Top Ten Books on my TBR for Summer 2015

By now you probably know about Top Ten Tuesday, but just in case you don't, each week the lovely people at The Broke and the Bookish have a different theme for us to make a list of ten books around. I don't take part as regularly as I'd like but mostly because I am lazy and my memory sucks. However I couldn't pass up this weeks topic! 

As you may have seen I'm currently on a 9 month book buying ban and am selling off my books as I read them to raise money for Beanstalk children's literacy charity. Therefore all the books on this list are books I actually already own!

Middlemarch by George Eliot - Kicking off with a biiiiig one that's been sat on my shelf for years. Allie is hosting a Victorian Celebration this month and next and I'm really thinking I'd like to get this read once and for all! 

Another for the Victorian Celebration. I started reading The Professor by Charlotte Bronte a while back but got caught up in something else and didn't really get into it. I enjoyed the little I read though and it's a little book and would be nice to get some more Bronte under my belt. 

And a final pick for the Victorian Celebration. I'm a huge fan of E. Nesbit but have somehow never read The Wouldbegoods which seems a total travesty as it's the second book featuring the kids from The Story of the Treasure Seekers which was a firm bedtime story favourite in my house! I think this will definitely get read. 

Neil Gaiman's Make Good Art Speech. Because I haven't read it yet and I don't know why. 

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion because I know this isn't a reason, but seriously everybody else has read it and I haven't and it totally sounds like I'm going to love it so I don't know why I haven't. 

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I bought this ages ago and I haven't read it yet and I keep seeing the other books in the series in the library and wanting to get them out but not being able to because I haven't read this one yet, so yeah. 

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor because it's about Alice and I'm all about the Alice. Alice forever, hurrah! 

I know those of you who are big YA fans will probably be screaming 'why haven't you read this yet??' at me with pained expressions, but Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. I bought the trilogy for someone a while back and it turned out they already had them and I read the blurb after having ignored the hype because it's hype and thought 'actually this sounds exactly my kind of thing'. So yes, I'm going to read this. 

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I can't remember where I first heard about this (in blogland somewhere, I know) but I remembered it while book shopping with Laura and Katie a few months ago and grabbed a copy and I'm looking forward to it. 

And finally, I'm still deciding whether to continue with rereading the Anne of Green Gables series or just skip from the first to Rainbow Valley. This is another that I bought with Katie because it was just too beautiful to resist and I can't actually believe that there are Anne books I haven't read! 

So that's my list! Hopefully since I already own them all and there is no aspect of wish fulfillment to the list, I'll actually be able to read some of them during the summer! Have you read any of them? Any you recommend? 

Inspiration on Monday: Quiet Book

Inspiration on Monday is a two weekly link up hosted by Trish and encouraging us to share all things inspiring and creative! So far for this link up I've posted about things I'd like to make and ways to inspire yourself but not about anything I actually am making. Time to change that! 

Sam's birthday is coming up at the weekend (as is mine since it's on the same day. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to not spending my birthday in labour this year!) and I'm making him some name blocks in an 'I've been making them for six months, they will get done probably the night before' kind of way. I'm not posting about that today. Ben's birthday is in October. Obviously in my head this makes it perfectly logical for me to be making a Quiet Book for him! I'm really excited about both these things but I wanted to share the blocks once they're actually done whereas the quiet book I don't mind sharing while it's in progress!

So far I've made two pages and am in the middle of a third. The first (and my current favourite) is from a template I found online and which you can also get hold of here. You will notice that her sewing is much straighter than mine and her finger puppets not only have eyes but she also has a duck. Eventually mine will have eyes and I will make a duck. Good things come to those who wait. Also all my sewing is done by hand, whereas all hers was done by machine. I am still afraid of my machine. 

With the doors shut...

Ta-dah!

The animals are finger puppets and the idea is that the kid/s can use the sunny grass page to play with the animals.They're also pretty cute and super simple to make. 

My second page was from a template from the same blog and is designed to help little ones with their buttoning practice. The pot has an open top so you can store the flowers in there once they're off. 

The colours are much better in real life, this is literally the worst photo I've ever taken I think. If anyone has any inspiring photography tips they'd like to share I'd love to hear them! The template for this page is here. 

The third page which is currently in progress is pretty cool and is for colour matching. Ben's just getting to the point where occassionally he'll point out colours to me or pass me something and tell me what colour it is. He seems to be picking stuff up really well without me actively 'teaching' him anything so I'm trying to keep up the pattern of incorporating things into play and helping him learn that way. 

