Random Jottings

Who would have thought it?

I told you I was going scan mad with all my old family photos and threatened to inflict them on you.  Well, here we go.

   

who would have thought that these two urchins (Kathryn on the left and Helen on the right) would grow up.....

 

to look like this?  (This time Helen on the left and Kathryn on the right)

Sovay - Celia Rees

This book appears in the Bloomsbury catalogue under the junior reading section but it is one of those books that can be read by both adults and teenagers.  I have not read anything by Celia Rees but rather liked the sound of a feisty girl dressing up as a highwayman to test the mettle of her lover who, in this case anyway, is found wanting.

Though this may appear as a frolic and fun book, there is a serious background to the story.  Set in England and France at the time of the French Revolution and at a time when those without any rights at all, ie - farmers, stewards, workers were beginning to get restive at their position and demand parity, this has a solid historical background.

Sovay enjoys dressing up as a boy and has taken up the dangerous past time of masquerading as a highwayman, Captain Blaize.  She holds up the coach in which her lover is travelling to test his bravery and love for her and when he hands over the ring she gave him with nary a protest but rather begging for his life and then, when confronted by her, lies, she realises that she has been merely infatuated with her lover, who then reveals his true colours.  He had merely pretended to be close to her so he could watch and spy for his father, the local magistrate, as her family were suspected of sedition and treason.

Sovay is forced to flee, in the company of her loyal servant Gabrial, and goes to seek her brother Hugh, who is at university only to find that he and his father have also vanished and rumour has it that they are in Paris.  Sovay is left to find her own way in a London that is teeming with intrigue and unrest and comes under the watchful eye of Dysart, an evil spymaster who is playing a very deep game indeed, planning revolution in England along with Robespierre across the Channel.

This story abounds in excitement and adventure and full of wonderfully colourful characters:  greenwood, the dashing Highwayman to whom she is rather attracted; Madame Pierce.with a red wig and rotting teeth,  who runs a bawdy house,  Toby a young thief caught up in this house who wishes to escape and become an apprentice locksmith; an American agent, Barrett sent to London to spy on Dysart; Leon, a captain in the French army, dashing and handsome - all of these characters come and go throughout the breathless pace of the story which flits backwards and forwards from the country to London to France and a close encounter with Madame la Guillotine..

Celia Rees writes with great panache and style and the plot fairly rattles along and keeps the reader absorbed.  As I said, in the catalogue for younger readers, though I would guess at teenagers myself, but well worth a read no matter how old you are.  My only reservation is the cover which has a rather 'modern' looking Sovay gazing at the reader, but I am assuming that this is a deliberate ploy to catch the idea of its targeted reading group and who am I to complain?

Great read. Loved it.

Zapping along - Redux

My posting on zapping along has received such a lot of comments both on and off blog, that rather than respond to all the questions raised and opinions expressed in the comments column, I have decided to post again.

It seems that my experience at school and later on in life regarding the speed with which I read is not unique.  A sad thought really. When at school it is difficult to hide this fact and I was often accused of being a show off and know it all because of my reading ability and so tended to keep as low a profile as possible.  Add to this, that I attended a Convent School where all signs of individuality were severely frowned upon; I seem to have spent most of my school days treading on egg shells. No wonder I finally snapped and walked out.

One comment was left by Litlove  who mentioned Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book which she felt had to be read slowly as if read quickly and in a big gulp would not be enjoyed so much.  This links with another comment later on from  Ros  asking if the speed of my reading depends on the nature of the material and could I read a complex densely argued piece of non-fiction as quickly as I read a novel.

I find on the whole that my reading speed adapts itself to what I am actually reading.  If I am sitting down with, let's say a DL Sayers detective story, I will get through that in about an hour and a half.  If I was reading a critical analysis of DL Sayers and crime novels of that era, then even if it was the same length as the novel (highly unlikely but let us suppose it is for the sake of argument) then it would take me twice as long.  My mind does seem to adjust automatically to the reading matter in hand.  I took an OU course on Shakespeare a year or so ago and found when reading the two plays I was studying and the accompanying text books, that I read much more slowly.

However, this does not necessarily mean that quick reading = fiction; slow reading = non fiction. 

For instance, I have found when reading Margaret Atwood that I had to put the brakes on pretty hard if I wanted to get the best out of her work.  Hugely complex, multi layered books that really make you think and as the first one I read was The Blind Assassin with its story within a story within a story, I really had to be on my toes and a fast read would not have answered here. 

Another comment asked if my speed of reading was one of the reasons I found the Booker list so difficult to come to terms with.  I don’t honestly think so.  I have mentioned Margaret Atwood just now, who has won the Booker and been in the short lists and I do read hers, albeit more slowly than usual; I have read Possession by Byatt which took me a day, I found that Remains of the Day was a read I thoroughly enjoyed and had no problems with, so I have come to the conclusion that in this case, it is purely whether I like the book or not, and speed of reading has nothing to do with it.

When I am reading Trollope, Dickens or Eliot or authors of that time and ilk I feel I read them more slowly, but other friends of mine who take weeks to read let's say, The Way we Live Now, and perhaps Bleak House, are amazed that I read them three of four days, but this to me is a slow read.  A fast read is a couple of hours.

It is impossible to find a rationale for all this and these are arguments and counter arguments I have been using all my reading life and there seems no final resolution in sight.

Litlove also mentions that she has heard that slowing down our brain waves makes us less prone to depression and reading is one of the ways in which we do this.  In my case my mind would still be whizzing along in top gear.    In response to this, I would say that I find reading the most relaxing and stress reducing activity I know outside of sleeping.  Sitting down and losing myself in a book is a wonderful way of getting rid of stresses and strains and I am not conscious of reading quickly as it is the norm for me.  And as for helping ward off depression – well, when I was going through a difficult patch several years ago now and suffering from in this way, sitting down and losing myself in a book, whether I read it quickly or slowly, was an escape from the glooms and made me forget my troubles for the time I was reading.   Perhaps books should be prescribed on the NHS…

I am trying to sum this all up now and come to a neat conclusion but not sure that I can.   I, personally, love being able to read quickly as it allows me to read so many books which as another comment pointed out, is something 'you obviously love'.  I regard this as a gift, I wasn't aware that I had this, I was just born that way and though I have become used to my capability in this area, I never ever take it for granted.

The downside is that I tend to 'binge read' when I find a new author I love and read everything I can lay my hands on in a short space of time and then am left bereft at the end and, if the author is alive and still writing, have to bide my time in patience until the next book is published.  If the author is no longer living, as is quite often the case, then the joy and pleasure of re-reads in the future is always there.  Re-reads of a book one has loved are one of life's pleasures, the joy of rediscovering familiar characters and situations and yes, this time, getting more out of it, as you always do on each read. (This was another comment I learned to live with 'What are you reading that for?  You have read it dozens of times already?”)  I have never ever maintained that I can totally understand or reach the bottom of every book I read, but some do not need deep analysis and thought, those are for pure pleasure, and I am just so thankful that with this ability I at least have the chance of making the acquaintance of those that otherwise would pass me by and would never impinge, purely because of the time factor.

I have had to take a lot of flak because of this reading speed but, apart from the teacher mentioned in Zapping Along and who I have never forgiven or forgotten, one other comment has always stayed with me for the simple reason I was so totally staggered by it.   I was told that in order to fully understand and appreciate what I was reading 'you should have a note pad and pen to hand and write your thoughts as you go’, and that if I read in this way “I will have more respect for you and your reading integrity.” 

No answer to that one really so I just get on with my love and enjoyment of books and maintain that it doesn't matter if you read 50 or 250 books a year, whether they be romance, detective, history, biography, philosophy or whatever subject matter you are interested in, reading is the most rewarding thing in life and can enrich each person.  

No argument there surely.....

Strictly Gone Potty

Oh, my the BBC are in deep doo doo again.  We have had Sargeantgate on Strictly Come Dancing and now we have Votegate.   Watched last night's show and was very sad to see that my personal favourite, now that Austin has gone, Tom Chambers, did not turn in a good performance and was in danger of leaving the show.  Once the judges have given the marks and your position on the leader board is clear, and the later on in the show we are, the more this board reflects the likely result.

In the early stages of the show, as was proved with John S, you can be bottom but be saved by the public but this chance diminishes as the weeks go by.  Last week with Austin in the bottom two it was likely he would be in the dance off, though there was a tiny chance that the public could have got him through, but unlikely.  So one of the best dancers in the show left, and I gather from certain posts on the SCD forums that the BBC were furious about this as Austin was a huge draw (most of the people who vote are female) and one of their viewer attractions was gone.

 

By the time you get to the semi-final with three contestants left, the dance off with the judges making the decision as to who goes through is a powerful tool and skews the whole voting system in favour of their decision.  This year, for the first time, and I am not a lover of conspiracy theories, I felt most strongly that the judges had their favourites who they wanted to go through. 

I do not vote in the early stages of the compeition. No money goes to Children in Need any more, which might in the past have made me pick up the phone, but I usually cast my vote or votes by the semi final and final stage.  However, last night was a total fiasco.

Both Lisa and Rachel danced very well and both scored the same amount of votes to tie at the top of the leader board. Tom, who I am sorry to say, did not do as well came bottom. It takes the thought processes of an ant to work out that no matter how often I voted for Tom, there was no way he would avoid being in the dance off and that my money and voting would be totally wasted as I would be voting under a falses premise.   So I didn't vote.

Nipped over to the SCD Forums in the gap between the show and the results show (which this week the BBC managed to put on the same night - presumably because they want a clear evening for the Sports Personality of the Year extravanganza on Sunday evening) and the boards were humming with emails and comments from others, like myself, who had worked out their votes would be useless.

Despite what the BBC think, and how they treat their viewers, we are not all morons.

So, we get back to the results show where obviously total panic has set in and the announcement was made that All Three Semi-Finalist would go through to the Final.  Screams, shrieks of disbelief all round and total mayhem.  This is then compounded by the announcement that our votes have not been ignored and will be carried forward till next week.  More mayhem as most of us did not vote for Tom because of the craziness of it all, so he will be at a disadvantage, and the two girls will have more votes.   This means that Tom, who I have to admit on tonight's performance did not deserve to go through, has been given a pass to the final and Lisa and Brendon, who had a fighting chance of beating Tom in the dance off (we all know that Rachel would have avoided this) and go through to the final have been penalised.  Brendon's face was a picture I can tell you. 

I am sure that, by now, readers of Random will wonder what on earth I am ranting about, it is only a show, get a life etc etc and you are, of course, all totally right.

However, what this points up once again, is the arrogant way the BBC treat the viewers/licence payers.  As you know, I have recently written to the BBC over the moving of the Vera Brittain programme at no notice whatsoever.  My telephone complaint recieved a bland all purpose email response which roused me to fury and when I told them so, received another bland response saying well write to the Controller then.  As I have already done that and, to date, have received no reply or no acknowledgement which comes as no suprise to me, this leaves me with nowhere to go.

One writer on the forums, ok and I know this is heresay and I am quoting an unverified source, said he phoned the BBC after the first part of the show to complain about all of the above and was told 'Oh yes we knew there would be complaints and that it would be unfair because of the way the voting system works'.  This is a truly gob smacking reply and to my ear, rings very true.

After the announcement of the three couples going through it appears that the BBC Complaints Board and the Complaints Line have gone into total meltdown so once again the BBC have proved that they have no idea of what the public want, how they feel and how to respond to these sort of situations. Anybody who can add 2+2 could see that mathematically this situation was a possibility as more and more contenstants were eliminated but nobody at the Beeb seemed to twig.

Incidentally, I am not giving up on my Vera Brittain complaint - I have every intention of sending that original letter back to the BBC over and over again until I bore somebody into replying!

OK rant over...

Little Dorrit

I have had slight reservations about Little Dorrit.  Mainly, I think because I do not know the book, have never read it and initially, I found the multiplicity of characters difficult to get hold of.  Again, this is because I am ignorant of the story, I had no trouble with Bleak House when it was on and heaven knows, that was simply teeming, but I had read the book many times so was able to place them all quickly.  I started reading Little Dorrit about half way through this current BBC adaptation and have to be honest and say, that for the first time in my life, I found a Dickens hard going.  Doesn't usually happen to me though I had the same difficulty with A Tale of Two Cities.  So I found it a great help to be able to picture the cast and settings as I read.

As with all Andrew Davies adaptations, this was masterly.  He distills the story line, maintains the essential vocabulary of each protagonist, pure Dickens and also adds and simplifies in equal measure to make everything clearer for a viewer who has never read the story.  Some of the 'character' parts which can be a tad irritating in Dickens (Sary Gamp and Mr Micawber come to my mind, I find them an acute pain) are much less annoying after Andrew Davies has sorted them out.  The part of Mr Casby, the seemingly genial, delightful, Father Christmas type figure adored by all his tenants, who in reality is a scheming skinflint,is beautifully played by John Alderton and his assistant, Pancks, the rent collector from whom everyone hides and who is revealed as a good guy, superbly acted by Eddie Marsan.  Pancks has his heart in the right place and is a true friend to Arthur Clennan acted by the lovely Matthew Macfadyan who I find more and more charming each time I see him.  Did not like him in Spooks but that may be because the show stinks and I gave up after a couple of episodes, a revelation in Henry IV parts 1 and 2 at the National with Sir Michael Gambon as his Falstaff (must not start raving about that again), and then I loved him as Mr Darcy as I thought he brought out the i nnate shyness and vulnerability of Fitzwilliam, and not a wet t-shirt in sight. He has a beautiful speaking voice and brought such sympathy to his portrayal of Arthur, showed off his kindness and good heartedness (is that a word...) and, of course, we then all rejoice in his happiness at the end of the story despite all his misfortunes.

The cast list for this was stellar with Tom Courtney turning in a simply superb performance as Mr Dorrit, the Master of Marshalsea, who could not come to terms with life outside the debtors prison, James Fleet, who we all know from Four Weddings and a Funeral and who usually plays silly twits, as his loving brother Frederick, Judy Parfitt as Arthur's cold mother, Andy Serkis totally over the top but rather sexy as the murderous Frenchman…I could go through each actor and write individually about what they brought to their parts but I won't as this post will then go on for all eternity.

And what of Little Dorrit herself?  A part which could induce a feeling of mild nausea in the reader and/or watcher (think Little Nell and you will know what I mean), but here a stunning performance by Claire Foy fresh out of acting school, sheer delight to watch, a young girl doing the best for her family against the odds, we watch her grow in stature and her love for Arthur and it is sheer delight from start to finish.

But when I come to the end of it and last night's final episode was moving, funny, exciting and nail biting all in one, I nominate the actor who played John Chiveree, the son of the gatekeeper at the Marshalsea, hopelessly in love with Amy, Little Dorrit, and broken hearted to see her love for Arthur.  His name is Russell Tovey and though I gather he has been on TV before, he was not familiar to me.  I shall keep an eye out for him. He had been consistently good and wonderful all the way through, but last night had an emotional scene with Arthur in the Marshalsea which  reduced me to tears.  A simply magnificent piece of acting, worthy of an Oscar, a BAFTA, whatever….the sort of performance that British jobbing actors turn out over and over again, seemingly effortlessly. Probably no starry rewards for this but these are gems to be savoured and this one is a jewel.

And, in the end, all this 'Oh I am going to emphasise the inherent lesbianism in Little Dorrit'  bit from Andrewe Davies came to very little.  In fact,this is the part of the story and the adaptation that seems to work less well than the rest.  Miss Wade and Tattycoram (who surely is one of the most pointless and irritating characters ever created by CD) seem to add very little to the story line, but I am ready to defer to any Dorrit experts out there who tell me not so, and I will admit that I was left slightly puzzled at the end of last night's episode at a couple of loose ends involving these two that I cannot work out.  Will have to re-read the last few chapters again as I have to say that it is a very tangled ending and one has to concentrate to work it out, even when being enacted on the screen in my living room.  I shall watch the Omnibus edition again on Sunday, unless the BBC move it again which they did the other night, despite their much vaunted commitment to this series which entailed the moving of the Vera Brittain programme which you all know about by now….

I gather Little Dorrit has not been as successful from a ratings points of view as Bleak House, but this can not only be put down to the BBC mucking about with its scheduling, but also because it is not one of Dicken's better known books and it is very dark and very very complicated indeed.  I persevered with it and ended up being totally drawn in and loved it.  Will be buying the DVD as soon as it is out so that I have the chance to rewatch and spot things I am sure I have missed.

I notice that the Old Curiosity Shop which was shown last Christmas is being repeated this weekend in case we are suffering withdrawal symptoms. This was shown on one of the commercial channels so they have obviously been watching Little Dorrit and want to catch us Dickens fans while we are in the mood.  I missed this when it was first shown and as it stars Derek Jacobi it should be good.

Sadly, I do find Little Nell almost unbearable and taking her seriously is not helped by Oscar Wilde's comment that 'a man would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell'………...

ZAP POW GOSH

Thank you all so much for the comments left on my Zapping Along post.  I have received lots of emails off blog as well about this particular blog entry and it has made me feel like dancing for joy to find that so many others have suffered from the lack of understanding or belief about our ability to read quickly.  It seems we have all had to deal with prejudices from teachers and tutors, and comments from one's peers along the lines of Smartypants and other epithets which I will not write here. 

I am thinking of forming FROTWU (Fast Readers of the World Unite) and order t-shirts and mugs and start a website.  OK only joking, but it is a thought...

I started to respond to the comments and realised that I was going to end up with an answer longer than the original post and also I found myself going down different byways and thoughts so I have started scribbling these down and intend to post again over the weekend when I have marshalled them in some sort of order. 

I was going to do it tonight but have just sat and watched the last episode of Little Dorrit and am quite overcome by it as I thought it was simply wonderful and just full of the most superb acting. I intend to rave about it on Random, also another post which I will do over the weekend.  Goodness me thank heavens I only work part time.  I am seriously beginning to wonder how I fitted everything in before.

And now, in order to relax before bed, the tea bag and pot beckon me and time to catch up on tonight's edition of It Takes Two whence I will find the latest gossip and scandal about Strictly Come Dancing, with which I am beginning to feel a tad disenchanted.  But  that is yet another post to write.

Thank you all once again for all your interesting comments.  Much food for thought.

Zapping along

John Zinn, who has become a regular and very welcome visitor to Random, has asked how I manage to read so many books.   The answer is simple: I am a very very fast reader. 

I have always read very fast and it has caused me trouble on so many occasions, usually at school when the teachers did not believe I had read the set book or the text for a particular subject: 'Don't be silly how can you possible have read it and taken it all in?' was the usual response to 'Oh Miss I have finished it'.  This drove me mental but there was nothing I could do about it.  Back I went and re-read whatever it was just to keep everyone happy.  In certain cases, this was no hardship.  I studied Bleak House for my A levels and this book was, and still is, my favourite Dickens.  I think it is simply magnificent and when I read it for the first time at the age of 16-17, I was so overwhelmed with it, I sat down and read it solidly in three days.  Of course, the following week arrived at my Eng.lit lesson and received the full blast of my teacher's wrath who clearly thought I was telling a whopper and she told me to read it again.  Well, no problem there, I did and loved it all over again.

She made the point that I could not possibly have taken it all in.  I have re-read Bleak House many times since and of course, I had not taken everything it, you cannot do this on one reading, you cannot do it on many re-reads.  I never claimed that I had, but that I had loved the text, given myself a good solid background to the story, became familiar with the characters etc and, then as far as I was concerned, the analysis and deep understanding would start when we sat down in class and went through it in fine detail.  However, this was not good enough and I ended up being sent to the Headmistress for Reading Too Quickly and Being Insolent About it. Fortunately, the Headmistress was sympathetic and understanding and had a word with my teacher and she let it go.  However, she got her own back later when she took my essay on Esther (surely one of Dickens's most die away, saintly heroines) and ripped it to shreds in front of the class and used it to illustrate my total lack of understanding of her character due to the fact that I had Read the Book Too Quickly. At the end of this session, when the rest of the class were sitting in stunned silence, I picked up my bag, my books and walked out of the class, out of the school and never went back.

You can see that this is something that still rankles with me all these years later and I am aware that this was an extreme reaction to a difficult person and a teacher who personally disliked me, but it meant that for years afterwards I kept my quick reading ability very much to myself.

I ended up working in the library system and there I was in clover.  Surrounded by books all day long, cataloguing them, ordering them, shelving them, talking to our readers about them, total total bliss.  Every Thursday night at one of the large central libraries I worked at, boxes of new books arrived and I and the assistant librarian fell upon these with shrieks of delight at all the goodies within.  I used to snaffle the most requested books and take them home and was allowed to do so as John Reed (can still remember his name. lovely man) knew that I would have them back in 24 hours and I did.

One day a reader came into the library and we got chatting about reading in general and he said that he had been on a speed reading course as he found he had lots to read and peruse during his working life and needed to get through things more quickly.  This was a three day course and at the end of it they had been given Animal Farm by George Orwell as their speed reading task and he was delighted to find that he could now read it in 45 minutes.  I beamed at him and said how wonderful and did not tell him that I had read it in half an hour as I did not want to upset him.

So, whether reading quickly is a blessing or a curse, is a matter for debate.  I have been a member of online reading groups, no more I might add except for one lovely friendly one, and was told off for reading too quickly and 'making everyone else feel inferior'. I left that group immediately and now that I live on my own with nobody to castigate me for getting through books too quickly, I can wallow and read as much and as fast as I like. 

When speaking to somebody about this years ago, I was told that most readers, though they do not realise it, 'hear' each word as they read it.  Fast readers such as I, 'see' the word rather like a quick scan, and therefore gain a nano second of speed on each word and as the words and the sentences build up, so does the speed.  There is no explanation for why some people can do this and others cannot.  Once I was sitting by the fire many years ago reading a book and turning the pages, totally unaware that one of my daughters was watching me closely, and she told me that my eyes moved so quickly that it made her feel dizzy. Again, totally unaware that this was happening.

At the end of the day, I regard this facility as a gift I thank heaven for on a daily basis even though it has caused me so much grief as well.  It has to be used carefully.  I deliberately make myself slow down if I feel I really really need to concentrate on a particular book, as it needs to be savoured and understood – this is usually the case with non-fiction which I do take longer to read, biography, history whatever. But I have to force myself to do it.

Give me a good, solid, fiction, a detective story, a light romance, adventure etc etc and I just relax into it and can get through a book in an hour or two depending on its genre. 

I have to say that this causes me a great deal of trouble when going on holiday as I have to make sure I have enough reading matter with me.  Just think how ghastly it would be if I ran out…. One such holiday my then husband kicked up such a stink as my suitcase was so heavy and when he opened it and found the bottom of the case was layered with books, one for each day of the holiday (14 days) he went potty.  I also had a couple in my hand luggage just in case.   This year I had a week in Turkey, a real lying around and doing nothing holiday and in the seven days I was there I got through 16 books (NONE of them great literature I might add) and had to resort to the hotel library with its collection of Grisham, Danielle Steele and chicklit which left me feeling slightly nauseous.  No matter they were BOOKS and kept me going until I got home and onto my next fix….

Blessing or curse – what do you think?

200 in 2008 (and counting....)

Have just spotted as I add another couple of books to my list for this year that I have now read 200 books as of today.  I was astounded when I saw this as I have not done this for a couple of years, I usually average around 140-160 so how come I am ahead of the game this year, I thought.  I also know that there are dozens of others I have not listed, light romances, thrillers etc that I have not bothered to review or list, simply because some were so slight and as these sort of books only take me about an hour to read, I did not bother so I would think the total is probably nearer 250 at the moment.

