This week...

Max


Who's a good birthday boi! Max turned 3 last week. Over the last 8 months or so he has had some pretty significant health issues so we weren't always sure that he would make it to 3 but he did! We think he is now going blind so we'll see what happens this year. For now, we are giving him the best life we can!

I'm reading

This week I read The Woman Who Got Her Spark Back by Fiona Gibson which was fun. My review is here.

I was then very surprised to find out that there had been a fourth short story in the Once Upon a Time Book Stories by Alice Hoffman. It was  released back in February and I have no idea how I missed it! As soon as I found out about it I had to read it. It is called The Bookstore Family and I really enjoyed it. I like how she manages to pack so much into stories that are no more than 40 or so pages. Now I need to decide which full length book I should read by her.

I did have a very strange moment this week where I wasn't read anything other than my War and Peace readalong (and to be fair I was am a bit behind on that anyway). I had finished my audiobook, my Kindle book and my physical book and I had no idea what I was going to read next in any format. Too many options to be able to make a decision.

In the end I decided to listen to Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Dame Judi Dench which is a rare foray into non-fiction for me. It isn't narrated by her though although the narrator who is playng her is doing a great job in my opinion. Basically it is a friend of hers, another actor called Brendan O'Hea, asking her questions to prompt her thoughts of memories of the various roles she has played in Shakespeare productions. I am really loving hearing her thought processes which do a great job of bringing the humanness of Shakespeare to the fore. Definitely makes it seem much more approachable than we think of Shakespeare now!

After my period of indecision, I decided to read A Secret Garden in Paris by Sophie Beaumont. I really enjoyed her last book, The Paris Cooking School, and I liked this one a lot too. I'll have a review up for this in a few weeks once Paris in July starts.

For a physical book I started reading Half Truth by Nadia Mahjouri. I met Nadia at the Rachael Johns Readers Retreat in Perth a few weeks ago and knew I had to read it after hearing her speak about her book!

We had a few hours of flying time over the weekend and I was able to take advantage of this by reading The Island of Hopes and Dreams by Kate Frost on the way up to Brisbane and then Once Upon a Thyme by Jane Lovering. I also started reading Not My Greek Wedding by Sue Roberts. All three of these are blog tour books so I will have the reviews up soon. 

I'm watching

I watched a movie called Firebrand which basically telling the story King Heny VIII's last wife, Katherine Parr. It shows a woman who has some pretty strong religious beliefs which bring her to odds with Henry in the last days of his life. I am not sure it is totally historically accurate but it is an interesting movie to watch. It stars Jude Law as King Henry and Alicia Vikander as Katherine.

Last week we started re-watching Ted Lasso.  I had been seeing lots of clips online and it made me want to go right back to the beginning. What a joy that show is! We finished the first season and I imagine we will continue with season two this week.

Life


We had to do a quick trip to Brisbane this weekend as it was my stepdaughter's 30th birthday. We flew up Friday night and back Sunday afternoon. On Saturday we took advantage of the great weather and went for a drive to look at Moreton Bay and then on Saturday night we had dinner at Skydeck. We were sitting outside on the viewing deck (yes, it's winter here and it was a bit cool but there were heaters). I have to say, the food was amazing! Amazing!

I did get a little bit excited as I started seeing ads saying Paris comes to Brisbane and there was a 4 story Eiffel Tower at Southbank so I made my poor husband traipse over the river to see it, but it was a little bit underwhelming really! Will just have to plan another trip to see the real thing

The only downside, I had picked up some germs before we went away so I was feeling pretty average a lot of the time, and flying does not help! I think I am going to be taking it very easy for the first few days of this week.


Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Remind Me of a Song
Blog Tour: Over the Sea to Skye by Sue Moorcroft
Blog Tour: The Woman Who Got Her Spark Back by Fiona Gibson
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
Weekend Cooking: Sticky Apricot Chicken Drumsticks
Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - May Statistics


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

Bravo Mr William Shakespeare presented by Marcia Williams

The Globe Theatre is delighted to announce a new season of Mr. William Shakespeare's plays. Prithee take your places once more for a performance of seven of the Bard's finest plays. See As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III, Twelfth Night, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing - each brilliantly presented in dramatic comic-strip form, including Mr. Shakespeare's own dialogue and the riotous remarks of the audience. Bravo!

On Sunday I was looking at my library account when I realised that I have a bit of a problem. I can check out four more books on my library card, I have six books waiting to be picked up with two more on the way, and I only had one item ready to take back. Uh-oh. A quick look at my shelves to see if I had anything I could read quickly reminded me that I had this book.

I can't remember whose blog I saw it on originally (normally I write these things down, but didn't this time), but Marcia Williams originally came to my attention when someone posted about her book Archie's War, which is a scrapbook style diary from the perspective of 10 year old Archie Albright. A quick look at the library catalogue did reveal that they didn't have that book on the shelves, but they did have some of the author's other books so I thought I would give one a go!

This book is a collection of 7 of Shakespeare's plays retold in cartoon format. The way that the author has done this is quite clever. The cartoons characters speak actual lines from the plays, whilst the text boxes under the cartoons explain the story, and then along the sides and bottom of each page, you have the unruly crowd commenting. They might be commenting on the story of the play, or it could be a societal comment, or it could be good old fashioned play on words. The commentary from the crowd is quite interesting as well, as the people along the bottom of the page are the lower classes of society with the class of the crowd gradually getting higher up the side of the pages. There are comments about the kind of food that would have been at the theatre, and the Puritans who discouraged attendance and about the Plague. There are cameo appearances by Elizabeth I, and Shakespeare himself, along with a couple of Marlowe and Bacon jokes thrown in for good measure.

As an adult, I really enjoyed this book. The book is aimed at Grade 3 to Grade 6 (so about 9-12), and I am not sure how well it would work. The pages are very busy, and whether they will understand the abbreviated versions of plays like Richard II and King Lear is debatable, but the illustrations are fun and there is plenty of humour which should help as well. I think that my favourite was probably Much Ado About Nothing, but that may well be because that is the play that I am most familiar with.

If you would like to get some idea of the types of illustrations that the author uses, then check out Marcia William's website.

When I picked this book up on Sunday afternoon, I was expecting that this was a book that I would be able to whiz through in a few minutes, but I found myself spending a lot of time on each page reading all the little comments, and looking at all the very detailed illustrations. It was a fun way to spend an hour or so.

Rating 4/5