As you'll see there are two balloons, each with a little velcro dot on them. There will be three or four other colours and each balloon will be attached to the elephant with a little ribbon string. Also the elephant is going to have an ear and an eye eventually. I really love this page. There isn't a template for it (I made my own) but the idea was entirely borrowed from this site.

Because I have a huge box of felt from when I was running my (currently on hiatus) craft business making kids toys I have a few more pages planned to use it up. As always Pinterest is so overly inspiring that I'm pretty sure I'll be making Sam one for Christmas as well!

The other pages I plan on adding (in case you're interested) are:

The ladybug page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The car page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The Mr & Mrs Potato Head page from Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

The sock matching page from Imagine Our Life

The alphabet page from And Next Comes L

Possibly a shape matching page like this one

Possibly the fishing page from Pops and Podge

Aaaaand possibly this amaznig counting Hungry Caterpillar page from Imagine Our Life

My favourite thing about this project is that felt is so easy to work with and because I'm hand sewing the whole thing I can just sit down and get it done. I've not even been working on it a week yet and I've already achieved so much, I'm pretty proud of myself! 

What are you working on at the moment? Have you ever made a quiet book? 

Things That Make Me Happy #2

Ellie at Lit Nerd has been hosting this as a weekly link up for a few weeks now and I'm excited to take part again! (I don't know if she's hosting this week because she's travelling and I'm writing this at 7am because we'll be busy later but I'm taking part anyway!).

This week has been full of adventures and gorgeous weather. We were pretty full of activity all week until Friday when we just staying at home all day and ran around the garden, and then we were up in London yesterday for the first gig we've ever been to in our five years together... This week has been full of happy things!

The Piano Guys

So this is the gig we went to yesterday and it was amazing. We didn't think we'd ever be able to afford to see these guys because tickets are like £50 but then last week they released some more standing tickets and Rhys and my parents paid for a couple of tickets as an early birthday present, which was the most exciting. If you haven't heard of The Piano Guys I want to know why. They are (mostly) two (sometimes four) guys, one of whom plays the piano, the other plays the cello and they do mashups, often of classical music with contemporary pop and cool unexpected versions of songs and if they can make One Direction songs good then they definitely deserve your attention!

The gig was really inspiring. The music was gorgeous, the guys are amazing performers and really funny to boot and I've never been to a gig with such a wide spectrum of people represented - I think the youngest person we saw was around six and the oldest probably over seventy. We may have bought ourselves a signed copy of their latest album, Wonders and we may well be listening to them on loop forever. If I've just introduced you to them, you're welcome. Also check out this, it's my favourite: 

Quiet Book

There's a post about this going up tomorrow for Inspiration on Monday so I won't post more pictures but I'm really enjoying making this (secretly) educational and fun book for Benji's birthday in October. I anticipated that it would take me ages to finish because I'm generally such a procrastinator but then it turns out that this project is really fun, pretty simple and very inspiring so I'm racing through it!

#30dayswild

Still loving this. This week we missed a couple of days because of travelling and work, but we still did lots: a couple of seaside walks, some reading outside and listening to birdsong before work, a walk in the woods with associated collecting of natural items, and a lot of time in the garden earthing up potatoes, picking strawberries and generally maintaining things! 

Star Wars Biscuit Cutters

These were reduced in Lakeland this week and so when Rhys was pottering around town with the boys he got some. We already have the Tardis and Weeping Angel cutters from one of Rhys' Ninja Swap parcels and they're great - the detail is awesome! We baked a batch of chocolate biscuits for Rhys to take to work and these are from the batch of chocolate gingerbread we baked for my family this weekend to say thanks for looking after the boys while we were at the concert. In case you're interested the recipe is thus: 

Chocolate Gingerbread

100g butter

100g dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon ginger

Cream together butter and sugar, then stir in golden syrup. When thoroughly mixed add the flour, cocoa powder and ginger and stir to form a dough. Flour the tabletop and roll out the dough to roughly 1-2cm thick. Cut shapes. Bake at 180C for approx 10 mins or until turning golden round the edges. 

Awesome Board Games

At a car boot sale last week we picked up copies of a really cool looking Winnie the Pooh memory game for kids. It has little honey pots with different colours on the bottom and baskets and you basically have to collect three honey pots with the same colour on them. Not too advanced for Ben to be interested in and a gorgeous game! We also got a copy of The Wind in the Willows board game which we have yet to play but it may be the most beautiful game we own. We have a silly amount of board games and never play a lot of them. I'm hoping that this summer will give us a kick to start playing again and enjoying some time together as a couple and as a family. 

What made you happy this week?

