Top Ten Tuesday: Holiday countdown!

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Ten Favorite Books from Ten Series (We all have a favorite book in our favorite series, right?) (submitted by A Hot Cup of Pleasure)

However, I have holidays on my mind, so I am going to do the last ten books I have read that have given me holiday vibes. Lucky I read a lot of escape lit at the moment!

An Island Promise by Kate Frost - Three friends go on holidays to Ibiza and promise that in 10 years time they will do it all again, except everything is different.

The Stolen Hours by Karen Swan - This book doesn't have a holiday feel at all, but it is set in Scotland and that is one of the places we are visiting.

Poppy's Parisian Patisserie by Daisy James - Poppy goes to Paris to work, but I would love to go back for holidays again and again. (my review)

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum - I picked this one because we are going to Korea next year.

The One That I Want by Sandy Barker - This doesn't really have holiday vibes either, but it is all about London, which is one of our destinations this time. (my review)

A Love Letter from Paris by Rebecca Raisin - Paris! Paris! Paris!! (my review)

The Itinerary by Penny Pentley - This is a fun read in which the main characters starts a European trip in Rome and ends up in France.

The Riviera House Swap by Gillian Harvey - The idea of being able to swap houses and spend some time on the French Riviera sounds amazing! (my review)

The Golden Gal's French Adventure by Judy Leigh - The two main characters in this story, head off to the north of France for a life changing holiday. (my review)

A Wedding in the Sun by Leonie Mack - Two people end up getting into all sorts of adventures on the way to the wedding of their exes. (my review)

What kind of books give you holiday vibes?

This Week....

I'm reading

Last week I shared that I was feeling a little unsettled reading wise, mainly because I couldn't decide what I wanted to read. This week I fixed that by finishing all the books that I had started recently, plus getting ahead on my review reading! It's been a busy reading week

I finished both Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko and Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum. My review for Daughters of Tuscany will be up in the next couple of days. I also finished The Readers Room by Antoine Laurain

I also started and finished A Love Letter to Paris by Rebecca Raisin, which I will also have a review of in the next few days.

Amazon Prime Reads included The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman this month, so I picked that up and read it very quickly. It really is a short story, coming in at around 30-40 pages. There was a lot in that short story though!

Finally, I decided to start read The Stolen Hours, which is the second book in the Wild Isle Trilogy by Karen Swan. I have decided that this is going to be my Scottish book for my read on a theme book club.

That feels like a lot this week!

I'm watching


We are now into the second week of Tour de France, and we tend to watch around an hour or so each night! Every night there is a 5 minute cooking show which features the food of the region that the bike race is visiting, called Plat du Tour which I really enjoy!

It's hard to believe that before I met my husband I had only ever seen one Star Wars movie, and that that was on a date. Now I end up watching everything as it comes out. This week we started watching The Acolyte which is the latest series.

This was the last weekend of the Spanish Film Festival, so I convince hubby to come and see a movie called The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, which was a really movie film. It's the story of a woman who is looking for her great-grandfather who went missing in the 1930s. Along the way she learns about her grandfather's childhood, and the role a teacher played in it. This teacher really existed which makes the story even more moving. I definitely recommend both this movie, and the one that I talked about last week as well.

Here's the trailer:

I have had another Spanish film called Lemon and Poppyseed Cake on my to be watched list for a couple of years but I hadn't been able too find where I could stream it. I was looking for something else when I stumbled across it so I had  to watch it. This was very different to the other movie, feels a bit more soapie, but I liked the story and now I need to make someting lemony and poppyseedy!


Life

Other than what I mentioned above not a lot to tell life wise. We are counting down to our holidays which will be here before we know it. I think all the main things are booked

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Purple!

Paris in July: Since Last Paris in July

Paris in July: An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain

Weekend Cooking: What I Baked in my Kitchen in June

Six Degrees of Separation: Kairos to A Nurses Life


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

Six Degrees of Separation: Kairos to A Nurses Life

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.

This month's starting point is Kairos by Jenny Eckenberg. This book was recently announced as the winner of International Book Prize for 2024. The book was translated from German.

The last book I read that was translated from German was Carsten Henn's The Door-to-Door Bookstore which I read last year. (my review)

Another translated book about bookstores is Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum who is a Korean author. I am reading this at the moment.

A couple of years ago I read Island of Sea Women by Lisa See, which is set on the Korean island of Jeju. We are doing a cruise next year which will take us to Jeju which we are very excited about.

Recently I have been listening to Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran. What is the connection? Well, this book is set in the island nation of Sri Lanka so they are both set on islands.. We know that we will visit Sri Lanka in the next couple of years. We know who we are going with, we just have to find the date! So the other connection is Jeju and Sri Lanka are both places we intend to visit.

For the next connection, I am using the sun connection as my link and choosing Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson, which is partially set in Nigeria.

For my last choice, I am selecting a book I just learned about the day I was writing this post, so I haven't actually read it yet. The book is A Nurses Tale by Ola Awonubi and it feaatures a Nigerian nurse in WWII London. Christie Watson used to be a nurse, so that's another connection between these two books.

I need to stop here which is a shame as I straight away thought of another book about WWII nurses.

Next month the starting point is with The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

Where did your chain take you this month?

This week.....

I'm reading

I mentioned last week that I started to read Welcome to the Hyanum-Dong Bookstore by Hwang Bo-Reum. I am still reading this book. I am not really sure why it hasn't really grabbed my attention as there is a lot to like, but it is a slow read for me.

I also started reading my next review book, Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko. I like it, but it does feel a bit like other books I have read.

I am feeling a bit unsettled when it comes to books. I also started The Readers Room by Antoine Laurain. This is probably the one that has caught my attention the most but if I do have some due dates that I need to be conscious of.

When I finished my last audiobook I declared that I would be listening to something fluffier next. Whilst that was my intention, I am not sure I was completely successful. It might just be a different version of intense. I started listening to Sidelines by Karen Viggers which is the next Rachael Johns' Book Club choice. I must confess it wouldn't normally be something that I would choose to read but that's book clubs for you, right?

Speaking of book clubs we had our face-to-face,  read-on-a-theme book club meeting on Saturday. I was called an overachiever because I read 3 and a half books that met the theme, which was translated books. Whilst I am sure that I will have no issue finding a book to meet the next theme which is Scotland, I doubt I will be reading that many books next month.


I'm watching


This week I started watching Series 2 of Stuff the British Stole. I watched all of series 1 a couple of weeks ago and found it fascinating. I will definitely finish this series in the upcoming week.

I also started watching the TV series adaptation of Women in Black. I have a few episodes to catch up on now.

I will also be spending some time over the coming weeks watching Tour de France!

On Saturday night we went to the movies to see The Movie Teller, which is being shown as part of the Spanish Film Festival. It's actually a Chilean movie, which tells the story of a family who live in a remote part of the country where the father worked in the saltpetre mines. The family loves the cinema and each week they go together. When the father has an accident they can no longer attend and so they send just one of the kids to the cinema and they have to come home and recount the movie. In addition, the movie tells the story of what happened in Chilean history from the 1960s to the 1980s. It is really in the movie part that this story shines. I am definitely glad that we got to see it.

Here's the trailer:

Life

Last week, Bree from All the Books I Can Read went to see Rebecca Yarros at Melbourne Town Hall where she talked about all things Fourth Wing and Iron Flame . When we arrived the queue to get in went half way around the block which means that there were several thousand people in the crowd! As you would expect this was a younger audience than there was when I went to see Bonnie Garmus but we certainly weren't the oldest in the crowd by a long way.

Rebecca Yarros was a lot of fun to listen to. I suspect she is asked very similar questions at each event as her answers did seem well practiced. There were also lots of things that she couldn't talk about, especially in relation to the TV adaptation which is being done by Amazon. Having said that, I left the event having smiled and laughed, so you can't ask for much more than that! And of course, I am definitely looking forward to the next book

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Being Released During the Second Half of 2024.

Weekend Cooking: 5 Ingredient Mediterranean by Jamie Oliver

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

This Week...

Life

We have had a very pleasant weekend. If we start with Sunday, we went into the city and visited the Pharoah exhibition which is currently on at the NGV. Every year, they have a winter masterpiece exhibition and it is always good, and this one is no exception! Part of the joy of going to the exhibitions held at NGV is to see how they are staged, and this one was once again excellent!!

Friday was Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. I wouldn't normally do anything to celebrate solstice, but I happened to see an ad for a Winter Solstice event at the winery down the road and thought why not! We have driven past this winery so many times and had never been there. There was live music, fires and a fire guy who came and did tricks for the crowd! It was a different way to spend Friday night.

I'm reading

I finished reading Midnight Blue this week. I then promptly started another translated book, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum. This is a Korean book, and will be my fourth book in translation this month! I'll have to convince my fellow book clubbers to have this as a theme again!

I haven't mentioned my audiobook for a while, but I think I will finish Song of the Sunbird by Shankari Chandran this week. This is a book that covers around 60 years of Sri Lankan history. If you know anything about the recent history you might recall that there was a civil war in this island country so there were times when listening was quite confronting. I have enjoyed the book, but I do think I will be listening to something a bit lighter next!


I'm watching

A few weeks ago my sister mentioned a show called Home Town when we were talking about feel good shows. I started watching this week and it definitely qualifies as TV that you can watch and be left feeling better about life afterwards. The show features a couple who renovate homes. The twist is that all the houses are in their small home town of Laurel in Mississippi.  I will definitely be watching more.

A friend mentioned a documentary called Mont St Michel: Resistance Through the Ages. We visited Mont St Michel when we were in France 18 months ago. In fact, we were there on New Years Eve and we had an amazing night! Even without having visited, the documentary would have been fascinating but it was even more so seeing as we have visited.

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Winter 2024 To-Read List

Cook the Books: Family Tree by Susan Wiggs
Sunday Salon: Rachael Johns Book Club Reader Retreat 2024



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

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Super Excited About But Still Haven't Read

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books I Was Super Excited to Get My Hands on but Still Haven’t Read. And yes, I am sticking to the script this week. It isn't always the case

Daisy and Kate by Meredith Appleyard - I first saw the cover for this at a reader retreat last year and wanted to read it straight away....but still haven't!

The Other Bridget by Rachael Johns - I bought this as soon as it came out in book form, as opposed to on Kindle, but still haven't read it.

The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley - I listened to all the previous Seven Sisters books, but the idea of listening to a book 30 hours long is very intimidating right now as I don't get to listen that much anymore. And then I have the next book after that as well

Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt - I had to have this book as soon as I saw it!

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn - What am I waiting for? Yeah, I don't know either

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin - I could also mention this author's subsequent books too.

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum - I have had this on my radar since last year.

The Starfish Sisters by Barbara O'Neal - I have quite a few unread books by this author

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain - Maybe I'll get to read this for Paris in July.

The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons -  I like the sound of this author's upcoming book too.

Have you read any of these books?