This Week ..

I'm reading

I actually read a couple of books this week which is quite a surprise!!  I was partly able to do this because we took Monday off and then we were forced to have Tuesday off because we didn't have any power. What else can you do but read in that situation when there is no power and no internet?  

The first book I finished was Flora's Travelling Christmas Shop by Rebecca Raisin. It's not too early for Christmas books is it? As usual I love the way that Rebecca Raisin writes about food and books, and this was a fun read. My review for this one will be up in a couple of weeks.

Once I finished that book I was back on the familiar question of what should I read next. Because we had no internet, I couldn't download anything new to read and none of the 270 books that I already have downloaded on my Kindle were calling my name.

I was struggling until I happened to see my library books from last week and it was a case of decision made. I absolutely loved Viola Shipman's book The Heirloom Garden when I read it last year, so when I saw the library copy of The Summer Cottage by Viola Shipman sitting there that was it. This is inadvertly going to be the first of three books over the next few weeks. I was excited to be approved for a review copy of  The Secret of Snow which is out later this month. Then that same day I went to the library and The Clover Girls was there waiting for me! 

I also picked up The Fence by Meredith Jaffe and The Goblin Empire by Katherine Addison.

I am now reading The Sundial by Shirley Jackson, the readalong book for RIPXVI. I am three chapters in and I have to say it isn't exactly what I expected.

I'm watching

I mentioned RIPXVI and the two new series we started this week both easily fit for that challenge. On Friday night, we started watching the series of What We Do in the Shadows, mainly because we had just watched the latest available episode of What If? What We Do in the Shadows is a comedy/horror about a group of vampires that live in Brooklyn. It was a lot of fun. We'll see if we watch any more or not.

Speaking of horror, we started watching Squid Game last night. On Wikipedia this is classified as a "survival drama" series, but it is pretty scary as far as I can tell. The body count is certainly high. This is a big hit on Netflix right now and you can see why. Think The Hunger Games on steroids! Have you watched it?

Life

Other than a couple of days off as I mentioned above, it was a pretty normal week, whatever normal means. We are still in lockdown here, but we are now able to go 15kms from home and we are allowed to meet other people outdoors, so we can start to meet friends. We did that yesterday as some of our friends are moving to the country in a couple of weeks.

We are looking forward to having more freedoms, but I think we will still be a bit wary of venturing too far from home. There are definitely days when we are over being at home.

I did attend our second book club meeting on Zoom this weekend.  There were four of us in attendance this time and I enjoyed the conversation. We are doing a read-on-a-theme bookclub, and this month the theme was Spring. The next theme is "Books about books". So far I have thought of three different options, all of which were packed in a box which is in the shed, so I am going to have to come up with something else.

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Fruit Salad. Yummy! Yummy!

Music A-Z: R

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - October

Weekend Cooking: Fish Girl by Mirandi Riwoe

Six Degrees: The Lottery to The Good Wife of Bath

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date