At the start of each year I love looking round the other blogs and read other reading plans, patterns of books to be researched and read that year and I am always filled with zeal to join a Travel Writing Challenge, or a Book that is over 500 pages long Challenge, or Read a book you thought you would never ever read etc etc, you get the drift.  I used to sign up for all of these and then come to a grinding halt, start feeling pangs of guilt as I was not keeping up, and then a total failure when I don't even start.  This happened this year with Russian Reading Challenge.  Out I rushed, copies of Eugene Onegin, Brothers Karamazov etc were bought and put on my Russian Shelf and there they have stayed and I have avoided eye contact with them ever since.

My other Reading Plan in 2008 was just to pick up and read whatever took my fancy, no pattern to it at all, and see what turned up.  And this is what I have done and it has worked well.  I wouldn't say for a moment that I have made any earth shattering literary discoveries, I have not written tomes of learned analysis of great books, but all I have read I have loved and thoroughly enjoyed.  I try very hard not to write about books I have really disliked as the fact that it is not for me, does not mean that somebody else will not love it.  I cannot go any further here of course, without mentioning the Booker list which I have a crack at it each year, only a couple I know my limitations, and really try to see if I can find one I love and can rave about.  Sadly, it still has to happen and a little voice in my ear is telling me that as I am not in tune with modern writing, why do I keep banging my head against a brick wall? Probably, becasue I am sheer bloody minded and I don't like to be beat.  So bring on the 2009 long list folks, that is one Challenge I will continue to attempt.

Toward the end of the year, most bloggers write about their Books of the Year and choose their one Book of the Year and mine is already chosen, unless something pretty darn amazing turns up in the meantime.

So what of 2009?  I think I will continue in the same haphazard way, grabbing what takes my fancy and reading those that are sent to me about which I know nil, sometimes it stays that way and then sometimes one will come out and bite my bum and I love it and would not have even given it a second glance otherwise.  And this is why reading is such an exciting thing to do.  The joy of discovery is always there and while you are out on the 'dig' who knows what wonderful artifact you will uncover?

Back to the sofa now on this dark, cold afternoon with a Miss Silver detective story, one of those I discovered this year and am thoroughoy enjoying.  I understand she has written 37 and a friend of mine has the lot and has loaned me the first ten.  Come January I am pretty certain I am going to need the other 27....

Oop North

Back from Leeds where it was very cold and chilly indeed.  Slippy icy pavements left over from the heavy snowfall of last week so had to look where I was going very closely. In order to minimise danger, we spent quite a bit of time in town, in restaurants and Harvey Nicks where there was certainly no ice and a good time was had.  Long tedious journey back and now very tired. I thought I would prefer going by train but, quite frankly, the changes, the cabs, the cost was sky high and sitting in a packed carriage with screaming chidlren and mobile phones is not my idea of heaven.  Economically, even with petrol being so expensive, it is cheaper to drive.  Yes, and the government wants to minimise cars on the road - well, make the trains cleaner, cheaper and more efficient and I might just listen to you....

Gutted that Erin and Austin are out of Strictly Come Dancing, Kathryn and I made sure we watched it and it is pretty clear that the judges want Rachel to win.  No matter who is up against her in the dance off now, she will get through as she already has done twice.  At this stage of the competition, the dance off should be abandoned as the judges can really influence, or basically decide, who gets through and Rachel is their choice.

I want to see a Tom and Lisa final but I feel he is not popular with them and has been consistently undermarked, whereas Rachel has been consistently overmakred so I think the odds are stacked against him next week.

Anyway, a good weekend, tiring but lovely and now  cup of tea and bed and back to normal posting soon.

 

Thought you might like a photo of one of heh lovely Victorian arcades in the town centre full of the most gorgeous shops.

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Random is having a rest for a few days as I am visiting daughter No 1 this weekend, am going to see Peter Pan, yes flying and all, do some shopping, chilling, chatting and gossiping so I will be back next Tuesday.  Have a lovely weekend everyone.