This week...

Big news this week!! I have launched the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge for 2026! If you love reading historical fiction, reading challenges and want to connect with other historical fiction lovers....join us! Here is the sign up post

2026 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

 I'm reading

Given the above I probably should be reading some historical fiction but it feels like I am reading everything but that genre at the moment!

I finished reading Menu of Happiness by Hisashi Kashiwai, which is the third book in the Kamogawa Food Detectives series. As usual I enjoyed the stories in this book, and I will read the next book when it comes out in English. 

I also finished listening to The Secret Christmas Library by Jenny Colgan. This was connected to a short story she put out last year called The Christmas Book Hunt. This time, Mirren and Theo head to the Scottish Highlands to help a cash poor laird search his book rich castle for a book following a series of clues left for him by his grandfather. It was a fun story, but the audio wasn't fantastic. There were lots of weird gaps so I had to listen to it sped up otherwise it annoyed me!

From here it is all the books I started!

I am supposed to be buddy reading Flashlight by Helen Choi. I have read the first chapter, which was very interesting, but I hadn't gotten to it yet! Will make more in roads this week. 

Last year I read A Christmas Carol and The Chimes by Charles Dickens and posted about it here. I decided that I was going to read Dickens' other Christmas stories and so this week I started reading The Cricket and the Hearth. I must confess that I was a bit perplexed by the first part of the book which was all about the cricket, but the story is moving along now!

I also started reading Golden Girls on the Run by Judy Leigh. I need to finish this one first as I am on a blog tour for the book this week! 

I normally try to listen to Hogfather by Terry Pratchett every Christmas and I will still try to but I thought I better start Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil first. This is the current Cook the Books selection. I would prefer to be reading it, but this book isn't available in any of the libraries in my state, and the ebook was completely unreasonable priced so I have used one of my Audible credits to get it. I wasn't sure how it work as an audiobook but so far it is good. 

I'm watching


I am starting to get my Christmas on, mostly through watching things on TV, but that's a start. This week I watched A Merry Little Ex-mas, which stars Oliver Hudson and Alicia Silverstone as a newly, amicably divorced couple who are trying to look like what Christmas looks like for this first year as a separated family. It was a fun watch. 

I did also watch The Chocolate Queen - a Very Chocolatey Christmas. The Chocolate Queen is Australian pastry chef queen Kirsten Tibballs, and she shared a number of relatively simple recipes, along with a couple of guest chefs. I might watch it again to see if I can get motivated to make some of what she shared. Maybe.

We have watched quite a bit of the cricket this week, which is very out of character for us! It's not something we have really done together since we met, but apparently this year we are interested! Australia is playing England, in a test series called The Ashes which has been happening every couple of years since 1882. It helps that Australia is performing pretty well!

On Sunday I went and watched Hamnet which is showing here as part of the British Film Festival. This is the movie adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's book of the same name. It isn't a happy movie, but it was definitely good, and very moving. Definitely worth seeing if you enjoyed the book!

Life

Speaking of getting our Christmas on, we did take a quick trip into the city to check out the Myer windows. Every year they have a specially themed Christmas story. This year it was all Lego and it was a lot of fun. I did try to convince Robert to go and do some other Christmassy stuff in the city but it was the end of a long day, so that will have to be on another day!

We had our book club Christmas lunch yesterday and we did a book gifting! We all ikced a number and then we got to unwrap the corresponding book. I ended up with a book I had already read but someone else had a book they already owned so we did a sneaky swap. The book I bought home with me was Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz. It was a lovely lunch and I got to have my first mince pie and christmas pudding of the season as well as a delicious burrata and tomato salad and some roast turkey!

Finally, a quick shout out to anyone who is visiting as part of Comfy, Cozy Christmas, hosted by Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. I look forward to seeing what Christmassy adventures other people are having! I should warn you though, I am in Australia and our Christmas is less comfy and cozy than hot and sweaty, weather depending! Melbourne does tend to have variable weather so it could be 15C/59F or 38C/100F, or anywhere in between!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Christmas Books That Remind Me of Songs
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2026 Sign Up
Daughters of Batavia by Stefanie Koens
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2025 Wrap Up Posts

In My Kitchen: November
Six Degrees of Separation: Seascraper to The Four Dutchmen




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