Armchair BEA: Ethics & Non-Fiction

I started to write a post on Literary Fiction yesterday, but life in the form of a small and wriggly ginger baby got in the way, so anyway, onwards!

Today's topics are Ethics and Non-Fiction, both things I have opinions about. To be fair, it would probably be easier to find something I don't have an opinion about but there we go.

The ethics part of this post is going to be short and sweet. I personally have no experience with plagiarism, but my feelings on it are don't do it. I always give credit whenever I've been inspired by anybody else (I probably link back to other people too much, but I figure it's better to do it more rather than less) - it's nice to share the love anyway. The other side of it is that if I have no inspiration I'm quite happy not to post for a few weeks rather than steal other people's ideas and content. I don't understand people who are that... I don't know. Lazy? Pressured? that they have to steal other people's content. I know from personal experience that often when I do actually get a post written, it constitutes several hours of work and I wouldn't appreciate people stealing chunks of it. Give credit where credit is due, and if you can't be original maybe think again about keeping a blog.

That is all.

Now, non-fiction! I'm pretty excited bout this genre at the moment. The last year or so has been big for me in terms of non-fiction reading. I'm going to give a couple of my favourites and a few that I'm particularly excited about from my TBR.

So this year my favourites have been :

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti - If you missed how much I loved this book you can check out my review/rant here. I loved it so much I even did a giveaway and that's a big deal as I'm on that part of maternity leave I don't get paid for now...

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - This is a memoir but pretty much the most frikking awesome thing I've read in a long long time. I want to read everything else Strayed has written and I finished the book totally inspired.

**EDIT**
I cannot BELIEVE I missed out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I loved this book so much I couldn't even write a review of it although I tried several times. If you care at all about food sustainability or local produce, you must read it.

And here, in no particular order of preference, is a stack of books from my non-fiction shelf that I have yet to read:

 

These are picked purely because Bossypants and Books,Baguettes and Bedbugs have both been recommended to me numerous times by other bloggers, and because I love and adore Nora Ephron and Bill Bryson. Just to put it in perspective, there are about 30 more books just on my non-fiction shelves that I haven't read yet.

 

However, I still want more recommendations! What are you favourites? :-) 

Armchair BEA: Blogger Development

Today's topic for Armchair BEA is blogger development. When I started blogging, I had no purpose other than to keep track of my books somewhere so that when somebody asked me for a book recommendation, or what was my favourite book I'd read recently, I'd actually be able to answer them rather than just staring blankly. Also, although a lot of my family and friends are big readers, I got the feeling they were getting more than a little sick of me going on and on about my latest favourite author all the time. Thankfully people online don't seem to have the same issues!

I was one of those bloggers who started out without really realising that a wider book blogging community even existed, so when I first started I was ridiculously focused on the amount of followers I had and so excited about it. I think that although I started the blog for myself, I very quickly got caught up in trying to impress people and the blog could easily have become something that wasn't a true representation of myself at all. Thankfully I realised fairly early on that I don't enjoy writing reviews to a certain formula. I like to write my 'reviews' more like opinion pieces, because that's all they are. Also I'm not a formal person at all, so it seemed silly that my blog was starting to sound so prescribed. Now I try to post equal amounts of reviews, memes like Top Ten Tuesday and Showcase Sunday, and slightly more personal posts. Through the combined awesomeness of RAK and various readathons, I've come across blogs run by the bloggers I now consider to be good friends, and the more I participate in the community, the more I get out of it. I'm running my own reading challenge (dedicated to all things fairytale and folklore) for the second year and really enjoying it, and I'm attending my first ever book launch party in the next couple of weeks. 

I've also noticed in the past few months (since the blog turned two) that I've been getting more requests from publishers to review books rather than me harassing the life out of them for things I really want to read. This is really nice, but is in no way part of why I originally got into blogging, or why I love it so much, it's just an added extra :-) 

I had an email a while back from a blogger who was just starting out and wanted some advice. All I could tell her was to talk to people - not in a spammy way, but actually converse in your comments and people will usually be quick to welcome you in my experience. I feel that the more I blog, the more I learn, and I've lost count of the number of amazing books I've read on blogger recommendations in the past two and a half years. I hope I never stop developing as a blogger; it's definitely something I plan to do for a long while more!