Fairytale Fridays: Andrew Lang and the Fairy Books

I decided in the interests of not forgetting about it that I should make Fairytale Fridays every two weeks instead of once a month. Then I promptly forgot about it, obviously! However, this weeks topic was self-evident really.

I've been collecting the beautiful Folio Society editions of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books for a while now without really knowing much about them beyond that they are collections of tales from around the world, so I decided to change that this week! It also inspired me to do a bit more reading on the authors of the various collections that I own, which will be coming another week.

There are twelve volumes of the Fairy Books, each in a different colour. They were published between 1889 and 1910 and were among the first English collections of fairytales. Aside from Lang only Madame d'Aulnoy (originator of the term 'fairytales') had collected the tales from such a large variety of sources before which made his collections pretty much unique. He was also among the first people to edit the tales specifically for children which obviously is very influential as today fairytales are viewed as tales for children although they weren't originally.

Although Lang had final say on what went into each collection he didn't actually do much of the translation or retelling of the tales; most of that was done by his wife and other translators although he eventually took credit for the work. Although he didn't collect his tales from their primary oral sources he did give many tales their first telling in English, and there are many tales, particularly in the later volumes that I personally have never heard of.

The Blue Fairy Book published in 1889 is the first volume and contains Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin, Rumplestilskin, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks, Hansel & Gretel and Jack the Giant Killer as a sample of the tales modern audiences will undoubtedly have heard of. In contrast the last volume, The Lilac Fairy Book contains no tales whose titles sounded immediately familiar. I'm interested to read the later volumes that I have (Crimson and Olive) and try to draw some conclusions as to why these tales are less well known. Undoubtedly because they haven't received the Hollywood treatment, but it will be intriguing to see if there are any easily identifiable reasons why.

I currently only have three volumes in the Folio editions, but from time to time my wonderful husband gets hold of one for my birthday or Christmas and eventually I hope to have them all. Not only are the beautiful outside (and the traditional Folio box gives them that little something extra) but they are full of gorgeous illustrations. They're pretty much the quintessential concept of what a fairytale anthology should be in my opinion!

Do you have any beautiful editions of fairytale related work? I'd love to see them! Tweet or Instagram them using #fairytalefridays so everyone can see, and don't forget to link up your fairytale related posts and spread the word!

Things That Make Me Happy

I'm joining in again with Ellie's Things that Make Me Happy idea. I love this as it forces me to go back over the week and remember the awesome stuff which in turn also helps me to see it on a daily basis and stress out less about the negative things so thanks Ellie!

This week the weather has been so so weird; rainy and windy one minute, glorious sunshine the next, so we've had some strange days and some stressful days but overall it's been pretty good.

1. The garden. Everything is shooting up at the moment it's amazing. Every time I look out the window the potato bed has got bigger and there are more strawberries ripening! A lot of stuff won't actually bear fruit until next year but still it's great to see it all getting going. I'm also getting really into flowers after being way more of a practical 'let's only grow it if we can eat it' kind of girl for years. They're so beautiful and happiness inducing and cheap. Awesomeness.

2. Frozen yoghurt drops. I found the idea for these on Pinterest and have no idea why I haven't tried them before. You literally put clingfilm on a baking tray and then put little spoonfuls of yoghurt (ours was apple and mango but any flavour will do) on the clingfilm and stick the tray in the freezer for half an hour. Then you peel the little dots off and eat them and they are the most delicious and refreshing thing ever. I'm in love.

3. Making stuff again. Although I've been making things daily for my #yearofmaking project I feel a little like it's been mostly cookery based lately, which I always view as the easy way out because dinner has to be made anyway! This week I started making a quiet book for Ben's birthday despite it not being until October and Sam's birthday being in a couple of weeks (on the same day as mine if anyone's taking notes) and me not having anything for him yet. I have plans though! I'll be posting about this in more detail for a future Inspiration on Monday post!

please ignore the finger puppets not yet having eyes...

4. Six Second Hugs. I've been reading The Happiness Project and Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin lately and I don't remember which book it is but she mentions that if you hug someone for six seconds or longer you instantly feel more connected and affectionate than if you do it for shorter amounts of time. I was skeptical but this is an actual thing you guys. Six is the magic number, give it a go!

5. #30dayswild. We're taking part in The Wildlife Trust's challenge to do something wild each day during June. So far we've done a lot of garden work, planted some seeds, done some wildlife identification and been for a lot of clifftop and coastal walks. I'm excited about making a butterfly feeder this week and going for a walk along the river and feeding ducks with the boys. It's been really good having something to push us to go outside and explore each day.

If you want to link up things that have made you happy this week you can do that here and use #sharethehappy on twitter and Instagram. I dare you, it will make you feel awesome!

