Sunday Salon | 31 May

[Bloggers note: yes, it’s the 1 June but this was all ready to be loaded yesterday and I just …. forgot 😦 ]

The end of May already. This year has been so weird but one constant for me has of course been reading and buying books. Mostly buying if I’m being honest 😀

So here is my round-up of the month.

The Stats

Books read = 6;
Number of Pages = 1968;
Progress against Goodreads challenge = 52% (7 books ahead of schedule)

May Book Haul

Because I’ve been flaky when it comes to updating new books I was going to do a list here BUT when I looked at how many there were and considered that my last two posts were basically just lists of books I’ve decided not to do that again, or at least not so soon. But in case you are interested…

4 x sci-fi/fantasy titles;
7 x crime;
1 x general fiction;
2 x true crime; and
6 x non-fiction

This list excludes pre-orders. That’s a lot. I’m going to try to do better next month by which I of course mean less. Having said that…

June Pre-Orders

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. – JCO – “a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all.” JCO is one of my favourite contemporary authors so, you know, had to be done.
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by HG Parry – “A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, [it] is a genre-defying story of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom.“
Riviera Gold by Laurie R King – the latest in the consistently excellent Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes series
Hinton Hollow Death Trip by Will Carver – volume 3 in a series of which I haven’t read any so far, but the premise sounded great and I can always go back to the others later

In other stuff……

Currently watching Stumptown and Snowpiercer and despite the horrors of the world enjoying John Oliver (Last Week Tonight) whenever he appears – this week’s should be a must-watch.

20 Books of Summer – it’s that time again, and you will already have (hopefully) seen my reading list post

Celebrating our wedding anniversary during the quarantine involved my home-made lasagna, a couple of glasses of fizzy wine and two hours of Chinese sci-fi on Netflix because that is how we, as a couple, roll.

Moaning about the fact that hardly anyone except me seems to be wearing masks when outside.

Hope you have a great reading week, and stay safe!

Sunday Salon | 1 December

Hey, it’s December 1st so that means it’s Christmas, right?

Thought so.

I was surprised when I sat down to write this that 2 weeks had passed since my last post on the blog, but a lot has happened chez Bride and I’ve been a tad distracted, so this will be a life update of sorts, with book and movie stuff to follow.

Promise.

First the catastrophe. I was working away on something when I heard a loud thump and the sound of Mr B yelling. When I made it down to the kitchen I discovered that he had opened our fridge and the door completely detached itself and landed on him. I emptied out the contents of the door shelves while he held it up, and then we had to move everything into our spare fridge (yes, we have a spare fridge, don’t at me). Luckily Mr B was only mildly hurt (physically – I think his dignity was severely dented) but it was clear that we needed a new fridge. That’s all done now and New Fridge is awesome by the way.

Secondly, necessary but not enjoyable – mammogram time. As a woman of a certain age, I get checked out at regular intervals and although the NHS staff are uniformly kind and professional it is SO undignified and I always feel stressed and pretty rotten afterwards. But I just have to wait for the results and that’s me for another couple of years.

Thirdly, all of the nice stuff

we had a day out at the British Museum to see the Inspired by the East exhibition, all about how western art has been influenced by the Islamic world, very interesting and enjoyable
I was able to book tickets to see Hilary Mantel talk about her third and final Thomas Cromwell novel. I have such a girl crush on her and this will be great.
I was able to support a couple of lovely people by buying from their Etsy shops on Black Friday – if you are interested please check out Cindy & Erin

Saving the best until last…..

We went to see My Favorite Murder Live at the Apollo in Hammersmith. MFM is one of my favourite podcasts; if you’ve been around here long enough you will know that I am into true crime so this was a huge treat. The MFM ladies were extremely funny and we had a great night out. I highly recommend both the podcast and the live show.

So that’s my last two weeks. I don’t know how I managed to cope with all of the excitement 🙂

Hope you all have a super week.

Monthly Round-up: October 2018

fullsizeoutput_888 So here I am back again after an unplanned hiatus. I really did mean to blog while I was away but that just didn’t happen, and then when I got back home I was unwell and life took over with lots of appointments and stuff. I’m hoping that over the next couple of weeks I will catch up on my backlog as I have lots of Notes about Things.

Watch this space.

Anyway, this is a quick recap of the last month!

Books read:

Night Film by Marisha Pessl
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd
Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel

Books bought: too many to list here. Seriously, it’s almost embarrassing. There are a lot.

Other stuff:

Our break in the east of England was really enjoyable, full of wonderful places and great food. I’ll be writing about all of that separately. Maybe not the food, but certainly all of the history stuff.

Lots of good TV around at the moment. Watching Killing Eve (in regular time, no binge watching) and loving it deeply, along with the return of Criminal Minds, one of my all time favourite series.