This week...

I'm reading

Last week I finished listening to Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Brendan O'Hea and Dame Judi Dench. What a delight hearing many of the stories about her roles, performances, friends, her sense of fun and about Shakespeare and his continuing relevance today! Dame Judi Dench is voiced admirably by Barbara Flynn, but there are some quotes where it is Dame Judi who is speaking, and there is 45 minutes at the end of the audiobook where there is a conversation between the two authors! I don't read a lot of non fiction so it is fantastic when I do and it is so enjoyable!

I then started Corked by Marc Fennell but put it off to one side to listen to The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. I think Corked was actually a podcast but now it has been packaged up and is showing on Goodreads as a book. So far The Briar Club is an excellent audiobook experience but I do kind of wish I was reading it so I can see the recipes that are included throughout the text. I might swap if I can get the book from the library when I go later this week. 

I finished reading Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour by Nora Nguyen. I really enjoyed all the places in Vietnam that we visited in the book, and ultimately the romance was satisfying, but it did take a long time!

Then I read a couple of books for Paris in July. I read One Summer in Provence by Carol Drinkwater (review here) and then I read Fresh Water for Flowers by French author Valerie Perrin. This was a very unusual book but I did really enjoy it! My review for this one will be up later in the month.

I then started a couple of things which I wasn't really feeling, but then the library helped me prioritise when I couldn't renew two books so I read the third book in Amanda Hampson's Tea Ladies series, The Deadly Dispute. These books are so much fun and I sped through it in one sitting last night!  I have one other book I need to read in the next couple of days but that will be on the list for next week.   

I did reach my Goodreads reading challenge goal for this year last week! I think I will increase it to 150 books which is basically 2 books a week for the rest of the year.

I'm watching


I went to the movies a couple of times last week. The first one I went to see was Grande Maison Paris which is a Japanese movie about a chef who runs a fine dining restaurant in Paris and is desperate to be awarded a third Michelin star. I have written a review which will be up on the weekend as my Weekend Cooking/Paris in July post. Here's the trailer.

The other movie we went to see was called Number 24. It is a Norwegian movie which is showing as part of the Scandinavian Film Festival. It is about a man who was part of the Norwegian resistance in WWII. It was a really interesting movie. It was structured as the elderly main character giving a speech to a group of students and then flashing back to the things that happened during the war. It was very well done. Here's the trailer.

Life

Not much to talk about here! Fingers crossed I have some exciting news to share soon.

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Honorifics
Paris in July: French-ish songs
Blog Tour: The Village Cafe in the Loire by Gillian Harvey
Blog Tour: One Summer in Provence by Carol Drinkwater
Weekend Cooking/Cook the Books: A Bakery in Paris by Aimie K Runyan
Spell the Month in Books: July 

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date and Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz