This week

 I'm reading

Well, it has been a very busy couple of weeks, which is why I missed last week so we have a bit to catch up on. From a reading perspective though, the first week was very busy, but this second week I haven't read much at all!

On audiobook, I finished listening to The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley! This is the seventh book in the Seven Sisters series, and I have to say....  arrggghhh that ending! It felt like an unfinished book to me. I therefore started listening to Atlas: The  Story of Pa Salt so that I could get some answers. It doesn't hurt that Richard Armitage is one of the narrators.

I managed to squeeze in The Chimes by Charles Dickens, which I posted about here.

I did start reading Last Christmas by Clare Swatman, but I have had to put it aside for now. Not sure if I am going to get back to this. It might be next Christmas.

As I mentioned in last week's Top Ten Tuesday post, we did a family read of Bluey: Verandah Santa, which was a lot of fun..

Finally I started reading The Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang which is the current selection for Cook the Books. To be fair, I am struggling with it a bit, but I am determined to finish it this year!

I'm watching


Before we came away we watched the movie Blitz, which tells the story of the Blitz on London, through the eyes of a young woman and her son. It wasn't too bad.

I then  watched A Paris Christmas Waltz. I mean.. Paris and Christmas? Yes please!

We then watched A Very Musical Christmas which was the stars of Australian musical theatre singing Christmas songs! The event raised funds for Beyond Blue, and I hope that they do it again.

On our family Christmas Day, the two boys/men said that we should watch a movie together and it was decided that we would watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The irony is that they were both asleep very quickly so the rest of us watched it but they didn't!

Life


We travelled to Adelaide for Christmas Day, and then after that, we have taken a road trip to the Eyre Peninsula, and we are just beginning to start the journey back to Melbourne! There have been silos, sailings, street art, seafood, scenery and so much more! Here's a couple of pics

Posts from the last two weeks



Countdown to 2025: Day 16
Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Summer 2024-25 To Read List
Countdown to 2025: Day 17
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge Wrap Up Posts
Countdown to 2025: Day 18
Countdown to 2025: Day 19
Countdown to 2025: Day 20
Countdown to 2025: Day 21
Weekend Cooking: Christmas Tree Cake
Countdown to 2025: Day 22
Sunday Salon: A Very Dickens Christmas
Countdown to 2025: Day 23
Countdown to 2025: Day 24
Top Ten Tuesday: Christmas Reads!
Countdown to 2025: Day 25
Countdown to 2025: Day 26
Countdown to 2025: Day 27
Countdown to 2025: Day 28
Weekend Cooking: A Tale of Two Christmases




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

Countdown to 2025: Day 27

This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 27 and the prompt for today is Christmas Crackers – Ended with a bang

It's not that it ended with a bang as far as the story goes, but rather in  my frustration at where it ended! Never mind, I have started the final book so I can finally get the answers after the earlier 7 books.

Tomorrow's prompt is Candlelight – a book that kept you up into the early hours

This week....

Max

I mentioned last week that I was worried about Max, and I was right to be. It turned out he was a very poorly puppy.

Over the last week, he has been poked and prodded, had surgical procedures and in short, cost us a fortune in vet bills. The reality is that he has a number of conditions which mean it is likely that he will be on medication for life.. We will hopefully find out more this week, but there's every chance he won't have a normal life expectancy. We will given him as good a life as we can for as long as we can.

I'm reading

I am finding that even though I am not working I am not getting a lot of reading done. I am managing to keep myself pretty busy.

Last week I wasn't sure what I was going to start  listening to next, but in the end I decided that it  was finally time for me to start listening to the seventh book in the Seven Sisters series, The Missing Sister, by Lucinda Riley. It is more than 20 hours long but hopefully I will get through it.

I finished reading A Little Place in Prague by Julie Caplin, which really made me want to visit Prague which I reviewed here. I am currently reading The Girl with the Red Ribbon by Carly Schabowski. I really need to get a move on with this book as I have this and another book due for review by Friday, and I am haven't even started reading that book.

I'm watching

I finished watching the first series of Home for Christmas which is a Norwegian series about a nurse who has told her family that she is bringing a boyfriend home for Christmas dinner, so now she needs to find one. There is a second series, so I will watch that in due course.

I started watching Nobody Wants This and the first episode was fun. I will continue with this series for sure.

We also finished watching Kaos. It's such a shame that this series has been discontinued as a it was a lot of fun, and very clever!

We also went and saw Widow Cliquot, a new movie which tells the life of the widow Barb-Nicole Cliquot who was influential in creating the Veuve Cliquot champagne house. I am hoping to talk more about this next week.

Life

Tomorrow is a public holiday so we took advantage of this and my husband took today off work as well to give us a four day weekend.