A Victorian Celebration

A couple of years back Allie hosted the first Victorian Celebration event; a couple of months over the summer dedicated to reading a lot of Victorian literature, and this year she has brought it back! I'm excited because despite being a very good little Classics Clubber back when I first started I've totally slipped with it recently and I need some encouragement to get back into the Classics. As you will see the lack of reading them is not for lack of availability!

Because I'm me and I really enjoy making piles of books that annoy the hell out of my husband (sorry Rhys) I decided to pull out one book from each author that I own on Allie's list and make a big pile of potentials. I didn't pull out any stuff I don't feel inspired to read so actually this pile is entirely made up of actual possibility as opposed to usually when I make ridiculously ambitious piles or lists full of books I don't really want to read. Anyway! I have no idea where to start, except possibly with a Bronte and possibly The Professor primarily because I won it during the last Victorian Celebration which means it's been sitting unread on my shelf longer than anything by any of the Bronte's has any right to!

If you have strong feelings about any of the books in my pile please let me know! I'll probably only have time to read one or two but as usual I like to give myself options. Here's what I've got:

• Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte - I started this a while ago and was really into it but then I misplaced it and by the time it turned up again I'd forgotten what it was about. It's little though and might be a good starting place.
• Ditto for The Professor by Charlotte Bronte which I've also started and got distracted from right about the same time I was losing Agnes Grey. One of these two it likely to be my first read because I know I love the Brontes so there will be no putting off there. 
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell I feel like I've at least read some of before, but I have no recollection and maybe we just talked about it a lot when I read Cranford? I don't know, but I enjoy Gaskell's writing as a general rule so I think it's probably worth finding out if I have actually read it already or not!
• Middlemarch by George Eliot. This is the only book on this pile which makes me sigh. I nearly didn't even pull it out because it's been on my shelf longer than almost anything else and I struggled with Adam Bede and Silas Marner during school but I read the blurb and I feel like I should at least give it a go. It does sound intriguing and like the protagonist could potentially be really cool. 
• Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allen Poe. I love this edition, isn't it gorgeous? This has also been on my shelf for aaaaages and I feel like I might dip in and out of it during the event. Maybe.
• The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett I bought during our recent trip to the Persephone bookshop pretty much based on my love of The Secret Garden. That said my current reading of the other Persephone book that I bought while there is making me think that Persephone books are probably worth reading regardless of whether you know the author or not. 
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. So I know several people will be shouting at me to read this (Ellie Lit Nerd I'm looking at you) because it's Wilkie and I did love The Woman in White when I read it all those millennia ago, so I might. I might.
• The last two don't probably count because they were both published after Victoria died although both the authors also count as Victorian authors but E. Nesbit's Fairy Stories wasn't published until 1977 according to the internet and my edition, but obviously must have been written a long time before as she died in 1924. Phantasies by George MacDonald was published just after, in 1905, and I'm very intrigued by it so I might try to slip it in somewhere under the guise of Fairytale Friday!

So there we go, an exciting pile. If you want to sign up to join in the Victorian fun you can do so at Allie's blog

Flight by Isabel Ashdown

Flight is Isabel Ashdown's fourth novel. I have another of her books but haven't yet read it although I plan to now! I read this a while ago and planned to review it sooner but life happened and so this review never did, but it's a sign of how good the book was that the story is still pretty fresh in my mind.

When Wren Irving's numbers come up in the first National Lottery draw, she doesn't tell her husband, Rob. Instead she quietly packs her bags, kisses her six-month-old daughter Phoebe goodbye, and leaves. 

Moving between the majestic coastline of North Cornwall and London's leafy suburbs, Flight is a story of secrets and lies - and of the indelible traces left behind when someone tries to disappear. 

When I first read the blurb of this book I thought it sounded like it would be fine - interesting enough to grab my attention and hold it but nothing special and to an extent, I was right. A lot about the story is fairly solid. There aren't a huge number of twists or really much that is unexpected about it except for me the quality of the writing. I didn't expect it to be bad, but nor did I expect it to be as good as it was. Really the thing that made Flight stand out to me was not the story but the way that it was told. I really liked every character, even the ones that didn't get much time devoted to them. All of them were really strong on the page and in my head and because of that the story tied together so well. There's a lot in it - stuff about love, motherhood, growing up, questions of identity - but the story never feels overwhelmed by the themes.

Honestly I'm not going to say much else about the characters or what it's about because the blurb speaks for itself and if it sounds at all appealing you should really just read the book and let that do the talking. Flight falls into the category of the kind of book which is really easy to write badly and very very difficult to write well and Isabel Ashdown has done a fantastic job.