Armchair BEA Day 1 - Introductions!

 



Today is the first day of Armchair BEA. Every year I am jealous as various bloggers head off to BEA and every year I wish I was American or that it was easier to get to America. This year I decided that at least I could sign up for Armchair BEA and participate slightly in the fun :-)

Here are my introduction questions. For those of you who already know a lot of this stuff, sorry, and for those who are new, hi!

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? 

I'm Bex, although I've recently realised that only my family and people on the internet call me that. Everybody else I know calls me Bekah or Rebekah. Anyway. I've been blogging about two and a half years and I got into blogging when my husband and I moved to another part of the country, away from all my family and friends and I thought it would be a good idea to have somewhere to keep track of my reading so that I would be better at giving people recommendations. I quickly realised how much I love having a place to voice my opinions and ramble about all the bookish things my long suffering family and friends really don't want to hear about!

2. Where in the world are you blogging from? Tell a random fact or something special about your current location. Feel free to share pictures. 

I'm blogging from the coast of Kent, UK and down the road is the house where Charles Dickens Aunt's house, where he used to spend his summers. I used to have a picture, but I have no idea where it's gone, sorry!


3.Have you previously participated in Armchair BEA? What brought you back for another year? If you have not previously participated, what drew you to the event? 

I've never participated before, but I love the idea of it because BEA itself always seems awesome and so much fun for bloggers who go.

4. What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2013?

I'm currently reading a few things; A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg (which is great), The Second - Last Woman to Die by Maggie Joel, which is really interesting, and How To Make Money Using Etsy by Timothy Adam, which is also really interesting and useful.  

5. Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.

I learned piano for ten years and really want to take lessons again so I can get my Grade 8 certificate.

6. Name your favorite blog(s) and explain why they are your favorite(s). 

Oh, I feel like I do this so much that any regular readers will just be rolling their eyes going 'oh my god not this AGAIN!', but since you asked, I have three absolute favourites. Musings of a Bookshop Girl is written by lovely Ellie and reading it feels like sitting down at your kitchen table on a sunny afternoon when you've got nothing to do except either curl up with a great book or have a long chat with a friend you've not seen for ages over tea and a warm scone. Laura is in charge of Devouring Texts and she is hilarious. She has a lot of the same interests as me and reads a lot of the stuff I want to read and it's my go-to blog for cheering myself up. Finally Hanna my book twin at Booking in Heels. I'm pretty much guaranteed that everything she reviews will either be something I love, have on my TBR, or really want to read. If she says something is good and it's not already on my list it will immediately go on it, no further questions needed. All three of them are generally lovely people and I now class them all as good friends as well as keepers of awesome blogs, which is a definite bonus  :-)

Obviously I have a lot of other blogs I really enjoy, but I'll limit myself to those three for this post! My blog roll is down the right hand side, in case you're interested.

7.Which is your favorite post that you have written that you want everyone to read? 

My little rant about libraries and why they are essential to society and the survival of life in general is pretty much the only post I've ever written that I would really love everyone to read.

8.If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why? 

Neil Gaiman, because he's just awesome. But in all honesty, I don't meet authors for a reason, which is that I mostly can hardly communicate with everyday strangers in social situations. If I were to meet an author I really loved I would probably end up in a corner in the foetal position, whimpering. An attractive image, I know.

9. What literary location would you most like to visit? Why? 

Haworth again, because last time we went we didn't go walking on the moors and I feel like I missed out. Also Bath because I want to go to the Jane Austen Centre which seems amazing, and the Lake District, because Swallows and Amazons.

10. What is your favorite part about the book blogging community? 

The people! And the recommendations, and the events, obviously.

