Time and Place Actually 8:11pm Saturday night, in my armchair in my living room, same as always!
Reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo, which I'm finding in turns pretty extreme and very illuminating and inspiring. I forsee some tidying in my future (although apparently after that I'll never have to tidy again which will be good). Also I just started The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith which seems like it will be lovely. This week I finished A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler's newest, and loved it. I'm not sure if I'll review it because I don't have a lot to say beyond it being great and Anne Tyler being awesome. I also reread Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I don't think I am ever going to get tired of reading this beautiful, heartbreaking, incredible book. Please oh please don't fuck up the movie...Oh and I read two volumes of Fables: Super Team and Inherit the Wind. I'm not going to talk about them because...I can't really without spoiling the rest of the series and I would never want to do that. Everyone should be reading it.
Loving It was my birthday last weekend and so we did some fun stuff like went to Ashdown Forest (the original 100 acre wood from Winnie the Pooh) and played Pooh sticks on the original Pooh sticks bridge, and had a barbecue with family and friends. On the Friday lovely Katie came down to visit and we did a bit of bookshopping (actual shopping for her, mostly browsing with the purchase of one book for Rhys for Father's Day for me. Still sticking to my ban people!) and much chatting. Obviously we didn't take pictures because we were busy enjoying each others company (and it never crossed our minds) so you'll just have to take my word for it, it was a very nice day.
Also the other day as I was passing Waterstone's on my lunch break I saw a poster in the window advertising a 'Meet Scarlett Thomas' event in a couple of weeks. If you've been around a while you'll know how much I love Scarlett Thomas books and how excited I am that her new one, The Seed Collectors comes out this week so you can imagine I was straight in the door to get my ticket and texting everyone I knew who I thought might be interested in coming! My sister's going to go with me aaaand Rhys even gave me a Waterstone's giftcard as part of my many birthday gifts so I can go in and get the book this week without breaking my ban! For the moment my social anxiety is entirely eclipsed by how ridiculously excited I am. Hopefully it will stay that way!
Acquiring Obviously with it being my birthday I got some presents! My mum and Rhys chipped in together to get us a couple of tickets to see The Piano Guys which I'm pretty sure I mentioned previously but omg they were the best. Also my sister has got us tickets to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in the West End in August which I'm really excited about! Besides that though I got a lot of books! The pile you see above is all courtesy of blogging friends and Rhys. Considering that the internet is a pretty random place I think I've pretty much hit the jackpot when it comes to awesome bloggers to call my friends. All of the books came with 'I loved this and I think you will' or 'I got you this because you got me x related thing' kind of notes and every one made me grin. It was a happy happy day!
From Rhys I got a Folio Society edition of Aesop's Fables, because I collect Folio editions and anything fairytale/folklore related. I also got a volume of Sandman, Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman which I've read but don't own and Volume 7 of the Moomin Comic Strip which is what prompted me to add Volumes 1 and 2 to my wishlist, both of which were subsequently purchased for me - Volume 1 by Laura and Volume 2 along with Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson by Hanna. I got The Martian and the DVD of Wild from Ellie, Eleanor & Park (as mentioned above) from Katie and Displacement by Lucy Knisley from Charlotte. Anyone can see this is a fantastic stack of books and as I said I pretty much have the best friends ever. Thanks guys!
Watching We watched Wild this week and I enjoyed it. I didn't love it as much as the book but I loved Reese Witherspoon in it and considering it's basically a one person story I think it was done fantastically well. And such beautiful scenery, obviously. Also my sister and her boyfriend bought us Big Hero 6 which I sort of watched while getting dinner ready and I'm looking forward to sitting down and actually watching it sometime soon as it looked pretty great. Finally we got a new DVD player which has iPlayer built in so we've been catching up with Celebrity Masterchef. Ah how I've missed that show...
Making mostly a mess, as you will see above. The picture of paint-covered Benjamin was taken after an experiment with Jackson Pollock style paint splattering a sheet pegged to the washing line. It worked pretty well and we're going to be using the sheet as a picnic blanket til it gets rained on and the paint has to be redone. We also made a crown and Ben watched Frozen pretending to be Prince Ben of the Western Isles. I've been trying to knit a square a day of a blanket I'm making. I'm doing well so far but it's only been three days so we'll see... If I keep to it I should be done in a couple of months! I'm also contemplating which page to make next for Ben's Quiet Book and also various plans for Rhys' birthday in August. Oh plus we got some wall transfer thingies from my father-in-law so we put a tree (inspired by the Paddington movie) on the wall in our front room and I love it.
Anticipating The Mini Ninja Book Swap! I decided yesterday that I missed the Summer Swap too much but still couldn't do a full on swap so I'm doing a mini swap - just a book or two and a letter. No gifts, no extras, no likes and dislikes to pair up, just 'hey, here's a book and a bit about me'. If you'd like to join in you can sign up here until midnight on Tuesday.
I'm also looking forward to a day off with Rhys without any visitors tomorrow. I love visitors but having had so many over the course of last weekend it's nice to have a bit of quiet family time! We're hoping to head over to a folk festival in the afternoon which should be fun!
So that was my week! Apparently this week is going to be mega hot and we're all going to roast to death. I'm going to crack out our beach tent and spend many hours by the sea I think. It's the only way to go. What have you been reading this week?
Happy belated birthday!
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday again! It was great to see you again and meet your family. I definitely intend to come back some time and do Canterbury properly without the time constraints. And YAY, you've got The Martian! I loved that book and am so excited for the film. I've an idea to do another rereadathon later on this year, unofficially (unless you want to organise another) and that is top of my list of rereads.
ReplyDelete"Seasons of Mist" is the only volume of Sandman I haven't read as the library didn't have it in stock - though I think they have rectified the situation now, so I must check it out sometime.