A great bookish weekend

This is more a quality than a quantity Phineas Redux' (I love reading Trollope, but it does sometimes feel like a battle to make serious progress with him), the latest 'Slightly Foxed' also turned up on Friday which is always a treat and most definitely a nice way to spend a grey and wet Sunday.
thing, but whatever saint keeps an eye on readers (the internet suggests that it's likely St Jerome) deserves my thanks for this weekend. I've got more than half way through '

Best of all though on my way home I stopped in Waterstones (because I can't help myself) they had copies of Diana Henry's 'A Change of Appetite' and now so do I. It's officially published tomorrow but I know when the boxes arrive in Waterstones so went along specifically in the hope that it might be on the shelf. Henry's books have all been brilliant, I've browsed through most of this one over the weekend and it's no exception. This one is basically about healthy eating, it makes for excellent reading without feeling in the least bit worthy or preachy. I can't wait to start cooking from it and now I'm back home I don't have to.

Last but not least I've been looking up Leicester Book Festival so this year there's a good chance I'll actually get along to some of it (expect to hear a lot more about now that I'm aware of it) most exciting from my point of view is that Meike Ziervogel will be there. This is a timely spur to read a couple of lurking Peirene books and the chance to hear what a woman who is something of a publishing/literary heroine to me has to say about what she does. Basically it's been a very good start to Spring.

Blink and I miss the weekend

I’m feeling a bit fed up with the world in general this evening – having not finished work till 7 on Saturday night and having to be back for 8am on Monday morning I’m wondering what on earth happened to the idea of a weekend (it doesn’t help that I don’t get paid until the end of the week and am feeling the pinch). Today has gone by in a blur and I’ve still got so much to do, when I need to be at work keeps changing so I can’t make plans (sulking because a projected theatre trip on Tuesday is going to have to be ditched) and the Scottish one might as well be in Scotland for all the time I’m getting to spend with him.

Christmas – and in retail terms it’s full on Christmas now – is not the easiest time in my line of work, it gets very hard to carry on being nice to people day in day out. I’m frankly dreading the coming week when we’ll be shorthanded and there’s a lot (A LOT) to do – what I want to do is stay on bed and read ‘Dr Thorne’ for Decembers Trollope classics circuit because obviously that sounds a lot nicer than earning a living, but now it’s time to stop grumbling, grit my teeth, keep my mouth shut and get on with it. After all Christmas comes but once a year.

To cheer me up (or conceivably just to keep me quiet) the Scottish one took me to see the first part of ‘Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows’ this morning. I’m an unashamed Potter fan; I’ve loved the books and the films and will be just a little bit sad when the last film comes out and I know that’s the end of it all. I climbed on the Harry Potter bandwagon back in 1998 when I was working in a bookshop and everybody kept recommending ‘Philosophers Stone’. Eventually I gave in and read it, bought the second one 24 hours later and then had to wait a couple of months for book 3 to come out which was the first one that had a bit of an event attached to it. After that it became a bit of a tradition between me and an English teaching friend to get the books at midnight on the day of release and to go and see the films.

Say what you will about J.K Rowling (and I have only good things to say about her) the fuss and fun over those book releases created some really happy memories. Before it happened it would have been hard to credit that much excitement over a book release, it’s also hard to imagine it happening again anytime soon so I’m glad to have been part of it.

My Potter books are well read – they’re perfect for retiring under the duvet with when colds or flu strike and generally when I feel in need of something familiar, absorbing, and easy to read. (Anyone surprised now that I didn’t take to ‘Hawksmoor’?) The films are much the same – perfect Sunday viewing even given the increasing darkness of the story and this one was a cracker. I cried 3 times - when the owl died, when the elf died, and when Hermione makes her parents forget they have a daughter (an emotional episode of Home and Away will set me off though if that gives a guide to how susceptible I am to tears). The best thing about this film though – the mounting and believable tension all the way through, and that it makes a pretty good stab at showing how complicated life is even when you’re not being chased by a demonic wizard, oh and quite a nice bit of animation too. So really my weekend’s been okay.