Married :-)

Hey everybody, I'm back! The wedding and honeymoon were awesome, and now it's back to work and business as usual :-) Unfortunately, though, I will still be less active than usual on the blog front. Some things have happened which require my time. I can't talk about them, but basically there are a few people who need looking after, and I need to be available to be there for them. I will still be posting at least once a week, and hopefully more often when possible, and am by no means going 'on hiatus' or anything so drastic, but just wanted to explain (ish) why I may be around less than usual! I am missing blogging loads, and miss keeping up with all your awesomeness. I promise I will be back soon. Meanwhile, here is a picture from the wedding :-)

This is me doing my 'aren't I so awesome' face... it's hugely sarcastic, and basically what I do whenever someone points a camera at my face, or gives me a compliment...

I'm About to Be an Absenteeeeeeee!

Hello all. Sorry I've not been so bloggy lately, and that this is going to be (yet another) apology for lack of forthcoming bloggyness, but tomorrow will be my last day of work for two weeks, as I'm going off to get married!! I am so excited it's actually beyond all belief, and I am going back to my mums for a week before the wedding to hang out with my family and generally prepare, plus having my first fitting for the dress, which I'm a bit scared about (don't worry, my Aunty is making it, so it's ok that I've left it this late..). I've just sorted out a big pile of books to take with me for this week, and the week of honeymoon following our wedding, and caused my fiance to sigh heavily, while then immediately going 'oh, actually, can you add those graphic novels we bought yesterday? and that Neil Gaiman book in the front room? Oh! And also, also, I might go and buy The Carpet People tomorrow'. These are the things that make me happy.

Speaking of things that make me happy, I arrived home today to find not only my next book from the Transworld Book Group Challenge, but ALSO two unrequested books from the lovely people at Simon & Schuster. Such a brilliant day! I should really be packing, as I'm leaving straight from work tomorrow and as yet my 'luggage' is a pile of stuff surrounding a holdall in the middle of the bedroom floor, but instead I'm going to show you guys a pretty picture of the pile of books I'm hoping to read in the next two weeks. I will hopefully be posting the odd review, but I know you'll understand if I'm a bit silent!

The top one is my next Transworld Book Group book, and the bottom two are the ones from Simon & Schuster. I won't lie, I'll probably be reading the Philippa Gregory next, and I'm also very excited about Fun Home, as it's part of my recent desire to expand the kinds of graphic novels I read. I know I won't read all of these but I do like to have some variety!

And now I'm off to do my packing. Or eat pasta bake, get stuck into my new book, and generally ignore everything wedding related I have to do! See you all in a couple of weeks :-)

The Sunday Salon - Wedding Countdown!

Happy Sunday all. We're now into the last three weeks before the wedding and my previous 'relax, it'll all turn out fiiiiine' attitude is morphing into something comparitively like stress. I'm suddenly realising that I may actually want my wedding to be perfect - a fact that I've been vigorously denying up until now. All my life I've rebelled against being particularly girly, and that includes getting all screamy and pink and fluffy about the wedding. Obviously I'm excited. Obviously it will be one of the most important days of my life so far, but I'm really not into all the mushy yucky stuff. Up until now I've been really quite laid back about the whole thing. Basically, the vast majority of the important people in my life are going to be there, even to the extent of flying in from Australia for it, and if they're all there and my fiance is there, then I figured there wasn't too much else to worry about, but now suddenly I find myself worrying about my shoes not being quite right, and whether the chairs will be ok. So to bring myself back down to earth I'm going to do a sum up of my book related activity for July and August. After the wedding, I do feel like I'll be entering a new phase of my life, and so I'm trying to get myself all up to date with everything before then, including reviews and stuff. Currently I'm incredibly behind in my reviews, so wish me luck!

This week I have read:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett - a few months ago the blogosphere was absolutely raving about this, so I was intrigued. The issues it addresses interested me and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I was up until 2am last night finishing it, because I just couldn't put it down!
• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan - the second in the series, the Percy Jackson books are a little immature but I'm loving them anyway!
• Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by Chris Stewart

I have currently reviewed none of these titles!! So far in August I've reviewed:

• The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark for the Transworld Book Group and the Historical Fiction Challenge
• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran - one of my absolute favourite books of the year so far!
• Bake Sale by Sara Varon, a gorgeous children's graphic novel with recipes!

So I know, I've been terrible at reviewing this month. I blame wedding stress and work and hopefully I'll be better after September 10th!

If you've stuck with me this far, thank you! This may be when you want to leave us though, as I'm about to list my acquisitions for July and August. I think I may need to start joining in with In My Mailbox, as this always ends up being a huge and horrendous list, which I mostly compile to attempt to scare myself into buying less books. It never works *sigh*.

In July:

Second Hand

• The Giant Book of Lost Worlds
• Join Me by Danny Wallace (because he is laugh out loud on the train hilarious)
• Body Surfing by Anita Shreve (because I've still not read any of her books!)
• Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
• Farmhouse Cookery - one of those gigantic big old school cookery books with recipes for the most miscellaneous stuff involving copious amounts of dripping. Love.
• The Truth by Terry Pratchett - my favourite Discworld novel, which I didn't own, so had to buy.
• Guardian of the Horizon by Elizabeth Peters - if anybody hasn't read the Amelia Peabody series and is a fan of detective type fiction, you definitely should. They have the advantage of being both hiliarious and interesting as well as dramatic, and you never see them second hand. Like, ever.
• Curse of the Pharoahs by Elizabeth Peters - see above!
• When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne - part of my stockpiling for future generations of the family. Also, my fiance never had the benefit of A.A. Milne's brilliant poetry as a child, so I'm educating him now.
• The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne - because it's been years since I read it.
• The Looney by Spike Milligan
• Wizards: A History by P.G Maxwell- Stuart
• The Complete Short Stories by Franz Kafka
• About a Boy by Nick Hornby - despite him being one of my favourite authors, I didn't actually own any of his books aside from The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. Time to rectify that.
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - because Rhys hadn't read it, and everybody should.
• Quest for Lost Heroes by David Gemmell - because it's rare for me to find a Gemmell I don't own in a charity shop, so when I do, I grab them!
• Bloodstone by David Gemmell - see above
• Waylander by David Gemmell
• Matilda by Roald Dahl

From ReaditSwapit:

• Snow White, Blood Red by Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow
• Gaglow by Esther Freud
• The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
• One Day by David Nicholls
• Biblioholism by Tom Raabe
• Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
• Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
• The Wonderful Weekend Book by Elspeth Thompson

New:

•  Bake Sale by Sara Varon
• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (birthday present from Hana at Booking in Heels)
• These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer
• Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman

And my most overly exciting book of July was a gift from my future father-in-law of an 1860's edition of Jo's Boys by Louisa Alcott. It's obviously a bit faded and has serious old book smell, which I love, and it's illustrated!!

That was possibly the longest list EVER, even for me and my list obsessiveness. I won't detail what I've got in August, except to say that so far it's a grand total of twelve books... nowhere near the THIRTY FIVE which came into the house in July!!

So I'm definately going to start doing this on a weekly basis....

Anybody else got any interesting books in the past couple of months/weeks?