11. Is there anything that you would like to see change in the coming years?

Not really. I know some people say it can be quite bitchy and stuff, but I honestly have no experience of that. From where I'm sitting it's all sunshine and roses :-)

Review: - Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison

Those of you who have been paying attention to my posts (or lack thereof) lately may have noticed that I'm on a bit of a handmade/self-sufficiency kick at the moment. Surprisingly it's lasting longer than such fads usually do, although that may have something to do with the fact that my sister and I have just signed up for our first craft fair in August (eeeeeek) so now I'm freaking out trying to make enough stuff in time. Anyway, that's kind of by the way except for the fact that Laura (of the Handmade Life) pretty much does in this book exactly what I'm trying to do. Here's the blurby bit from Goodreads:

Laura Lovegrove didn’t really want to leave her busy life in Ealing – all her friends lived there, it was easy to keep her two little girls entertained, and she had lots of quiet space to work on her fabric designs. But when architect husband Adi is relocated to rural Norfolk, Laura puts on a brave face and ups sticks to the sticks. She knew village life would be different, but she wasn’t quite prepared for a pokey cottage, nosey neighbours, errant poodles, and even a significant ex turning up. Worst of all, a house fire at Laura’s cottage destroys most of her beloved vintage clothing collection. Left with just scraps of fabric, Laura is determined to breathe new life into them. At the village’s sewing group she learns how to back stitch, cross stitch and a whole lot more – her new love for sewing could be her fortune! She turns her scraps into purses, bags, ties, even dog leads (which should solve the poodle problem), and soon is inundated with orders. But Adi is growing increasingly distant, just as ex Chris starts to show a whole lot of interest in Laura and her designs …

Straight up I have to get one thing out of the way. Laura spends a lot of this novel going on about how great living in Ealing was. My parents just moved to Ealing and I really have problems believing anybody would think it was that great. However I am prepared to admit that I'm biased against it because they moved from gorgeous, green and leafy, almost the countryside but still close enough to London to class as London Hampton Hill and that's where I spent my whole life before moving to Kent. Now that's out the way! 

Pretty much every summer I go on a bit of a 'chick lit' splurge. So far this is the sum total of this year's 'splurge' but I really enjoyed it so I'm probably going to go find more books like it and treat myself a bit. My favourite thing about the book was that after her collection of Vintage clothes is damaged in a fire, Laura, despite having little sewing ability, decides to repurpose all of her vintage fabrics into scarves, bags, small chicks for her kids at Easter and the like. Also, she does all of her sewing in a yurt, which just seems ridiculously cool to me. 

If you enjoy (as I do) books about women who leave a situation where they were happy, move to another place where they are initially unhappy and drift apart from their husbands and then discover their talent for something they can immediately make tons of money from and be totally successful and fulfilled, you will like this book. Also if you're into making stuff. 

Oh, and just because I haven't mentioned Chris (Laura's art school ex who magically reappears in her life) it's because I kind of disliked him. He was a bit drippy and vague and I didn't really buy Laura being that into him. Especially not over her husband, who was kind of an arse at times, but mostly quite great. 

Bout of Books Friday

Friday

Rhys was off work, so I anticipated getting lots of reading done. When will I learn not to anticipate things? Firstly, we had to take the car to the garage to get new tyres and I wanted to go with to have a wander around the charity shops while we waited (also so Rhys didn't have to sit there by himself for hours). Then after that Rhys was feeling crap so I looked after Benji for a couple of hours so he could have a nap. We went to the library as they had a new book in for me, which was great. Then we basically spent the rest of the day mooching about and I again didn't get much reading done until after Benji was in bed and Doctor Who was over.

I did get another early birthday present from Rhys, which was amazing and book related so I shall show you what it was. My birthday isn't until June but Rhys and I are historically terrible at keeping secrets so we tend to get each other about four presents as we keep giving them to each other as soon as they arrive, so have to keep getting more so as to have something to give each other on the actual day! My first present was the Juno soundtrack, which I used to have but then lost, my second present is the most amazing thing in the world and I will take a picture sometime in the future when I remember (it's an Eddie Izzard 'Cake or Death?' t-shirt from the gig we went to the other night!), and my third present is this:

 

 

For those of you who have no idea what this is, it's a notebook with Death from The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. She is my favourite and I love her.



Pages Read:110
Books Read From: A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Books finished: Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison, The Craft Business Handbook
Blogs Visited:.....
Snacks Consumed: some of a massive (seriously, massive) tub of popcorn we got for Eurovision tonight and also half a bar of the new Cadbury's Marvellous Creations with cookie and nuts. It was actually really nice.

Bout of Books Thursday

Thursday

Today was not the best day, readathonwise. I did finish knitting a teeny tiny blanket for a premature baby though, so not a total washout. I did manage to read about 20 pages of The Craft Business Handbook though while knitting blocks for my friend.... 

