Today’s Booking Through Thursday’s question is:
Any New Year’s reading resolutions?
That looks like enough! :)
now over.
We had a good time with our family in West Lothian. The snow held off, so our drive there was uneventful. We’ve had good food, good fun, eaten lots and played lots of games. On Boxing Day we went for a walk and enjoyed the cold crisp weather.
Yesterday we went to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena. The grandchildren loved it!
This is the youngest granddaughter (age just 5) doing her first ever climb:
Grandson (age 8), who went up like a rocket:
and eldest granddaughter (age 10), who climbed with great confidence and ease, really excellent – and that’s not just me saying it but the instructor too:
I was amazed yesterday when I received an email telling me I’ve been nominated to receive an Award. Was it for real I wondered? Well it is!
Feeling very self-conscious and not being a person good at blowing my own trumpet can I ask you to have a look at this website:
and if you feel so inclined to vote for my blog?
This week’s Weekly Geeks question is about how to find time to read:
Do you read for a few minutes here and there?
Do you put aside certain nights or times of the day to read?
How do you minimize family interruptions?
If I don’t have some time for reading each day I feel deprived – I have to read even if it’s only for a few minutes. Reading is essential.
I’ll read whenever there are a few minutes here and there. At work I used to read whilst waiting for the lift, at breaks and at lunch time. I’ll read whenever I have to wait – at the doctor’s, dentist’s and hospital waiting rooms (it is more difficult to concentrate in those places, I admit). I also like to read whilst eating breakfast (but not other meal times), and each night I read before I fall asleep.
Family interruptions aren’t a problem. I can read whilst the TV is on, provided I don’t want to watch what’s on, of course. Sport is ideal for both reading and writing – the background noise seems to help me to read. This may be because growing up I had to do my homework in front of the TV in a warm room, or upstairs in a freezing cold bedroom (we didn’t have central heating).
A few ‘new’ books came into our house this week.
Some came from Barter Books in Alnwick. For a while now I’ve been trying to make some space on the bookshelves. I find it very hard to let any books go, but as I have a large number of unread books I decided to be ruthless and think about the books I have read and whether I would I ever read them again. I managed to weed out 25 books and on Tuesday we took them to Barter Books, one of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain. It is housed in a huge old railway station, built in 1887 and closed to passengers in 1968. Now it’s a bookshop that works on a swap system – you take books in and if they accept them you receive a credit and can then use that to get more books. You can, of course, just go and buy books as well. They accepted 22 of our books and I came away with just 6, so I have achieved a small amount of shelf space.
The books I ‘bought’ were three Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus books to complete our set (I have read these already), and an early novel of his, Watchman, which I haven’t read. The other two books were gardening books:
Both these books were my husband’s choice. They are full of practical things to do and make such as making a bird table, building a cascade, making a compost bin, laying paving stones and decking etc.
And he found this book on Amazon, The Stream Garden by Archie Skinner and David Arscott, all about creating and planting your own natural-looking water feature. The reason behind his choice is that we want to improve the little stream that runs through our garden. I posted a video of its current condition on my other blog Margaret’s Miscellany last Sunday. I’d love our stream to look something like this:
Books to read next:
I finished a couple of books this week – The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe, which I wrote about earlier and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday, which I’ll write about soon. Reading Coe’s book reminded me of Mary Webb’s Gone To Earth, so I got that down off the shelf and I’m thinking of reading it this week. I read it several times as a young teenager and loved it. I’m curious to find out what I think of it now.
I had to move all my to-be-read books out of the living room this week because we’re having a wood-burning stove installed and I didn’t want the books to get covered in brick dust etc. This got me looking at what I have in waiting, as it were, and I think I’ll choose one of these books to read next:
We have an old plum tree in our garden. This year is the first year we’ve been here and we didn’t know what to expect from the tree. It’s been absolutely blooming, full of fruit. The boughs are weighed down to the ground with the weight and I’ve picked many kilos of plums. I don’t have any jam jars so I’ve been cooking the plums and either eating them with ice cream, or making crumble, or freezing the fruit.
I made crumble with some of these, a simple recipe made with plain flour, sugar and butter, rubbed in until mixture resembles breadcrumbs and then cooked on top of the plums for about 30 -40 minutes at 190°C.
Check out the other entries this week at Weekend Cooking.
BooksPlease 