It was our wedding anniversary on Friday night so we went to a very nice restaurant for dinner. It is at a restaurant which was on the 35th floor of a building in the city, so there was an amazing view. The bathrooms have what is probably the best view from a bathroom in Melbourne.

On Sunday we took a drive down to the Mornington Peninsula where we went for a bit of walk at Arthurs Seat and then onto the Portsea Hotel for lunch. We stayed at a nearby hotel and then today, we went to the Peninsula Hot Springs, which is a mineral springs area where there are around 70 different pools and experiences. It was a very relaxing experience.

Tomorrow we won't do much at all, not even watch the Melbourne Cup, which is why we have the public holiday!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Trick or Treat

Blog Tour: The Bookshop at the Cornish Cove  by Kim Nash

Blog Tour: A Little Place in Prague by Julie Caplin
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: November links

Festive Treats: October

Weekend Cooking: What I Baked in my Kitchen in October

Six Degrees of Separation: Intermezzo to The Kamogawa Food Detectives 






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

Six Degrees of Separation: What I Loved to A Guide to the Birds of East Africa

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.

The starting point this month is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt, a book I don't recall hearing about let alone reading. When I was thinking about what my strategy was going to be in relation to this book, it was almost as though I then thought, "and how exactly can I make this even harder for myself", and a plan was hatched.

My starting point was to think about what Siri Hustvedt's background was, and it turns out that she is an American author, whose family background is Norwegian, so then I thought about what other books I had read either by a Norwegian author or set in Norway, and the first one that came to mind was The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley, which is the second book in the Seven Sisters series. A lot of the action in this book took place in Norway so this was my first step.

Where I complicated it for myself was then I decided that my links for this month would be based on the books in the Seven Sisters series. I could have done just the books in the series - there's an obvious link - but that would be a bit boring right. So my twist was that my selections will be based on the settings in each of the books from this point on.

The first book in the series is The Seven Series. In the historical part of the novel, we learn the story of how the Christ the Redeemer statue was created. A lot of the book was set in Brazil, but there were significant portions of the book that were set in Paris as the statue was being designed. The only book that I can think of that I have read that was set in Brazil was State of Wonder by Ann Patchett.

The second book in the series is The Storm Sister, which was my link to What I Loved in the first place. This book is set primarily in Norway and looking at the history of Edvart Grieg, the man who composed the music for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt.

The third book in the Seven Sisters series is The Shadow Sister. This time, the historical section of the book focuses on a young woman who is friends with Beatrix Potter. The modern part of the book focuses on an antique book and life in the country. The characters are looking for a hidden family treasure which reminded me of The Peacock Summer by Hannah Richell where an old house hasn't given up it's secrets yet.

The fourth book in the series is The Pearl Sister which has a significant section of it's story set in the far north of Western Australia. I thought I would choose a contemporary novel - The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots by Loretta Hill. This was one of the early rural romances I read, and I think it would easily stand up to a reread. I certainly have good memories of this one.

The fifth book is the one that I am listening to on audio at the moment - The Moon Sister. This time the author is exploring the history around flamenco dancing in Spain. For another historical fiction novel set in Spain I have chosen The Last Queen by C W Gortner about Juana, the sister of Catherine of Aragon, who married into the powerful Hapsburg family.

The latest book in the series, the sixth, is The Sun Sister. I haven't read it yet, but I understand that it is set in Africa, so for my final choice I am revisiting a lovely book that I read many years ago, A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson. This was such a delightful read which I thoroughly enjoyed but I had forgotten all about!

I have taken us on a journey around the world from Norway to Kenya using the books in the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley as the compass.

Next month's starting point is How to Do Nothing by Jenny ODell. Maybe I will keep it a bit simpler next month, but maybe not. We'll see.

Where has your six degrees taken you this month?

This week...

I'm reading....

I posted the first paragraph or so from Henrietta's War on Friday but I haven't made any progress there. I do really want to get some time to read this book this week because so far I have really enjoyed it!

I have read a fair chunk of Aria's Travelling Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin which is a book that I have downloaded from the library. The odd thing is that I can only read this using the Borrowbox app which I can only seem to read on my phone. That does mean that I can read at 4am if I can't sleep but otherwise isn't that convenient. I definitely prefer to be able to read on my Kindle. I recently got a  review book from Netgalley that couldn't be sent to Kindle either so goodness knows how I am going to read that but I will figure it out.

I am also still listening to The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley. I mentioned last week I was going to try and vary the speed of the audio, which I did, but maybe I have to work up to a higher rate slowly. At the moment I have it at 1.2 and I am not sure that I want to go too much faster at this stage.

I'm watching...

We watched a couple of episodes of Normal People this week. We do have a tendency to watch an episode or two of a show an never get back to it again. There's no reason not to get back to it but we will see.

I did have a Sunday afternoon binge watch of Sweet Magnolias on Netflix which is based on a series of books by Sherryl Woods and which I haven't read. Robert was busy in the bathroom sanding, painting etc so I got to just watch a few episodes in a row. It's pleasant, easy watching, so I will probably watch more.


In Life

The social life is kind of getting back to normal, kind of. I don't mean in terms of going to an art gallery, or the movies. I did get together with a group of friends for a divorce party/dinner. My contribution was White Chocolate Cheesecake. With this particular group of friends, there is no other choice. Last time I went I wanted to try a baked cheesecake so I made a Salted Caramel Baked Cheesecake which was yum but I did get in trouble because it was the "right" cheesecake! I have been making this cheesecake for more than 10 years and apparently they still haven't had it enough times!

We, by which I mean Bob the Builder, is still working on the bathroom, but there is really just one big job to do once the acrylic panels come into the hardware store. Other than that, just finishing touches. I am, however,  looking forward to when my son can go back to using the main bathroom rather than our ensuite. I don't really mind except either his bodywash is different or he uses a lot of it because everytime I have the next shower after him the shower base is like a skating rink. It's so slippery!

We have recently been refinancing and making changes to our financial priorities which sounds very very grown up, and is! It's also kind of stressful but everything was sorted out last week so we are now on our way towards our goals. As part of this,  we are also starting to look at new cars. There are just so many options, and it's hard to know what the right choice to make is. This will be the first time I have ever had a brand new, or near new, car.

The last thing to mention this week is that the signup is now open for Paris in July, hosted at Thyme for Tea! I am excited to participate in this again. It was always part of my plan for this year, but it would have been much easier if we had actually been allowed to go to Paris but I am sure I will come up with something!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday
It's Friday!
Alphabet  2020
Weekend Cooking

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

This week...

I'm reading....

After finishing Normal People last week, I decided that it was time to tackle one of the big books that I had sitting in my Audible account, and so started The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley. This is the fifth book in the Seven Sisters series and comes in at a sizeable 20 hours listening time so it will keep me listening for a while. I have seen people mention that they adjust the speed and listen to audiobooks at say 1.5 times normal speed. Maybe I should try that with this book? Does anyone do that?

Other than that I am still reading The Silk House by Katye Nunn and that's it. I have chosen the next book off my shelf but haven't started it yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I'm watching...

I am very pleased to say that I actually finished some things this week! 

I finally watched the last episode of Outlander. I had the last episode sitting there for several weeks but every time I thought about watching it I didn't because I wasn't in the right headspace to watch what I knew was going to be a gruelling episode, and it was. Now, like everyone else, I wait for the net series..

On the opposite end of the scale to gruelling is The Great which was completely over the top, completely bonkers show, but we thoroughly enjoyed it! The performance of Nicholas Hoult was amazing with the range from over-sexed, over privileged king who could do whatever he pleased (Huzzah!) but who had an almost childlike need to be loved. I was curious to see that one of the main forces behind The Great was an Australian screenwriter,  and that his wife was playing one of the key characters. What The Great is not is historically accurate in any ways, but it does tell you that in the opening titles where it says "an occasionally true story" so as long as you take it in that vein and don't expect historical accuracy it will be fine.

One of the music artists I have reacquainted myself with during this period of social isolation is Garth Brooks. Back in the early 90s I was a big fan and used to listen to those early albums over and over again, but I felt like I kind of lost track of his music. I have been watching some of the shows he is doing on Facebook and was reminded of how good he was. This weekend I watched the new documentary Garth Brooks: The Road I'm On which was really interesting, and reminded me that part of the reason I lost track was that he retired for so long. Needless to say, I have already told the husband that the next time he comes to Australia we are going to go and see him perform!

In life

I have noticed that there is a notice on Blogger telling us that we have to swap to the new Blogger before the end of the month. Mostly it is okay, although I don't like the way that it deals with placeholder posts. As soon as I had a post that I needed on a specific day I used to change the schedule date and it would sit there as a placeholder in the right date order. I haven't yet figured out how to do that in the new Blogger. It appears as though it saves it in the order of the last time you edited a post which doesn't really work. For now I've had to come up with a Google sheet to save the dates so that I can make sure I don't miss anything. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. And it turns out adding new labels is a bit challenging too.

The big news for this weekend for us (other than it being my birthday) was that it was bathroom reno weekend. It was a long weekend here so we took Friday off to make it a four day weekend. On Friday my husband started ripping out the old bathroom, and then slowly did everything to start putting it all back together again. It can't be finished yet because a couple of items that you wouldn't normally have to special order weren't in stock at the hardware store so once those things come in it will be finished off, but I am happy with how it looks right now. Here is the before and the final progress photo. Note the beautiful green bench top that is now a thing of the past. Once it is totally finished I will share another picture.

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday
Weekend Cooking

Six Degrees of Separation

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