Currently: It's Been Far Too Long (& a Bit of September Wrap Up)

It's been too long since I did a Currently post and I'm feeling a little disjointed with my reading so it felt like time! Also I've been up for waaay too long this morning due to Benji's current thinking that it's a good idea to refuse to eat most of his dinner and then wake up at 5am complaining of hunger. The joys of parenthood.

Time and Place 7:10am on Sunday morning in my (fairly chilly) front room. Benji is watching Winnie the Pooh and I'm 'resting' (aka reading The Bookshop Book and blogging). We've just been making dough for English Muffins, because I like to utilise the time when having to get up at ridiculous o'clock for no reason, and doing some painting.

Eating and Drinking: Tea. In the biggest mug I could find. I just had a scone with blueberry jam as well but we're waiting for Rhys and Sam to wake up before we have breakfast proper.

Reading I'm going to do this in two parts; one what I'm reading now and then what I read during September. I'm reading a few things at the moment. Firstly, If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie is longlisted for the Giller Prize this year and was my pick after I decided that I'd read one long/shortlisted book for each of the prizes I follow. I'm a couple of chapters in and it's really intriguing so far. It's about a boy, Will, whose mother doesn't let him go outside and what happens when he does eventually venture out. Then I'm reading Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley which Charlotte recommended ages ago and then I found totally by accident in the library last week. As an ex-runner so much of what she says resonates and it's absolutely hilarious. I'm sort of hoping it will help pull me back into the running thing. I'm picking my way through Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray as one of my reads for RIPX but I can only read it during the early part of the day because it's creeeeeeepy and I'm a wuss. It's brilliant so far though - every bit as good as The Diviners. Finally, and as previously mentioned, I'm rereading The Bookshop Book by Jen Campbell as sort of research for my London Bookshop Crawl (of which more later).

During September I finished six books which is absolutely not bad for me nowadays. They werrrrrre; The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas (to make up for me being the only person in the world who hasn't yet got Queen of Shadows. Thankfully my sister bought it so I can borrow it when I next see her in a few days), Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell, which my sister and brother-in-law sent Rhys and I as a sort of amalgamated birthday present, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver which were both rereads during ReReadathon #2, Cress by Marissa Meyer (for The Lunar Chronicles Readalong that I've been taking part in), and When It Happens to You , a beautiful collection of inter-related short stories by Molly Ringwald, of Breakfast Club fame.

Loving The Ninja Book Swap! I signed up for two parcels this time around and received my first one yesterday and it was awesome as usual. The book choices were great - I've been wanting to read We Were Liars since everyone was talking about it a while back, and Tracy also sent me one of her favourite books which is entirely in the spirit of the swap - send people stuff they'll love and also connect and share the things you love! She also sent me chocolate, a kit for making my own earrings, a beautiful bookmark and a SNITCH NECKLACE which I didn't discover til I was going to bed last night is ALSO A WATCH. I am the most excited about this and will be wearing it all the time. Tracy, you are fantastic and completely made my day!

Acquiring We're on a spending freeze in October which means we're only buying essential groceries and paying for necessary travel (to work and occasional trips with the boys) and the bills and direct debits we usually pay for. Immediately prior to it starting I bought Rhys season 1 of Smash which he'd been talking about for a while. When I saw it in Asda for £5 I couldn't resist! We also got Mr. Turner and The Book Thief movie on 2 for £10 in HMV. Also Laura sent me her old Penguin English Library copy of Moby Dick (thanks Laura, it's beautiful!) so I'm ready for Hanna's readalong!

Watching We've been watching The Great British Bake - Off obviously. I'm totally hoping that Nadiya will win because she's great. We've also been watching Hairy Bikers: Northern Exposure which is really interesting. I love learning about different types of cookery and it's very inspiring. We're also watching the latest series of Gareth Malone's choir. This series features acapella groups and it's fun. Also, obviously, Dr. Who has started up again so we've been watching that, although I haven't seen last night's episode yet because I decided it looked too creepy for me to watch right before going to bed, so we'll watch it this evening probably.

Making I've been making quite a bit, particularly since we've been on this spending freeze. Yesterday I made potato soup with bacon which was amazing. I may share the recipe during the week as it's brilliant and super simple (and cheap!). This morning, as mentioned, I've made English Muffins, and I've also used the spending freeze as motivation to finally finish sewing the last sleeve into a jumper I started knitting for Ben a year ago.

Anticipating So many good things coming up! Sending and receiving my second Ninja Swap parcels, putting together my #OTSPSecretSister parcel for October (it's so great!), Ben's third birthday, a blogger meet up in Stratford-upon-Avon towards the end of the month, and then Nonfiction November and the nonfiction book swap I'll be organising again during it. Also the London Bookshop Crawl despite it still being four months away. I sent out preliminary emails on Friday with a poll to vote for the bookshops you most want to visit. If you're interested in joining us have a look at my ideas here and you can also sign up with your email and I'll email you the rest of the details I have so far! Any booklovers in London or who can get there for a Saturday in Jan/Feb are welcome to join us!

That's what I'm up to! What are you reading? Are you planning to come on the bookshop crawl?

Currently: The Birthday Edition!

I've been doing Things That Make Me Happy posts for the past few weeks and while I love them I do miss my currently posts so I've decided to switch them about a bit and have a little variety!

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?