A newsletterish thingy..
Every season, I write a longer blogpost, a bit like a newsletter, to have a chat about the previous season of doings.
Every season, I write a longer blogpost, a bit like a newsletter, to have a chat about the previous season of doings.
I appear not to have written a post on my reading since September last year! And that, my friends, is not a good thing.
In September of 2020, I remember saying it might be good, with my birthday and Christmas approaching, to receive book vouchers for my favourite stores. But no, it was not to be.
Instead, but just as appreciated, I received garden-nursery vouchers, which I have started to use this last week. Gardening for me is as much a passion as reading.
But also, summer came and I try never to go near the city during summer – a waste of my time, so I stay happily ensconced in our coastal garden by the sea. Which of course makes my Kindle and the all-important Amazon and Audible bookshops vital. Here, by the sea, where I can hear the waves and watch the seabirds, I have no need to drive into the city, park the car, walk through crowds to get to a bookshop. It’s all done with the click of fingers and buttons.
I’m the slowest reader ever.
I never was.
Once I would devour a book a week. But now I write and do many other things besides, and by bedtime, my only fiction reading time, I can manage a few pages if I’m lucky. It’s probably why I thank Matthew Harffy for setting me on the path of audiobooks after my first of three eye operations this year.
And try and say that quickly!!!
You know of course that a snifter is a brandy balloon…
…a piece of glassware that is narrower at the top than the bowl and concentrates the heady aroma of the liquor to the nose.
And in essence that’s what this post is.
Three free snifters designed to titillate your palate and give you an idea of what’s emerging from my little grey cells.
I’ve had a wonderful year of reading to date and it’s time to share more of the titles and to recommend.
I’m in a kind of hiatus currently. In between edits of Passage and moving on to a collaborative novel between myself and highly popular and successful hybrid author, Simon Turney. But more about that shortly.
There’s not much room for indulgent book reading when one is writing an historical fiction novel. In most cases, it’s all about research. Research, research, research. And my research books of choice are always mentioned in Author’s Notes in the back of each novel.
In terms of indulgence though, there were some stand out books for me this year with an amusing and informative one thrown in at the end. Here they are, in no particular order…
House is tiny.
It’s a small dwelling that was put together in fits and starts, bits added as the original owners decided they could afford it. It’s quaint, every room is on a different level and the rooms are small, but it is so perfectly idiosyncratic and the place just spoke to us when it was put up for sale 31 years ago by the original owner.
We renovated six years ago and opted to remove the old wood-heater because we knew that in our old age, the last thing we wanted to be doing was carting wood and dealing with the ash, dust and mess that is a wood-burner, despite the obvious charm of flame and wood.