This Week...

 I'm reading

This week I started reading The Lost Palace by Alexandra Walsh. So far it is really interesting. Lots of ancient mythology mixed with a dual timeline. I need to finish this soon as I have to publish a review next week.

I started and finished listening to Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone this week. There was an element of pressure to that because of have had it in my library for ages, but noticed that Audible had said that they were removing it from their free offerings by 31 March. The odd thing about that is that this is book 2 in a series but book 1 and book 3 are currently still available. It doesn't make a lot of sense! I did enjoy listening to this book and I do intend to go back and read the others at some point.

I then started listening to Diddly Squat by Jeremy Clarkson. This is actually a selection of his newspaper columns that have been collated and published.  I am listening to it in the car with my husband, so even though it is only a couple of hours long it will still take a little while to get through. We've never actually done this before so it's nice.

Because we are listening to Diddly Squat together that meant that I needed to choose another book to listen to when I am in the car. I have a lot of books that I want to listen to, but they are all quite long and I am not sure I can commit to them right now. I ended up choosing to listen to a non fiction book called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. I am not sure if it is an actual cookbook. So far, it's more a book that talks about food rather than a cookbook. We will see what happens. 

I'm watching

We watched the first few episodes of season 3 of The Mandalorian over the weekend. We also watched one episode of Last Days of Pompeii which is a really interesting history show which counts down the last couple of days before the volcano destroyed the town of Pompeii. Given that we were in Pompeii not that long ago it is interesting to hear what the experts have to say.

We also watch the first couple of episodes of Bake Off: The Professionals. I think this series originally aired in the UK last year (maybe?). We do enjoy watching this show so we will stick with this for a while. We are also still watching Great Canadian Bake Off. Do you ever get the idea we watch a lot of baking shows? We really do!

I also watched the first episode of The Great Cookbook Challenge. The idea is that the contestants come in and pitch their idea to some judges, including a cookbook publisher and the best idea wins a publishing deal. That's an oversimplification but I liked it enough to keep watching

Life

Last week was a pretty quiet week all round.

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: A New Start

Blog Tour: Hopeful Hearts at the Cornish Cove by Kim Nash

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: April links

Weekend Cooking: What I Baked (In My Kitchen) in March

Six Degrees: Born to Run to I Wish I Had a Red Dress

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

This week....

 I'm reading

I don't often read much when I am on holidays, but over the last week I did manage to get some reading done. I finished reading Without Further Ado by Jessica Dettman which I loved! This was such a good read!

I started and finished reading The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin. I will have a review in the next couple of weeks but let me just say that I think this is the best book I have read by her yet!

My next book is going to be The Forgotten Palace by Alexandra Walsh.

I also finished listening to The Martian! I am so glad that I chose to finally read this book. You may recall that this was something I chose to read for my read-on-a-theme bookclub. We met on Saturday and there was an interesting mix of books. 

Next month we are going to read the same book which is the new book from Pip Williams who wrote The Dictionary of Lost Words. Her new book is called The Bookbinders of Jericho. The plan is that we will all read this and then hopefully a few of us will go to the Melbourne Writers Festival to hear her speak in May. We'll see how it goes!

I have started a new audiobook which is Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone. So far, this is an enjoyable listen. I particularly enjoy when the male narrator, Chris Brinkley, is narrating. He has a lovely voice! My main reason for listening to this now was that it says that this is leaving Audible soon so I need to really commit  to listening to this during this week. I didn't realise that it is the second book in a connected series which is a bit of a pain but oh well.

I'm watching

It's only a three and a bit hour flight to New Zealand, it is just long enough to watch a movie. On the way to Christchurch the screens didn't appear to be working particularly well so it wasn't possible, but on the way back the screens were fine. I started to watch The Menu on the plane but it didn't feel like a plane movie  (too intense and need to watch on a bigger screen) so I watched George Clooney and Julia Roberts instead in Ticket to Paradise. It wasn't terrible.

The same could be said of Two Tickets to Greece which I saw on Saturday. This is one of the current French Film Festival films. It is about two old friends who go travelling in Greece. One is very uptight and conservative, and one is not! 

Life

The highlight of last couple of days of our trip was definitely visiting Milford Sound. This is a place that has been on my list of places to visit for years. It's not the easiest place to get to. It's a 4 hour drive there and back and then we were on the boat for a couple of hours. It was, however, totally worth it! What a place.

We did have a bit of an odd situation when we were coming home. We were sitting in the departure lounge, and we could see the bags still being loaded, boarding had started and then we got a text message saying our flight was cancelled! Perhaps someone pressed the wrong button? When we got on board, it turned out that we needed to make a previously unscheduled stop in Christchurch to refuel. When I got back to Melbourne I checked my phone and had another text message from the airline saying that they were trying to contact us to rebook us so that we could get home! I am not sure who knew what was going on but it clearly wasn't everyone!

On Saturday night, we went to see British comedian Rob Brydon's A Night of Songs and Laughter tour. It was a good night without being a great night. It felt a bit like an old fashioned form of entertainment. It was ostensibly a light hearted look at his life through story and song, with a few impressions along the way. All the songs were pretty old, and so were some of the jokes!

Max

I think he was pleased to see us when we got home! He had been outside all day so maybe it was coming inside that he was excited by!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Kiwi Authors

Weekend Cooking: What We Ate on Holidays - NZ Edition

Best Sellers Around the World: New Zealand

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