What's with today, today?

Simon posted a fun meme over at Stuck-in-a-book the other day- he assigns a random letter and you have to pick some of your favourites that start with that letter. And my letter is N! Let's do this. Favourite book... number9dream - David Mitchell Image from Google Books This book made me really fall in love with the writing of David Mitchell- and still my favourite. Although Cloud Atlas is also amazing! And I can't believe it but it took me a while to think of it...   Favourite author... E. Nesbit Image from Wikipedia I grew up with Five Children and It , The Phoenix and the Carpet and so on, but most of all with The Railway Children. My siblings and I read the book, and watched the movie, multiple times. E. Nesbit will always have a special place in my heart! Favourite song...   No Light, No Light - Florence and the Machine Because I love Florence and the Machine! Though I have to say it was a toss up between this and No Aphrodi...

Helen over at A Gallimaufry has given me a Liebster award! Which is basically a meme for small blogs (with under 200 followers) where you answer 7 questions and then ask a new set of 7 questions to 7 people. I enjoy both memes and A Gallimaufry (she has a series on the Grimm Fairy Tales which I particularly enjoy) so I am excited about this. The questions: 1. Describe your ideal home library/study.  I'm going to base this on my ideal home library as described to a friend 10 years ago, while doing my final exams at school. Because obviously I have spent a lot of time thinking about it. For starters, this library is situated somewhere near the sea. I'm thinking of a remote Hebridean island, but a cliff-top anywhere would probably do. One wall of the room is double-glazed glass, looking out at the ocean and the storms that roll in from the distance. The opposite wall is covered in bookshelves which are full of books. The floor has rugs and beanbags scattered round, and t...

Ah, December. The month of end-of-year lists, wrap ups and frantic Christmas shopping. And of course looking forward to next year. So in the end-of-year spirit I am looking to post several year wrap-ups, including a final post on my reading round the world challenge and my yearly booklist post. But to start off, plans for next year! Which is perhaps a back-to-front way of doing things... This year my blog has been sorely languishing, and while I can't guarantee that I will be more diligent in posting next year, I do have some plans to pep it up a bit. Over the holidays I am hoping to do a bit of a template re-jig, weed out some of my older posts and just generally make things a bit more presentable. So changes ahoy! My other plan for next year is to take part in Simon at Stuck-in-a-Books A Century of Books  challenge.                                    The original challenge calls for ...

I'm doing this meme again, along with Stuck-in-a-Book . A quick reading round up... The book I'm currently reading... Night Waking by Sarah Moss Erm, so I saw a review of this on Stuck-in-a-Book as well, and it intrigued me so I picked this up from the library. A historian is staying on the small Hebridean island her husband owns with her husband and two small children for the summer, when she finds the bones of a child buried on the property. Incorporates children's/19th C. history along with musings on good parenting and relationships. I enjoyed it (I just finished it... but it still counts, right?), speculating on the narrators state of mind and following her attempts to uncover local history. It did wrap up perhaps a bit too smoothly though. The last book I finished... Besides Night Waking that is! Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter I've been keen on Angela Carter since my friend Georgia lent me The Bloody Chamber , so I was interested to...

I wanted to write this post ages ago, in responses to the post over on Stuck-in-a-book   post , but blogger has been playing up and uni assignments have been calling... so some of these books are out of date, and some have been changed, but here we go... The book I'm currently reading... I loved Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles  SO MUCH when I was younger, but I haven't read anything else by her (or even the whole set of the Chronicles, for that matter). This is living up to my expectations, it's a regency/fantasy book and it's so much fun! The main character is a street urchin in London who dresses as a boy to stay out of trouble and takes a job breaking into Mairelon the magician's caravan and is then taken on as an assistant. Adventures ensue. The last book I finished... I am reading quite a bit of fantasy at the moment I feel, and this is also set in a quasi-regency period, but with the added complication of an alternate hist...

I did this a couple of years ago- it's a meme taken from Ronni- and I liked it so I'm doing it again. Pretend that it's NYE rather than New Years Day.... 1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before? Studied by distance, ran a bible study. 2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I'm a bit wishy washy with new year's resolutions. I guess the same as most people- eat better, exercise more. 3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Two school friends of mine did- to Amelia and Matthew. Both in October. Also my cousin, in June, to Oscar. 4. Did anyone close to you die? My Gran. It was somewhat unexpected. We remembered her chocolate cakes and love of books. I remembered the time she defended us from a charging bull (it may have been a cow) armed with a pitchfork. Love you Gran. 5. What countries did you visit? Didn't leave Australia. 6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010...

In my wanderings around the blogosphere I have come across two(!) memes that involve filling in the blanks with books you've read this year. I couldn't decide which one to do, so naturally I have done both. The downside is that you start to run out of good titles, but it was fun nonetheless. First, from Regular Ruminations ( here ): In high school I was:   Under a Glass Bell  (Anais Nin) People might be surprised I’m:   The Fire in the Blood   (Irene Nemirovsky) I will never be:   Jude the Obscure   (Thomas Hardy) My fantasy job is:   Unseen Academicals  (Terry Pratchett) At the end of a long day I need:   Love in a Cold Climate  (Nancy Mitford) I hate it when:   Housekeeping  (Marilynne Robinson)  Wish I had:   A Study in Scarlet  (Arthur Conan Doyle) My family reunions are:   Exploits of Moominpappa  (Tove Jansson) At a party you’d find me:   Looking for Alibrandi  (Melina Marchetta) ...

Teaser Tuesday As always- meme hosted by Should be Reading . "Sophia was climbing very slowly now, with long pauses between steps, and Grandmother could see she was scared. The old woman stood up too quickly." - p. 47, 'The Summer Book', Tove Jansson

Tuesday Teaser :  "Everyone looked up. Swooping down in a shadowy cloud of broken umbrellas, Mr Brokkenboll was dropping towards them out of the sky." China Mieville, Un Lun Dun , p. 259

I came across this meme at The Captive Reader (my exploration of the world of book blogging continues!) which apparently originated with MizB at Should Be Reading , it goes like this:          Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page.  Share with us two (2) “teaser”             sentences from that page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! So here goes:     There was another thing she said, my wife, sympathetically, referring to the way I regarded life on the one hand and film on the other. "Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?" Don DeLillo, Point Omega p. 55