Month: January 2013

Happy New Year! I hope that you’ve had a good start to 2013 and have had a nice few weeks with your friends and family.

I’ve had a good Christmas and loved seeing my boys enjoy the excitement of it all. They got lots of toys, lego, books and games, but their favourite present appears to be a light saber torch that they enjoy “zapping” each other with.

I didn’t get any books for Christmas (everyone thinks I have too many already!) but I got a big fluffy dressing gown, a warm jumper, lots of chocolate and my husband bought me a Sonos Wireless Hi-Fi so that I can listen to my music (and audiobooks) in different rooms of the house.

I bought my husband a tow bar and a cycle rack so that we can now fit all four bikes onto the back of our car. We’re all looking forward to travelling further afield with our bikes.

We also got (and played) lots of board games over the holidays. I was going to tell you all about them, but ended up writing so much that I thought they deserved a post of their own. I’ll expand it and let you know all about my favourite board games next week.

I haven’t read much over the last few weeks, but I am now 300 pages into A Suitable Boy. I found it difficult to get into as there were so many different characters – it probably took about 150 pages for me to be fully engaged. But now I’m loving it all – even the political bits! I can see it becoming an all-time favourite. The only problem was the weight of the book, but I solved that by chopping it into manageable pieces – the greatest book vandalism I’ve ever been guilty of. I don’t regret it, there is no way my wrists could cope with the entire 1500 pages. Have you ever chopped a large book into pieces?

I also started Parallel Stories but abandoned it as there was no special spark to justify dedicating that much time to it. There was nothing wrong with the writing and I could see myself picking it up again at some point in the future – perhaps as a read-along?

I also abandoned Canada by Richard Ford as the characters were flat and I failed to empathise with any of them. I was expecting a deep literary tome and so was surprised by how light the tone of it all was.

On a more positive note I finished War with the Newts and A Trick I Learned from Dead Men; two wonderful books that I’ll tell you about soon.

Enjoy the rest of the week! I’ll be back soon with some book reviews.