What I read
As I said in the Monday post I read a lot of fan fiction recently, which I guess counts as reading, but sadly doesn’t count towards my Goodreads goals. I’m “only” 5 books ahead now. One of this year’s challenges, though, is to read more books than the previous year, which means I’d have to read 157…
Only two BABALs this month so not terrible, but I did borrow a couple of books from the library in order to complete two of the reading challenges in time.
So I read:
- The Pole Star Family
- The Women – Kristin Hannah
- White Silence (Elizabeth Cage #1) – Jodi Taylor
- Dark Light (Elizabeth Cage #2) – Jodi Taylor
- The Vanishing Bookstore – Helen Phifer
- Women in White Coats – Olivia Campbell
- The Seaside Family
- Long Shadows (Elizabeth Cage #3) – Jodi Taylor
- Black Candle Women – Diane Marie Brown
I ended the month still working through:
- Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (Cherry Ames #1) – Helen Wells
- The Paris Bookshop for the Broken-Hearted – Rebecca Raisin
- Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3) – Jim Butcher
- The Secret Seven
What I watched
- Given that Supernatural is 15 seasons long, unsurprisingly we are still watching it. Currently on season 3.
- I finished All Creatures Great and Small but haven’t chosen what to watch next, apart from infrequent episodes of Malory Towers series 4. I also watched The Secret Garden (the 90 version, naturally) as I just happened to spot it on Netflix.
- My sister and I have continued to watch The Flatshare on Tuesday nights.
- With Brodie we watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. He found it part scary and part boring, but watched avidly all the same and at one point turned to me and asked which do you think is the better pirate? The options being Jack Sparrow and Barbosa. I answered with Jack Sparrow – of course!
What I did
The rest of our week off landed in April so we:
- Visited Arbroath for a wander along the beach/waterfront and spent a bit of time at the arcade.
- Went to Craigtoun and walked into St Andrews via the Lade Braes.
- Visited Fife Zoo where Brodie was “attacked” by a Lemur (meaning one tried to take a toy out of his hand).
- Took part in a big build at a library to build a scale model of Claypotts Castle.
Aside from the holiday:
- I finally finished my book shop scene by gluing all the little books and other bits onto it.
- I restuck all my Famous Five postcards to the wall again as the blu-tack had given up yet again. (Annoyingly even though several cards kept falling down the blu-tack still took off chunks of paint elsewhere!)
- I 3D printed a cute little book box, in fact I printed three, but two got given away so I’m back to only having one. My goal is to print a bunch of them with different coloured covers.
- I treated myself to a couple of Lego flower sets so I’d have something to put in my Secret Garden vase all year round.
How was your April?
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
Just like I have been binge reading your fanfiction!
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In March I’ve read a lot more than in April or so far in May.
I was very disappointed by Ruth Franklin’s “The Many Lives of Anne Frank”. Since I was 13 years old, I’ve read every single book on Anne Frank, her family and her helpers when they were in hiding. Most of these books were very interesting. Ruth Franklin repeats a lot of what Melissa Mueller, Carol Ann Lee and Miep Gies have written (and have described so much better!).
Ruth Franklin goes off topic a lot and talks about political upheaval that took place 20 or 30 years after Anne Frank’s death and has nothing to do with her other than forcing Franklin’s political opinion on the reader. Fortunately, I got it through our public library, so I didn’t waste any money.
Another book that I sorted out was “Nordwaerts” by Sylvia Furtwaengler. A woman and lots of huskies doing the dog race in Russia. I’ve read better books on this topic.
“Mothers and Daughters” by Evan Hunter was very good again after 40 years of reading it for the first time, probably his master piece. I also liked his newer novel “Privileged Conversations” which takes place in NYC.
Then I finished reading “Woodswoman IIII” (don’t ask me why she didn’t call it “Woodswoman IV”) and it was o.k., but not as gripping as the first two Woodswoman autobiographies.
A newer book that was published this year and was really worth reading: “Into The Fall” by Tamara L. Miller, set in the woods near Toronto and unpredictable.
On Easter Saturday we drove all the way to Northern Vermont to visit the Vermont Country Store where we ordered stuff every once in a while. My assumption was right, they have even more stuff in the store than in their monthly catalogue.
On the 12th of April we had 4 inches of snow in Worcester (10 cm) and on the 26th of April it was so warm that we needed to turn on our air condition. May is so far very rainy, but hopefully the second half will be better.
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