This week....

I'm reading

I finished reading The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang, and liked it. It was a book I picked up on a whim from the library having not heard anything about it. It has a really fun premise, is a bit fantastical and just that little bit different.

I started reading The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson. This is the current Cook the Books selection and so I will be reviewing it later this month and finding something to cook from it as well. It's not as foodie as most of the other selections are so I am not sure what I will make yet.

I read One More Day of Us by Shari Low, which I am due to review this week. I also started The House on the River by Rachel Burton which is also due for review this week. I actually have another book that I need to squeeze in before Friday but I haven't started that yet. 

A couple of weeks ago I went to an author event at my local library to see Australian author Amanda Hampson talk about her latest book, The Deadly Dispute, which is the third book in the Tea Ladies series. I just finished reading the first book in the series, called The Tea Ladies, and it was a fun tea-cosy mystery! It is set in the garment trade in 1965 so it is also a great choice for my read on a theme book club this month as the theme for that is the 60s.

On audio, I finished listening to Away with the Fairies which is the 11th book in the Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood. I hadn't actually read any of the series for many years, but it didn't take me long to get back into that world! I then started listening to Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. Is there a more perfect author/narrator combination than Emily Henry and Julia Whelan? I'm not sure there is!

I did also go to one author event last week. I drove to a small country town called Gisborne which is about 40 minutes away from me to hear Natasha Lester talk about her new book, The Madamoiselle Alliance which is based on a real person. What a woman! I was ready to drop anything and just start reading that book straight away. I will read it next week as it is one of the book club selection for the readers retreat I am going to in a couple of weeks.

I did share my April highlights on Instagram which were the books below. There are reviews for three of them up on the blog already, and a fourth will be up this weekend. These are the books I rated as 4.5 or 5 star reads with Pictures of You being the 5 star read for this month.

I'm watching


Masterchef Australia is back! Yay! This is a show that my husband and I enjoy watching together. This year it is a Back To Win series, meaning that all of the contestants have been on the show once or twice before but never won! I think I would prefer a show with new contestants but this will still be good.

I watched the first three episodes of a new show called The Secret DNA of Us. The idea is that a couple of hundred people from a town all come together and get DNA tested and then they come back together once the results are in and talk about what connects them. In some cases they find out that they might be fourth cousins, or that at some point they had an ancestor from a part of the world they had no idea about. There is also a reporter who is a researcher and she has come up with some very interesting stories to connect the DNA results with history. It's my kind of show!

I need to say thank you to Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumb and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings who are hosting the Springtime in Paris movie event. I have been meaning to watch the French movie The Intouchables starring Omar Sy for the longest time and I never quite got around to it! It was this week's selection for the event, and I loved it!

The Intouchables is about a young unemployed man named Driss who just needs someone to sign his paper to say that he attended for a job interview and was unsuccessful so he can get his unemployment benefit. The job is to look after a man named Philippe who is a quadriplegic. No one is more surprised than Driss is when he is offered a trial period. Philippe is an aristocrat who lives in an amazing house in Paris, Driss grew up in the projects. Philippe loves classical music and expensive art. Driss grew up living off his wits and getting by however he could. What sets Driss apart from everyone else is that he doesn't see Philippe as just a quadriplegic man, he sees him as a man. A man who used to love extreme sports, a man who now has an accessible van to move around in but has a very expensive, fast car just sitting in the driveway.

The movie is a touching look at care and compassion and about seeing the best in each other, and it is even more touching given that it is based on a true story I am so pleased to have watched it now. 

Here's the trailer

The last movie for the event is Charade which I hope to watch this week.

Life

I went to aqua class for the first time in forever last week. In fact, I went twice and I am going again this morning. It's a friendly enough group, who clearly have all known each other for a long time. The first class I did I was thinking that it wasn't really pushing me, until later that day when I could definitely feel it in my legs. 

On Wednesday night we went to see German composer Hans Zimmer live in concert. My husband loves listening to movie soundtracks while he is working and Hans Zimmer is one of his favourites so this was his birthday present! It was a really good show, different to what I was expecting really. I wasn't familiar with everything but I still enjoyed the show. There was music from movies like Gladiator, Inception, Dune and much more. The highlight for me was music from The Lion King.

On Saturday it was our federal election. In Australia it is compulsory to vote, or should I say it is compulsory to turn up to the polling station and get your name crossed of. If you are lucky, your polling station will have a barbecue set up where you by what is known as a democracy sausage. It is a sausage in white bread, sometimes with onion, and with the sauce of your choice. Australians do get excited about the democracy sausage on election day. My polling station doesn't have a barbecue. I think we are going to have to find one that does for the next election.


Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with the Word Cafe in the Title
Blog Tour: The House of Lost Whispers by Jenni Keer
Blog Tour: A Greek Island Gift by Mandy Baggot
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - May Links
The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley
Where the Birds Call Her Name by Claire van Ryn
Weekend Cooking: In My Kitchen - April
Six Degrees of Separation: Rapture to The Swan Maiden



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

This week....

Global Book Crawl

Last week was the inaugural Global Book Crawl in Melbourne, so Bree from All the Books I Can Read and I couldn't resist the idea of wandering around the city visiting bookstores! The idea behind the crawl is that you have to visit between 8 and 12 bookstores around the city and collect stamps. As long as you visited the required number of stores then you could get a free book and you would go into the draw to win 50 books. If you spent $100 in a single store you should have received a Global Book Crawl tote bag. 

We were somewhat thwarted by the fact that one of the stores that you had to visit was only open on certain days so we didn't get to get the free book, but we did have a fabulous day visiting some bookstores that we were familiar with, others we had never visited before. We got to talk books, life and everything in general and I did as many steps on that day as I normally do when I am holidays! The photo above was taken at the first bookstore so I still look relatively fresh!

I did get a bag from the last store that we visited but they had already run out of  the specific tote bags and it was only the second day when we did it.

The stores that we visited included Books for Cooks, Hill of Content Bookshop, Kay Craddock Antiquarian Booksellers, Mary Martin Bookshop (where the pic above was taken), Paperback Bookshop, Readings Emporium and Readings at the State Library.

I can definitely see myself doing this again if they have it again next year. 

Here are a couple more pics, including my haul for the day. 

I'm reading

Unlike last week I actually finished more books than I started this week! I also posted 5 reviews which is a very unusual for me! I have a few I would like to post this week and then I will be almost caught up I think!

I finished reading Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods which I thoroughly enjoyed. Last year I listened to the audio of The Lost Bookshop and was underwhelmed but this one grabbed my attention straight away and didn't let go!

I also finished The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer which was a really good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will post a review of this one in a couple of weeks time.

I also read A Greek Island Gift by Mandy Baggot. I have read a few of Mandy Baggot's books now and enjoy her portrayal of Greece in the pages of her books. My review for this one will be up later this week. 

I went to the library to pick up a cookbook that was on hold for me and saw The Rainfall Market by Korean author You Yeong-Gwang on the hot picks shelf and couldn't help myself. I have started reading it and so far it is good. Different from my usual reads but good.

I'm watching

We sat down this week and watched the most recent version of All Quiet on the Western Front which was an excellent film. What I didn't expect is that we would watched some of the 1979 version starring Ernest Borgnine as well. By comparing the two you can definitely see how movies have changed over the last 50 or so years. For example, the soldiers in the earlier version were very clean and tidy. The ones in the recent version with covered in mud and other things for most of the movie

However, they both don't compare to the gritty reality of war, as we saw when we watched a couple of epsides of the Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam. 

We have watched a few documentaries this week. We watched a four episodes of a documentary series about the life of Winston Churchill which was very interesting. Whilst he is rightly famous for leading the British during WWII, there are some less than stellar instances in his life where he made decisions that had devestating consequences.

On a lighter note we went to the movies over the weekend to see The Penguin Lessons which stars British actor Steve Coogan. It is about a man who is a bit lost really who starts teaching at a school in Argentina right when the military coup happens. He acquires a penguin, and the movie tells the story about how his life changed as a result. It wasn't a bad movie. The word nice probably applies more than anything. 

I did catch up on my Springtime in Paris movie viewing this week by watching Paris Blues and Hugo. 

Paris Blues stars Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Caroll, with a guest appearance by the great Louis Armstrong. The story is about two American musicians who live in Paris. They meet two American women who have come to Paris on holidays and they quickly fall in love. I hadn't heard a lot about this movie but I did enjoy it for a number of reasons. Firstly, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married in real life so it was fun seeing them together on screen. Secondly, it was interesting to see the way that the race question was addressed in this movie. If you had of asked me to name a movie which starred Sidney Poitier which addressed issues relating to race I would have said Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or To Sir With Love. This movie looked at how different the experience was for Poitier's character living as an African American in Paris compared to what it would have been in America at the time. Another point of interest for me was seeing Paris itself. Yes, there was glamourous side of Paris, but this movie was made in 1961 and there were evident signs of the destruction of Paris during WWII. For example, there was a scene where they visit what looks like a market, and the market is set up amongst some runs. 

After watching two older movies, Hugo was a more recent movie (made in 2011) but set in the 1930s. It surprised me that this movie was made by Martin Scorcese. I always associate his name with more violent movies but this was a very sweet movie which was based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabaret by Brian Selznick.

In this movie orphaned boy Hugo lives in a train station in Paris, keeping the clocks wound up as he was taught to do by his uncle before he disappeared. He is trying to fix an automoton that his father had found at a museum, in the hope that he would get one final message from his dad. In order to survive and get the parts that he needs he steals from various stores in the train station, which brings him to the attention of the station policeman. If I had one criticism it is about the police man, but otherwise it is a great cast that brings a lovely story to life.

There were so many layers to this movie, which at its core is about the power of imagination and in particular the magic of movies. 

I am really looking forward to watching The Intouchables this week. It is a movie I have been meaning to watch for years!

Life


We did spend a lovely afternoon have afternoon tea at Oxi Tea Rooms. It is more of an immersive experience rather than just afternoon tea. I will post more about it in a couple of weeks for Weekend Cooking but this  is one photo. 

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Surprise!
Blog Tour: The Best Days of Our Lives by Helen Rolfe
White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton
The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin
Weekend Cooking: The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
Pictures of You by Emma Grey




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

This week

I'm reading

I did a lot of starting books this week! Some finishing but nowhere near as many as I started!

One book that I finished was the audio of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt by Lucinda Riley and Harry Whittaker, the final book in the Seven Sisters series. I have listened to all of these on audiobook. Given that each of these books is more than 20 hours long that's a lot of listening time! I started listening to the first book more than 6.5 years ago, so it has been a bit commitment! This final book was narrated by Richard Armitage for Pa Salt's parts and Tuppence Middleton for the modern story. It feels like this book did what it needed to do in terms of tying all the origin stories together, and telling Pa's story, so I was satisfied with the end of the series. I did have one question about what happened on the luxury super yachts (IFYKYK) but overall it was good. 

I then started listening to Away with the Fairies by Kerry Greenwood. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Kerry Greenwood had passed away recently, so I thought it would be a good time to go back to the next Phryne Fisher book. It did surprise me a little that is 16 years since I read one of the books but I think I have slipped back into the world quickly. After listening to Richard Armitage for so long it did take me a little while to get used to the sound of a new narrator but I think I am there now!

We did a bit of a roadtrip on the Friday and Saturday of the Easter weekend, and I convinced my husband that we could listen to a book while we drove. It needed to be something that he would enjoy too, so I chose The World According to Kaleb by Kaleb Cooper. Kaleb Cooper is a young British farmer who is now a bit of a celebrity thanks to his appearances on Clarkson's Farm, a reality TV show featuring well known British....presenter I guess is the best word....Jeremy Clarkson. It is only a short book at around 2.5 hours and it was amusing. Kaleb is a young man who knows exactly what he likes (farming) and what he doesn't like (sheep among other things!). 

As that book was so short, we then started listening to The Satsuma Complex which is both written and narrated by Bob Mortimer. Bob Mortimer is a British comedian who appears regularly on panel shows such as Would I Lie to You and he makes us laugh a lot every time he is on! He's a great oral storyteller. We will listen to this when we are in the car together for the next little while!

In terms of books I was reading myself, I finished The Best Days of Our Lives by Helen Rolfe. The review for that will be up this week. 

I then read The House of Lost Whispers by Jenni Keer, which is another super interesting book by her! It's a bit of a genre bender but I will say more when I review it next week!

I also started The Tea Ladies by Amanda Hampson which is going to be my read on a theme book club selection this time around. The theme is 1960s and this book is set in 1966 so it fits the theme beautifully. 

I also started The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer. I picked it up on a whim when I went to the library last week, but I can only borrow it for a week so I needed to get going with that one sooner rather than later!

Finally, I didn't take the physical books I was reading with me when we went away so started The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods. I am a bit torn now as to which book to finish first as I did get sucked into this one pretty much straight away!


I'm watching


We are big fans of the archeological show Time Team here in my house. It is often on the Real History channel at around dinner time so we will watch it if it is on, even if we have seen the episode multiple times before. I was a bit surprised to find that over the last couple of years they have been making Time Team specials that are only on Youtube! This week we watched one called Digging Band of Brothers which was an excavation of the camp where the US 101st Airborne Division was based in Britain. There are a few other specials that we will watch now! If you are interested this is the link.

We also started watching a new series of  the American Baking Show which is the first one I have seen where Paul and Prue are the judges.

I also watched How to Steal a Million as part of the Springtime in  Paris event hosted by  Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumb and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. What a fun movie! It starred the beautiful and ethereal Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, who was very handsome as a young man.  The premise is that Audrey Hepburn's father is a serial art forger. He agrees to hand over a famous statue to display in a museum without realising that he has agreed to have the piece authenticated. If it is tested, then it will be revealed as a fake then he will be found out. Hepburn's character then enlists the help of a man she caught stealing a painting from her own house (or so she thought) and hijinks ensue. The movie had such charm and naivety. I couldn't help but think if the movie was made today how very different it would be! I am planning to watch the next couple of movies for the event this week.


Life

I had to go to the funeral of a friend last week. He was a larger than life character who drew people to him. It was a reminder to live life to the best of your ability as you don't really know how long you have. Also #$%$ cancer.

In Australia, Easter is a four day weekend with public holidays on both Good Friday and Easter Monday. A lot of people choose to go away for the weekend. Originally, we were planning to go away overnight next weekend, but then my son is going interstate that weekend so we decided to go on Friday and come back on Saturday.

You probably recall that we like a good art silo, and this trip we managed to see 4 full size ones, plus a collection of smaller ones. The main reason for heading up the highway was to go to the Lake Boga Flying Boat Museum. During WWII, Lake Boga was a secret base for the repair of flying boats like the Catalina aircraft and saw Australian, American and Dutch planes landing on the lake.  It was also a key point in the communications between the Allies. It was a fascinating place, and I think it might be a place that we go back to should we be up that way again. Recently there has been a new art silo done at Lake Boga, which reflects this history. The other photo is of a silo at a place called Sea Lake, which was cool because in the day you can see the image below, but at night they projects some films onto the silos taking about the farming and the dark sky environs around which means amazing stargazing

One of the highlights of the trip was going to a nearby lake called Lake Tyrrell which is the largest salt water lake in the state of Victoria.  We went at sunset the first night and it was spectacular. I took so many photos. The next morning we went at about 8am and we were pretty much the only ones there. Well...us and the flies. 

We had to come back on Saturday as we had a show from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival featuring another British comic, Tom Allen! He is on various UK show and he was very entertaining. This was the only show we got to go to in this year's festival as we were away for most of it!


Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: What I Read on Holidays
Blog Tour: Under a Riviera Moon by Helen McGinn
Blog Tour: Secrets Under a Riviera Sky by Jennifer Bohnet

Weekend Cooking: What We Ate on Holidays: Japan and South Korea - the Sweet Edition

Spell the Month in Books - April





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

This Week..

I'm reading

We are back from holidays! We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Japan and South Korea. We are already talking about when we will go to Japan again! One thing that was surprising was how much reading time I had! I think it is because there was no TV to watch on the ship, and I wasn't playing any games  or doom scrolling on my phone due to limited internet. I also had pre- written all the blog posts for the time I was away so no blogging required either! I normally wouldn't read too much while on holidays but this time I finished 10 books! I am not going to list them all here as I am planning to share them in next week's Top Ten Tuesday post. I also now have a ton of reviews to write as I used this time to get a little bit ahead on review books, but also read a few books just for fun!

What I will talk about is what I have been reading since I got home.

A book that I started on the plane but finished yesterday is Secrets Beneath a Riviera Sky by Jennifer Bohnet. This is a book that I will be reviewing in a couple of weeks time.

Another book with a review due in a couple of weeks time is The Best Days of Our Lives by Helen Rolfe. I loved her Skylarks books set in an air ambulance unit, and was hoping for more, but this is not connected to that series at all!

This morning I started reading Pictures of You by Australian author Emma Grey. I could say I started this on a whim, but the reality is that the library wants its book back, and I don't really want to return it unread, so binge read here I come!

March was a really good month for me. I finished 17 books which is probably the highest I have had in quite some time. I know that I am not going to maintain that pace going forward though. Of the books I read in March, I gave two of them 5 stars (The Jam Maker and The Winter Sea), and another five books rating 4.5/5! Here they are:

I just wanted to mention the passing of Kerry Greenwood. She was the author of the Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman series, and lived a very colourful life. It has been a number of years since I read any of her books, but I think I will pick one up when I go to the library!

I'm watching


I didn't watch anything on the plane on the way to Japan, but on the way home I watched Wicked. I saw it in the cinemas when it came out, but I had forgotten how long the movie is! It was a delight to watch it again though.

The French Film Festival finished yesterday and because I was away for most of it, I didn't get to see all the films that I wanted to see. I was therefore delighted to see that a couple of them were available on the plane. I chose to watch The Marching Band! It was such a good film, although I do seem to have the knack of picking films to watch on a plane that will make me cry! 

Here's the trailer

Speaking of films set in France, kind of, Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumb and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings are hosting a Springtime in Paris movie event. The idea is that each week we watch a film and then share our thoughts. The schedule is below.

I did come home from holidays with a bit of a head cold, so sitting down and watching Mrs Harris Goes to Paris was the perfect way to spend Sunday afternoon. It is a movie that I have watched numerous times, and I have listened to the audiobook! I shared my thoughts about the book and the movie a couple of years ago during Paris in July which you can find here.

We also started watching Amanda and Alan's Spanish Job. We loved the two series set in Italy so we were always going to watch, and it is interesting to see the Spanish culture and food.


Life

I am hoping to have big news next week! Let's just say I had to do some job interviews via Teams whilst I was on the cruise, which is a bit odd! I am crossing everything for one of the roles in particular. 

In big news, I bought a new fragrance while we were away. I am one of those people who tends to wear the same fragrance for years until they stop making it, and then it takes me an age to find another one that I like. And then I wear that until they stop making it! Over and over. I also got a sample bottle of another one so now I have three choices every morning!



Max

As seems to be normal with Max he needed to go to the vet while we were away as he had some sores suddenly appear on his belly. He's good in himself, so nothing to worry about but we do need to get his medical conditions under control which I suspect means a change of medication. 

I think he is glad we are home though. He has barely left our sides in the last couple of days. This is a live action shot from a minute ago.

Posts from the last week

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - April links

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Degrees of Separation

Sunbirds by Mirandi Riwoe

Weekend Cooking: In My Kitchen - March

Six Degrees of Separation: Knife to Here Be Dragons


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