This week

I'm reading

It's November and the best of 2025 lists are coming out. It always bemuses me a little bit because there are still 5 weeks of year left and I still might not have read my best book of year yet! The other thing that I am always left wondering at the end of the year is what have I been reading. I have read some really great books this year, and have read more 5 star books this year than I have in the the two previous years combined. However, when I look at all the best of lists, I haven't read any of them!

I finished three books this week. The first was Letters from the Ginza Shihodo Stationery Shop by Kenji Ueda. This is another of the Japanese book which have a number of stories that are really only linked by location and theme. In this case, the location was a stationery shop. I loved all the talk of pens and notebooks and the like, but I am not sure this one worked completely for me.

By contrast, I loved  Good Spirits by B K Borison and started telling my friend to read it when I had only read the first chapter. It was so much fun and I am really looking forward to the second book of the series coming out in the second half of next year.

I was trying to get through my library books which I can't extend again, and so I picked up Foster by Claire Keegan. This is such a small book, less than 100 pages, but Keegan definitely knows how to tell a great story, about not a lot, in very few words! I am already looking forward to reading more from her.

I am currently reading Kim Nash's Life Begins at the Cornish Cottage and I am having so much fun with it! The main character is producing a pantomime which is very British Christmas to me. My review for this one will be up in the next few days for the blog tour.

I thought I had gone to my last author event for the year but it turns out I have two more in me. Last week I went to see Holly Brunbauuer talk about her book What Did I Miss? at my old library system. It's funny because the branch we went to is at the major shopping centre in the area but I had never been in the branch before even though it's been open for years! I have another library event this week  and then maybe that will be it for the year. Maybe!


I'm watching



We went to the movies on Saturday night to see The Choral which is showing as part of the British Film Festival. The movie stars Ralph Fiennes as a choirmaster who is recruited to lead the choir of a Yorkshire town. He's a controversial choice because he has spent a lot of time in Germany. It also follows the lives of some of the younger people in the village who face the inevitability of being sent to the War and the impact of the conflict on life.  It was a really lovely movie! If you've read either of the last two books by Helena Simonson you might enjoy this! Here's the trailer:

Life


We went to a lovely lunch with my sister and brother in law on a moving restaurant called Q Train. It was yet another meal on a train, although as far as I know that is the last one for the year.

We moved into this house 3 years ago. It was built new so there wasn't anything major to be done but there were still projects. This week, my lovely, handy husband finished building a deck by our front door. We upcycled the wood from my sister's old deck and it came up a treat! Now to the next two, much bigger projects. 

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Classics I Haven't Read
The Lucky Sisters by Rachael Johns
Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce
Cook the Books: Maame by Jessica George
Spell the Month in Books: November




I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings