Almost halfway through June…

How did we get here so quickly?

This month has been relatively quiet, compared to last month at least. If you follow me on Instagram (link is at the top of my blog’s home page) you will have seen me posting lots of photographs of big cats, relatives up close and personal.

That’s because at the end of May, partly celebrating our wedding anniversary, partly marking my significant birthday from back in January, we stayed at the Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent for their overnight experience, which included the opportunity to hand feed big cats. Mr B has a slight hand tremor so didn’t feel able to take part in that activity, so lucky me got to feed a white tiger (twice), a black jaguar and a white lioness. It was awesome, being so close to large, powerful animals who were gently taking food from your hands. So magical.

The Big Cat Sanctuary is an excellent organisation involved in the conservation of big (and small) cats and contributing to international breeding programmes. They have a fabulous Instagram feed of their own; go and check them out.

After that we celebrated Mr B’s birthday which involved presents (books of course) and a very nice Indian meal at a local restaurant, complete with cocktails. I think he enjoyed himself 😀

I’m making great progress on Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer Challenge (see my reading list here); so far I’ve finished three books, reviewed two on the blog and have another review prepping for posting in a day or so.

I’m currently reading two more:

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, published in the 1930s; and
The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum, all about forensic science during the Jazz Age in New York

A couple more after that and I will have met my target for June, which feels good.

In terms of what I’ve been watching, way back in January (possibly even December) one of the UK channels began showing Major Crimes each weekday starting from the very first episode. Mr B loves this show but I had never watched it, so we decided to build it in to our routine and soon enough I was hooked; only 10 years after everybody else. Last week we came to the very last episode and I am bereft. Currently looking for something else to fill the void.

Temperatures are starting to rise here in my corner of SW London so summer is on its way. I hope you are all well and staying safe!

The Bride’s Blogiversary

Here we are at yet another anniversary for this blog in all of its incarnations. The Bride is now 14 in blog years.

I was 14 in 1976 (if you’re paying attention you may be aware that a significant birthday is on the horizon)

What do we know about 1976?

some of my favourite acting talent was born in 1976 – Ryan Reynolds, Cillian Murphy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Keeley Hawes & Kelly McDonald;
it was a leap year;
the summer Olympics were held in Montreal, and fellow Scot David Wilkie won a gold medal in the swimming pool;
Agatha Christie died (I remember this vividly);
the UK won the Eurovision Song Contest with the “classic” Save Your Kisses for Me;
All The President’s Men & Carrie were released; and most importantly
Mamma Mia was No. 1 on my birthday. Here I go again….

I may have a small sherry to celebrate later!

My Week – 17 October edition

It has been a much quieter week than I had intended.

Last Sunday I went to the first of three planned screenings at the London Film Festival, and saw the new Edgar Wright film Last Night in Soho (which I loved btw) but due to Life Happenings, I didn’t make it to the other two. A shame, but can’t be helped, and they are films that I will catch up own later.

It’s also been a week of family anniversaries:

Monday 11th was my American sister-in-law’s birthday (my baby brother lives in West Virginia)
Tuesday 12th would have been my late Dad’s 87th birthday
Thursday 14th was my brother’s birthday
Saturday 16th marked 30 years since my Mum died, which is astonishing to me; it seems so long ago and also just yesterday all at once…..

I didn’t buy any new books this week, other than expected pre-orders of course, I haven’t entirely lost my mind 😀 and I made progress on all of the books I’m currently reading and finished one – The Chestnut Man which I’ll talk about soon. You can see what I’m reading on my sidebar.

It’s just been quiet and autumnal and there is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I just need to slow down and that’s OK.

Hope you are all well and staying safe!

Looking back at Summer 2021

So, here we are well into the first full week of September and I am only just picking up my virtual pen in order to look back at the past two months after an unplanned break in blogging.

The break was not planned (unlike last year when I took a month off) but was in response to a major reading slump which hit me in mid-July. None of my normal tactics to get over this worked – reading non-fiction, especially true crime is usually the cure – and it wasn’t so much that I didn’t enjoy the books I’d selected while I was reading them, it was a mixture of not feeling like picking any of them up, and even when I did engage a bit more I just couldn’t finish anything. I hate when that happens.

Of course, it didn’t stop me from buying more books – too many to list here I’m afraid.

The first major category was Twenty Books of Summer. I finished five, reviewed three, started another three and stopped. And then I stopped writing because I had nothing to say.

But fingers crossed, I may have come out the other side and am keen to get back to both reading and talking about the books I’ve read. So I’m going to do some round-up posts and some short movie reviews until I have caught up. I was also going to avoid challenges but I see that there’s a novella challenge coming up in a month or so and I might give that a go because Short Reads 🙂

I hope you have all had a great summer and will stick around this wee blog of mine!

My Month in Review | May 2021

I can’t believe that we are already at the end of May (or the start of June when this will be published); almost halfway through the year. So much better than this time last year. The Book God and I have both been fully vaccinated, we’ve ventured out to a restaurant for the first time in I don’t know how long, and we have plans to do interesting things over the next few weeks.

The sun is also shining and the temperatures are beginning to climb above 20 degrees (centigrade) and things are looking good.

I’ve probably jinxed it now!

It’s been a good reading month too.

Books read this month = 8
Pages read = 3417
Progress against Goodreads challenge = 53% (8 books ahead of schedule)

In terms of challenges, I have half-heartedly started the David Copperfield Reading project with nothing substantive to report so far, and the Twenty Books of Summer challenge starts tomorrow (1 June). You can find my book selections here.

Next month’s pre-orders:

Castle Shade by Laurie R King – Mary & Holmes get caught up in a mystery involving Queen Marie of Romania. Transylvania might just be involved! This is the 17th entry in this series and I really do need to get caught up
The Wood Bee Queen by Edward Cox – librarians, local folklore, magical stones – what’ not to love!
The Murder of Graham Catton by Katie Lowe – death of Mr C thought to be solved, done and dusted but along comes one of those pesky true crime podcasts to stir things up again
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides – exclusive students in a Cambridge college – actually made it four comments down on the Amazon page before I hit my first reference to The Secret History
Falling by TJ Newman – pilot’s family is kidnapped and the only way to save them is to crash the plane…..
Star Eater by Kerstin Hall – magical bloodlines, shadowy factions, spying, all of the things
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron – what is targeting the great spaceships which transport stuff in human occupied space?

I’m going to try really, really hard not to buy anything else but we shall see. My track record is not good…

Nothing much else to add here, so I’ll wish you very happy reading, and stay safe!

April in Review

Here we are with a quarter of the year already gone and it’s time for another monthly round-up.

April was a good month for bookish matters.

The Stats

Books read = 8
Pages read = 2846
Goodreads challenge = 5 books ahead of schedule and already at 40%

Pre-orders for May

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon – “Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman.”
Phase Six by Jim Shepard – reading a book about a global pandemic while in the middle of a global pandemic seems counter-intuitive but I am unable to resist. This was written pre-Covid btw
The Album of Doctor Moreau by Daryl Gregory – HG Wells meets boy band culture with some murder thrown in. Sounds awesome.
Last Days in Cleaver Square by Patrick McGrath – I have always had a great fondness for McGrath but it’s a while since I’ve read anything by him. The premise of this – set in 1975 where an old man is haunted by visions of the dying General Franco – sounds fascinating.
The Beresford by Will Carver – two of my favourite books so far in 2021 were written by Will Carver and I fully expect to love this new standalone thriller also
Witch by Iain Rob Wright – all I know about this is it is horror, there’s a witch (duh) and there may or may not be cursed manuscripts…….
The Nine by Gwen Strauss – my interest in the experiences of women caught up in WWII continues; this is the story of nine women fleeing a German forced labour camp.

Coming up

I get my second Covid vaccination this week about which I am very glad. Mr B is already fully vaccinated and I’m looking forward to feeling more confident about heading into London again as the museums re-open.

A BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love by Emily Mortimer starts next weekend. It looks lush and enjoyable with a great cast and high production values and I for one am sold.

I have a couple of challenges coming up:

Cathy at 746Books is hosting Twenty Books of Summer from 1 June to 1 September and I’m already compiling my list. This will be my year to finish, I can feel it 🙂
I’m challenging myself to read David Copperfield, prompted by having watched Armando Ianucci’s recent film version. These days I do tend to struggle with classic Victorian authors so I’m giving myself a chance and planning to read in line with the original publication schedule, which means I should finish around November. November 2022, that is.

Apart from that all is quiet (despite the howling wind outside at the moment). Hope you are all staying safe and have a great reading week!

Updating my week (ending 18 April)

We’ve been graced with beautiful sunny weather over the past few days which is guaranteed to lighten my mood, but last week didn’t start that way. On Monday 12th we woke up to sleet, of all things.

Anyway, despite that the signs of spring are increasingly evident, and the photo here shows the view as I walk out onto my front step 😀

Currently reading

I’ve got a few books that have been on my currently reading list for some time, but I have been absorbed in The Children of Red Peak by Craig DiLouie because of a long-held and continuing fascination with cults, whether real or fictional. Hoping to finish this soon.