Pages read: 20ish
Books read from: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, and The Craft Business Handbook
Books finished: Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison & The Craft Business Handbook
Blogs visited: .......
Snacks consumed: Some chocolate and vanilla ice cream

Bring on Friday.

Bout of Books Wednesday Update

The master post thing kind of stopped working for me today. I figured if I was getting bored scrolling through all the other days, everyone else probably was to, so I'm going to do a post per day from now on! 


Wednesday

Yesterday was slightly less successful than Monday, but I'm not going to let it deter me! I still have the end of the craft cupboard revamp project to get on with, and Benji and I are taking a trip to the Farmers' Market later to get some things (which may or may not include a cupcake...) and I will probably get caught up in knitting teeny tiny hats for premature babies again, but that aside, The Art of Fielding is getting really good and I'd like to get settled down and read at least another few chapters today!

Pages Read: 122
Books Read From: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Books Finished: Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison
Blogs Visited: Among Stories, and then the usual suspects.
Snacks Consumed: a cupcake, which was awesome, and then Rhys brought me a pain au chocolat when he came home which was also awesome. 

lemon cupcake with a flower on. Made of win. 

Today's definitely been better than yesterday which is pretty much down to the fact that all I've done since dinner is lie on the sofa and read. I didn't get hardly any reading in before Benji went to bed as he rolls so much now that I take my eyes off him to read a paragraph and he's like, across the other side of the room, upside down, in a drawer or something. (Just to clarify, this has never happened so far, but the other day he was nearly under the table in approximately five seconds of not looking at him) So anyway, during hours of daylight much attention must be paid to the baby which means lots of knitting (which I can do without looking at it), but not much reading :-( Anyway! The cupcake I bought myself earlier was awesome and The Art of Fielding is, as expected, getting better and better. I might squeeze in a few more pages before bed and hopefully some more in the morning as Rhys doesn't start work till about midday and he likes to hang out with Benji when he's here in the mornings!

Also, why is eating a cupcake so much more awesome than having just a slice of a big cake? I love cake in all its forms but there's just something extra satisfying about cupcakes and I can't work out what it is. 

Bout of Books Challenges

Book to Music Challenge

So firstly I want to say that I love this challenge! It's hosted by Medusa's Library and basically what you have to do is make a playlist to go along with one of your favourite books.  The songs on this playlist that I'm currently making on Spotify for Little Women (pretty much my favourite book of all time) will seem like they have no relation whatsoever to it, but what can I say? They immediately jumped to mind! 

Apologies for the amount of Disney!

1. Sunny Afternoon - The Kinks
2. I'll Make a Man Out of You - Mulan
3. Pack Up - Eliza Doolittle
4. Pencil Full of Lead - Paolo Nutini
5. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning - Jamie Cullum
6. Whistle While You Work - Snow White
7. Someone Like You - Adele
8. Octopus's Garden - The Beatles
9. Trouble - Ray LaMontagne
10. Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
11. You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You - Jamie Cullum 
12. Feeling Good - either Muse or Nina Simone depending on your preference!
13. Home - Michael Buble
14. American Tune - Simon & Garfunkel

Bout of Books Master Post

So, it's Monday and Bout of Books is finally upon us! We're still at my parents' this morning, travelling back today and so far this weekend I've done absolutely no reading, but today is a new (gorgeous and sunny) day, and not only is it readathon, but I'm going to see my best friend later (so yay for that) aaaaand all my blogging girlies are doing the readathon too so I'm even more excited!!

I think I'm going to keep this as the master post for updates and post challenge entries on a different post just to keep it from getting too massive, and so that I don't have to write a completely new post every day. We'll see how it goes, anyway!

Monday

So far this morning I've read nothing, but I did bring four books with me for two days away (obviously), so I'll be reading from some of the following at some point today: 

      

I just realised, after nearly two and a half years of blogging that it's sooooo much easier to copy and paste pictures rather than save and upload them. Yes, I am an idiot. Yes, you can feel free to laugh at me. I'm at least part of the way through all of these books and they're all great in their own ways. I need to intersperse this with some knitting I'm doing for a friend and also some I'm doing for this awesome charity (making teeny tiny hats and blankets, so cute!), and also want to spend some time on other people's blogs being supportive and chatting and stuff :-)  

Pages read: 173

Books read from: Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison, Stitch n Bitch Nation by Debbie Stoller, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Books finished: Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison

Blogs visited today: Creative Deeds Reads, and then Laura and Ellie, who already get enough linking, you should all know where they are by now!

