Things Which Have Been Happening Lately

Some of you will know about the recurring awful thing that's been going on in our family for the past couple of years, about which I am generally very mysterious and fairly depressed. We (by which I mean me) have dealt pretty well with the bulk of it, primarily because it involves a family member and so only really involves us indirectly, however about a year ago we had an unexpected event happen in connection with it and it left me feeling pretty powerless and scared, and in the last week we've had a totally unexpected recurrence of the same event which has left me a bit dazed. We're still waiting for the outcome of what's happened, which is always the worst bit because I spend my time convincing myself that the worse possible scenarios will definitely happen and generally stressing myself out more than I need to. Hopefully I've learned how to deal with it enough from the past two years to not have to absent myself from blogging this time, but if I'm more vague and all-over-the-place than normal then I hope you'll forgive me! Also for how totally cryptic I'm being!

So anyway, this is a really a reorientation post. I've been struggling with a review of MaddAddam for a few days so I'm taking a break from it to give you a little bullet pointed sort of post about what's going on around here! Firstly, for those who are interested, I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and in the annoying stage of being too fat for my normal clothes but too thin for maternity clothes, meaning I'm continually pulling my trousers up, which isn't the best look for work, but never mind! I heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time last week, which was pretty lovely :-) Unfortunately EVERYTHING (for which read this and this) that I'd really like to do this year is either happening just before or just after I'm due to give birth, but never mind!

Books wise, I finished MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood this week, as well as The Mark of Athena, the third in the second series of Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan, and The Forgotten Affairs of Youth by Alexander McCall Smith. The latter two I probably won't review, because, well, Percy Jackson is Percy Jackson, really. They're very entertaining books, but there's not a huge amount that's new to say about them, and the Alexander McCall Smith is one in the Sunday Morning Philosophy Club series about Isabel Dalhousie, which I really enjoy and find mildly hilarious but again there's not a huge amount to say except they always make me want to go to Edinburgh. Again, probably something for next year! 

I've just remembered I'm also meant to be reading Macbeth before the end of the month for The Classics Club Twelve Months of Classic Literature Challenge I decided to participate in at the end of last year. I should probably get on that...

I also signed up for another Coursera course. After the epic failure that was me signing up for Modern and Contemporary American Poetry AND Comic Books and Graphic Novels, both of which had heavy workloads and quite a bit of reading AT THE SAME TIME as going back to work and then finding out I was pregnant again (so basically just a bad idea), I decided to sign up for another course which probably has waaaaaaayyy too much of a workload for the time I actually have available, but it looks really fun and has a cool reading list and as a bonus I'm pretty sure Hanna is doing it too. Because we have to do everything together now, I blame the Ninja Book Swap. So yes, this is the course and I'm super excited about it!

Speaking of the Ninja Book Swap, sign up info for the first ever Valentine's edition can be found here. Basic premise (for those who don't know) is that you sign up, are given a swappee, make them a nice parcel of a book or two from their wishlist (which don't have to be new, just in nice condition), a little gift and a card telling them who you are and then post it. Meanwhile somebody else does the same for you and it's just generally ridiculously fun, so if you haven't signed up you should and if you can't take part for whatever reason you should still definitely tell all your friends about it :-) Oh, and you should follow us on twitter for all the updates! @NinjaBookSwap

Finally, if you want to sponsor me for the reading I did for Great Ormond Street Hospital back in December (final page count is still to be determined, but I read A Tale of Two Cities plus at least one other book and some bits and pieces, so it's a fair amount!) it would be hugely appreciated and you can do so here.

And that's pretty much my life in a nutshell. I feel like somebody should be doing a drumroll....

Review: Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first book I decided to tackle in my self -set Myth Series Challenge. There were lots of reasons why I decided to read Dream Angus first. For starters, I am a big fan of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and enjoy his style of writing, therefore I was hoping to enjoy this book, and I wasn't disappointed. Also, I am, as my profile would indicate, 'into' dreams. Having them, pursuing them, interpreting them... and so I also had a personal interest in reading this book.

So. Dream Angus is the Celtic God of dreams, love, and youth. The traditional story is that he fell in love with a woman who came to him in his dreams. When she would not stay with him, night after night, he stopped eating and made himself ill, until his worried parents started a search for her. Eventually, they found her, but it turned out that the girl, Caer, (also the Celtic goddess of love) had a problem, in that she turned into a swan every other year, and Angus must overcome this to be with her.

In Alexander McCall Smith's retelling, he has interspersed the story of Angus with modern stories of love and dreams. My favourite quote from the book was actually in the Introduction, when McCall Smith says that "Angus... represents youth, and the intense passionate love that we might experience when we are young but which we might still try to remember as age creeps up. Age and experience might make us sombre and cautious, but there is always Angus within us - Angus the dreamer". As I love mythology in general, I really enjoyed reading a story that I had not previously known, and thought the way that it had been redeveloped was very engaging. I really enjoyed the style of the book, as it was very lightweight and easy to read: I finished it in an hour...

Rating ****

Next up: Baba Yaga Laid an Egg...