Just finished

One by One, my next read in the Robert Hunter detective series by Chris Carter; I think it’s #5 but I’m far too lazy to check. Oh wait, yes it is. Deeply gruesome, I sat up until 02:30 to finish it, and have already added #6 to my TBR

New books (excluding pre-orders):

An Evil Mind by Chris Carter – as mentioned above
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens – planning to read this following the original publication schedule
Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick – In 1949, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie has returned as a Trustee to live in the long-defunct boarding school that he had attended as a child. There he is preparing a memoir.
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer – A speculative thriller about the end of all things, set in the Pacific Northwest. A harrowing descent into a secret world.
Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, edited by Jonathan Strahan – This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through.
Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman – Francine is a luminary in her field of evolutionary science. She joins the Foundation to study a colony of bonobo apes: remarkable animals, and the perfect creatures to certify her revolutionary feminist theory of reproduction.
The Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow – volume 12 of this long-running series, a good source of new authors in the horror field

Currently watching:

We’ve been trying to finish off a number of series we had recorded, and have succeeded with ZeroZeroZero (awesome) and Briarpatch (very enjoyable), and we will soon come to the end of the very last series of Elementary, which will make me very, very sad.

Hope you are all doing well and staying safe. Some short movie reviews will be coming up soon, so watch this space.

March in review & April so far

I struggled a bit during March so didn’t feel very much like writing (or reading for that matter) but have no fear, I didn’t abandon books altogether. April promised to be marginally better, though as I write this a simple repair to our central heating system has led to a complete failure, and I’m having difficulty adjusting to new medication, so we’ll see how all of that goes…..

Enough of the moaning I hear you cry, what about the books?

March

Books read = 5

Pages read = 1299

Progress against Goodreads challenge = 2 books ahead, 28% of my target

April

I was going to list all of my pre-orders for the next month but that was starting to make me feel overwhelmed, sp let’s not and say we did 🙂

If you are interested there are 13 books on pre-order, 6 of which have already been delivered onto my Kindle app. All of them look really interesting as of course they would be otherwise why would I be ordering them (I can imagine you asking this question), and if I had to pick one then the only physical book I’m buying this month is the Illustrated HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy anniversary edition – with art by Chris Riddell. I still have the original LP of the radio show somewhere in a cupboard from back in the day, and as a long-time fan I’m inordinately excited about this new edition!

I’m currently reading quite a few books as you will see from the sidebar but finding it difficult to settle on anything so I’m dipping in and out as the mood takes me, which can be quite fun.

So that’s where I am at the moment. Keep your fingers crossed that the banging I can hear above my head is denoting progress on my heating issue, and that the sun might come out later today.

Hope you are well and staying safe – see you next time 😀

Updating my week – let’s not and say we did

Last week was a bit of a horror to be honest – a short but intense depressive episode, a couple of bouts of insomnia and a narrow escape from a phishing attempt – so I’m just not going into the details. You can probably guess not much reading got done so we’ll just skip that for now.

One of the things I missed was my Blogiversary! The Bride is now 14 years old; who’d have thunk it 😀

I turned 14 in 1976. Centuries ago!

Kelly McDonald, Sir Chris Hoy, Martha Wainwright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ryan Reynolds & Chadwick Boseman were born. I love all of these people.

Agatha Christie, Howard Hughes & some bloke called Mao died

Mamma Mia was number one in the UK on my birthday. This explains a LOT

Star Wars began filming, Brotherhood of Man won the Eurovision Song Contest back when Britain still won that sort of thing, the summer Olympics took place in Montreal and Hotel California (one of my perennial favourite) was released.

What a year that was. Still feeling really old……

October Monthly Round-Up

A week late, but what a week it’s been! So many distractions, but I did still want to come on here and register my reading progress for October.

Books read = 4

Number of pages = 1401

Drum roll, please………

I have hit my reading goal for this year – 60 out of 60 books with two full months to go. To early to say how many more I will read before the end of the year, but I will be reading more that’s for sure.

November pre-orders:

Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood – New York, 1946. Lillian Pentecost is the most successful private detective in the city, but her health is failing. She hires an assistant to help with the investigative legwork. Willowjean Parker is a circus runaway. Quick-witted and street-smart, she’s a jack-of-all-trades with a unique skill-set – and together they investigate the murder of a wealthy young widow. First in a anew series, couldn’t resist.
One by One by Ruth Ware – Snowbound thriller full of tense corporate shenanigans plus avalanche. I haven’t read any Ruth Ware before, so very much looking forward to trying her out.
The Children of Red Peak by Craig DiLouie – survivors of a cult digging into their past, releasing memories and trauma that they have repressed for years. The answers will no doubt be found at Red Peak.
Last Stand in Lychford by Paul Cornell – Exploding fairies, the architect of the universe and a celestial bureaucratic blunder make this a satisfying conclusion to the ever-popular Witches of Lychford series.

That’s it from me! Hope you all have a great reading week.