That’s the first month of the long-awaited 2021 over, and to be honest, it wasn’t any better than much of 2020, was it.
What I have read
I set myself a target of 100 books for 2021 and then proceeded to ease myself in slowly, mostly reading easy children’s book as I didn’t feel motivated to read much else what with the new lockdown restrictions and rubbish weather. Thinking back to my stats for last year, my stats for this month are heavily tilted towards both rereads and children’s books. I did read a couple of new grown-up books at the end of the month though!
- The Return of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard #2) – Lynne Reid Banks
- The Girls of Mulberry Lane (Mulberry Lane #1) – Rosie Clarke
- Anastasia Krupnik (Anastasia Krupnik #1) – Lois Lowry
- Anastasia Again (Anastasia Krupnik #2) – Lois Lowry
- Anastasia At Your Service (Anastasia Krupnik #3) – Lois Lowry
- Clanlands – Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish
- Anastasia Ask Your Analyst (Anastasia Krupnik #4) – Lois Lowry
- K is for Killer (Kinsey Millhone #11) – Sue Grafton
- Anastasia on Her Own (Anastasia Krupnik #5) – Lois Lowry
- The Secret of the Indian (The Indian in the Cupboard #3) – Lynne Reid Banks
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- Anastasia Has the Answers (Anastasia Krupnik #6) – Lois Lowry
- The Radium Girls – Kate Moore
- Dead Man in Ditch (The Fetch Phillips Archives #2) – Luke Arnold
And I’m still working my way through:
- L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone #12) – Sue Grafton
What I have watched
- Hollyoaks, as usual.
- More Mythbusters, Only Connect and Taskmaster, plus the odd episode of The Crown.
- Some films with Brodie which include A Bug’s Life, Paddington 2, Toy Story 4, Peter Pan, The Incredibles, Hotel Transylvania and Hotel Transylvania 2, The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Bee Movie.
- The Big Fat Quiz of the Year – for once I did better on current affairs (and even sport!) than entertainment.
- The second series of Dream Home Makeover (I can’t understand why I like this when they’re tone-deaf enough to genuinely think they have customers on a ‘limited’ budget, who are spending $30,000 for redecorating and furnishing a single room.)
- Tattoo Fixers and Tattoo Fixers on Holiday
- After reading Clanlands I was in the mood for Outlander so I started back at at season one.
- Wandavision, the new Marvel show which is on Disney+
What I have done
- The very hard jigsaw of the Marauder’s Map which I got for Christmas
- Many wet and cold walks and trips to various parks
- Some home-baking, Brodie and I have made no-sugar blueberry scones, banana bread and porridge bars.
- Played in the snow as it snowed twice in January
- Had a few ‘special’ teas where we set the table and ate together – steak pie on New Year’s Day and a veggie haggis potato pie on Burns’ night. We also ordered pizza one night, Brodie’s first delivery!
I also spent far too long trying to solve this puzzle from one of the magazines, and in the end sent a photo to my family who were equally baffled. Then finally, a few hours later my dad solved it (he’s the crossword-er in our family).
Let’s see if any of you can solve it?
If you get it, just say so in the co
What has your month looked like?
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
Beautiful pics of Brodie!
January didn’t bring much snow (now we have 18 inches), but it’s too cold to walk outside in January and February with the icy wind most of the time and temperatures in the 20 Fahrenheit…no weather to be outside for more than 10 minutes.
So I’m reading a lot (finished “The Moment” by Douglas Kennedy, now reading “The Ear of the Heart” by Dolores Hart) and before falling asleep at night I’m rereading all my Norman Dale books.
Norman Dale was a British children’s books author who wrote suspenseful books in the 1940’s and 1950’s. I guess he was overshadowed by EB and Malcolm Saville.
However, I grew up reading his books “Clockwork Castle”, “Dangerous Treasure” and “The Best Adventure” (German translations) and in 2008 discovered his master piece, “Skeleton Island” which I can highly recommend (maybe via public library request). It was never translated into German.
“Skeleton Island” is very hard to get on the Internet and very expensive (but worth every £!).
It takes place on a river in Cornwall with a mysterious island in the middle of the river.
The nice thing about most Norman Dale books: they have a map in the frontispiece, so you can check the map when you are reading the book.
Other good Norman Dale books are “The Exciting Journey” and the sequel “Mystery Christmas”. “Skeleton Island” is volume 3.
We played Trivial Pursuit and Memory on one Saturday in January when the golf course was snowed in and André couldn’t play golf.
Other than that I’m still busy filling out my German pension application which is much more time-consuming and much more difficult than for instance getting prepared for the US citizenship.
In February I plan to order all Robert Langdon novels by Dan Brown and then read them in chronological order. I read “The DaVinci Code” when we spent 10 days in Southern California in 2019 and I ran out of books. I never expected it to be so well-written and compelling.
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I had to google what 20 degrees F is. Around -6 or 7. It’s generally around -3 or or 4 here at the moment. As we’re in full lockdown there’s no way of seeing anyone other than going for a walk with one person at a time or going to the park so we are wearing a lot of layers and doing it anyway! I invested in a thermal tshirt and socks to help. At least our snow hasn’t been more than a couple of inches (yet).
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