmes get ignored; I disappear to bed very early for undisturbed chapters; rainy weather is welcomed!!!

So, thanks to my enforced inactivity following my surgery and the recent rainy weather, I have been reading ... A LOT!

I took "The Player of Games" by Ian M. Banks with me into hospital to while away the time, but despite having a 7½ hour wait I couldn't concentrate enough to read more than a chapter or two.  I didn't know what to expect when I received it and was dismayed to realise it was Science Fiction of the most complicated and scientific sort!  {Think "Dune" on a cocktail of steroids and Omega 3}  This type of book requires  a large investment of time to get in tune with - you have to cope with long, unpronounceable names for characters and locations (e.g. "Mawhrin-Skel", "Meristinoux"); you have to accept that robots have independent personalities and thought, that science has progressed to allow people to regrow body parts, change sex on a whim, and live for hundreds of years - which means that they have a LOT of time for sitting around philosophising!  On top of all of this there were cons and double-bluffs within the story so some of the characters were nearly as confused as I was.  I didn't like the rather selfish, self-centred main protagonist, "Chiark-Gevantsa Jernau Morat Gurgeh dam Hassease", and despite rooting for him in his adventures within a distant barbaric civilisation during the final ⅓ of the book, I don't think I'll be looking out for any of his further exploits or indeed any more Culture novels by Ian M. Banks

My next book choice needed to be more accessible and less of a struggle so I raided our bookcase at home thinking that I'd re-read something, but it turned out that Hubby has quite a stack of books that I've missed over the years.  I started with "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham who didn't disappoint with this story of litigation in America.  The main and supporting characters were well fleshed out, the pace kept the pages turning and the corporate baddies were suitably unpleasant.  I had to Google the reason behind the title though - apparently a rainmaker is a lawyer good at drumming up new business for the firm.




Next came "Blind Instinct" by Robert W. Walker.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!  This book should be held up as a lesson to all authors not to set their novels in a foreign country without having spent a reasonable amount of time there.  Walker has the decency to acknowledge the help he got from "British English From A to Zed" but it would have been better if, rather than add a phrase from every page, he'd watched some modern British TV programs if he was too lazy to come and research in person.   British men in the year 2000 do not invite ladies to "alight" from a taxi no matter how gentlemanly they are and I can honestly say that I have never, ever heard anyone say ""Something is afoot!" outside of period dramas such as "Downton Abbey" or "Miss Marple".  We might have avoided taking the Lord's name in vain back in the day of Sherlock Holmes and Mary Poppins, but believe me, there are plenty of Brits that use far stronger words than "Gor Blimey" and "bloody" even as long ago as the turn of the Millennium!  Our own police are rarely armed and so I find it highly unlikely that a visiting FBI medical examiner would be allowed to even bring her gun into the UK, let alone walk around London with it in her handbag!  I could go on ... the plot resembles a string vest ... this book is so bad that it is now in the recycling!

After that disaster, it was with some trepidation that I picked the next book from Hubby's section of the bookcase.  "The Fire Baby" by Jim Kelly.  Reading the cover synopsis I was expecting a supernatural tale of some sort but was pleasantly surprised to find a "normal" mystery story intertwined with a journalist, Philip Dryden, getting mixed up with illegal immigrants in East Anglia.  A book set in Britain written by a Brit!  There were lots of twists and turns, and while the characters often got themselves into scrapes (where would the story be if they didn't?) it was a darn sight more readable than my previous book.  This was the second in a series ... I think I'll seek out "The Water Clock" in which Dryden's adventures begin.


My fifth book in a fortnight was Suzanne Collins' second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, "Catching Fire".  This was as un-put-downable as the original story.  We're introduced to more of the Districts surrounding the Capitol as Katniss & Peeta tour in the run-up to the 75th Hunger Games.  The evil, scheming President Snow has threatened Katniss' family and friends if she doesn't do her best to suppress the stirrings of rebellion ... A great page-turner with lots of action, ethical dilemmas for the character, interesting settings ...
I've already started on "Mockingjay"!

What are you reading right now?  Ever felt a book should never have been published?