This week

I'm reading

It's been a busy reading week this week. On Monday last week I still had two books to finish for blog tours last week so my first priority was to finish both of those. The first one was Finding Forever in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Christensen, which I reviewed here. The second was The Nile Cruise by Caroline James, which was a fun trip down the Nile!! I reviewed that book here.

I have been listening to Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens which was written and narrated by British comedian David Mitchell. It was a really fun audio experience, especially when he went on one of his middle-aged man rants! This was a rare foray into non fiction for me. I read it as it qualified for one of the Goodreads Summer Challenge.

I had previously listened to the first 10 minutes or so of Before I Knew I Loved You by Toshikazu Kawaguchi before I switched to Unruly. I have now gone back to that book on audio.

My read on a theme book club theme this time is "environment" which is the perfect reason to read my first book by Charlotte McConaghey. I chose to start with her latest book, Wild Dark Shore, because it also counted for two Goodreads categories. I thought it would take me a while to get through, but i twas so good that I ended up reading it over the course of two days

Finally I started The Little Porto Book Club by Rebecca Raisin which I am on the blog tour for next week. Originally, I was going to read this on holidays and just take my laptop and write the review while I am away, but if I can get it read and scheduled this week, along with any other posts for next week then maybe I won't take my laptop. We'll see.

I'm watching

We finished rewatching Ted Lasso season 3 and of course went straight onto the first episode of Season 4. Such a good show. 

We also watched a fair bit of Bake Off this week. We binge watched 6 episodes of Bake Off: The Professionals on Saturday night, and we also watched the first episode of Celebrity Bake Off as well. Interestingly Cherish Finden was the guest judge on Celebrity Bake Off, and she was also on the grand final of Masterchef Australia! We haven't watched the Masterchef final yet as we were out last night but we will probably watch it tonight.

I did watch a Japanese film last week called Perfect Days which is about a man who is a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. It follows his very regimented life as he goes about cleaning a series of architecturally designed toilets and how he finds joy in the little things around him. It was a lovely film and it had a great soundtrack. Here's the trailer

Life

We've been talking for a while now about what the best way to store our travel memento magnets and this week we actually did something about it, and we are really happy with how it looks! You can see that there are still some gaps, so it might be lucky that we are going on holiday at the end of this week!


We had a pretty quiet Saturday, but on Sunday we went to see Six which is the rock musical about the six wives of Henry VIII. It's such a fun musical. We went to see it last time it was on and there's every chance we will go to see it again next time as well! 


Max


Max went to the spa this week so he is looking very handsome as you can see from the pic above! She puts the bandana on all the dogs to take their photos!

Posts from the last week



Top Ten Tuesday: Shhh....don't tell anyone!
Blog Tour: The Secret Dressmaker by Jenny O'Brien
Blog Tour: Finding Forever in Pelican Crossing by Maggie Christensen
Blog Tour: The Nile Cruise by Caroline James
20 Books of Winter: July recap!

Weekend Cooking: Library Loot!
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: July statistics!

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

Six Degrees of Separation: Wild Dark Shore to The Enlightenment of bees

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Boondock Ramblings.

This month the starting point is Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghey, which is a book I intend to read at some point...maybe!

For my first link I am choosing Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. I read this book many, many years ago, back in the 1990s at some point.

Another book I remember loving back then was The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Our current read on a theme book club theme is Mothers and Daughters, and would both of those books would have been good for that theme. I am, however, reading another book by Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter. This was one of the books that I read on the plane on the way home yesterday.

From here, there are a gazillion books that are have the title of The something's daughter and I was tempted to go down that route. Instead though I am choosing The Astral Library by Kate Quinn because it was a book that I read while we were in Turkiye.

A Turkish author I love is Elif Shafak. In anticipation of our trip, I had borrowed her book The Forty Rules of Love from the library but had to return it unread as I ran out of time. I will be reborrowing it soon though. 

Another book that I was really looking for to reading but had to return unread was The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden. I will be reborrowing this one too!

Next month's starting point is a book by Austrian author Stefan Zweig – The Post-Office Girl. 

Will you be joining us?