Snacks consumed: So far, dry toast for breakfast because there was no margarine, no jam,and only Weetabix which is gross. Yay mum's house :-p Oh, and tea :-) Also, fake milky way bars from Sainsburys and some chocolate tiffin from Costa (incidentally, why is everybody now calling fridge cake tiffin again? they seem to switch between the two depending on mood...)

Tuesday 

So far this morning I've managed to have some breakfast (toast with honey today, because I'm back home and our cupboards are marginally more stocked than mums.. that said I'm still going to have to go shopping for snacks later on I think!) and my front room looks like this: 

That little space on the armchair is where I'm perching to do blog stuff while Benji rolls round on the floor, and just to give you an idea of what I'm contending with at the moment, the bag on the chair is full of knitting, the paper behind it is a list of my current and future creations, on the table behind the mug are two alphabet blocks currently in progress for a friend, at the front of the table, almost out of shot is my folder of knitting patterns, and on the chair is a pile of material I nicked from my sister for another project. Alongside all that, The Art of Fielding is hiding in the corner of the chair there, Jamrach's Menagerie is next to the laptop, and Laura's Handmade Life which I finished yesterday is underneath the pile of material! As well as reading, I need to have a massive sort out of my craft storage area today as at the moment the table is holding everything so it's out of Benji's way! 

It's a gorgeous day here, and Benji and I plan to go on a little trip later to the library and post office, but probably no major expeditions, which leaves lots of time to catch up with The Art of Fielding! 

Pages Read:35
Books Read From: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Books Finished:Laura's Handmade Life by Amanda Addison
Blogs Visited Today: there were some, but I've forgotten...
Snacks consumed: Bourbon biscuits

Bout of Books Goals

It's Bout of Books on Monday, and I thought I should probably write about my goals for the week, just so that I know where I'm starting from in order to judge how spectacularly I've failed at the end of the week. Defeatist? Me? Never...

Anyway! Because I love taking photos of piles of books (and Rhys hates it because I inevitably end up leaving piles of books lying around the house in unlikely places which he then falls over in the middle of the night), here is a pile of books (sorry Rhys!):

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, and Laura's Handmade Life I've nearly finished already. I may even finish TPOBAW before Monday but it's on there just in case I don't, because I must. The bottom three (Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson, and Citadel by Kate Mosse, in case you can't see) are just examples of how awesome my library is, and I am definitely going to get to them in the next couple of weeks. I like to have variety at the moment, as I don't seem to be able to read one book at a time anymore....

And in the name of variety, these are some of my many review copies (most of which I was meant to review a while back but the baby and the library got in the way!) that I really want to get to:

The two which particularly excite me are Pictures at an Exhibition by Camilla Macpherson, because it's about the National Gallery's Picture of the Month scheme during World War Two, and each chapter has those code things you scan with your phone and you can see the painting for that month. I love the idea of this! Also, Sketcher by Roland Watson- Grant just arrived today and it sounds awesome. Plus I want to keep up the roll that I'm currently on (I was sent a graphic novel to review earlier in the week and finished it the day after it arrived. Review pending).

I will inevitably end up reading half a book and feeling crap by the end of the week, but there we go. If I don't dream big, I have nothing to aspire to!

Aside from unrealistic piles of books, my goals for the readathon are thus:

1. Read for at least an hour a day. 
2. Go to bed half an hour earlier than usual and read before sleeping. 
3. Visit people's blogs and comment! I am so crap at commenting lately so maybe if I make myself do it, I'll get back into the swing of it!
4. Make awesome snacks - I'm thinking popcorn, muffins and probably something with cheese. Maybe cheese straws or cheese scones...

I feel like lately my reading has been really fragmented and pushed to one side, because I've been crafting like crazy (see here,here and here for pretty things I've made since the last time I told you about pretty things I'd made!) and learning about the Ancient Greeks, but that's just finished and although I'm working on an order for a friend, there's no deadline for it so I reckon I can just make next week reading week. I'm seriously looking forward to it. 

If you're participating let me know so I can come and check out your posts and COMMENT! :-)