This week....

 I'm reading

I don't often read much when I am on holidays, but over the last week I did manage to get some reading done. I finished reading Without Further Ado by Jessica Dettman which I loved! This was such a good read!

I started and finished reading The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin. I will have a review in the next couple of weeks but let me just say that I think this is the best book I have read by her yet!

My next book is going to be The Forgotten Palace by Alexandra Walsh.

I also finished listening to The Martian! I am so glad that I chose to finally read this book. You may recall that this was something I chose to read for my read-on-a-theme bookclub. We met on Saturday and there was an interesting mix of books. 

Next month we are going to read the same book which is the new book from Pip Williams who wrote The Dictionary of Lost Words. Her new book is called The Bookbinders of Jericho. The plan is that we will all read this and then hopefully a few of us will go to the Melbourne Writers Festival to hear her speak in May. We'll see how it goes!

I have started a new audiobook which is Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone. So far, this is an enjoyable listen. I particularly enjoy when the male narrator, Chris Brinkley, is narrating. He has a lovely voice! My main reason for listening to this now was that it says that this is leaving Audible soon so I need to really commit  to listening to this during this week. I didn't realise that it is the second book in a connected series which is a bit of a pain but oh well.

I'm watching

It's only a three and a bit hour flight to New Zealand, it is just long enough to watch a movie. On the way to Christchurch the screens didn't appear to be working particularly well so it wasn't possible, but on the way back the screens were fine. I started to watch The Menu on the plane but it didn't feel like a plane movie  (too intense and need to watch on a bigger screen) so I watched George Clooney and Julia Roberts instead in Ticket to Paradise. It wasn't terrible.

The same could be said of Two Tickets to Greece which I saw on Saturday. This is one of the current French Film Festival films. It is about two old friends who go travelling in Greece. One is very uptight and conservative, and one is not! 

Life

The highlight of last couple of days of our trip was definitely visiting Milford Sound. This is a place that has been on my list of places to visit for years. It's not the easiest place to get to. It's a 4 hour drive there and back and then we were on the boat for a couple of hours. It was, however, totally worth it! What a place.

We did have a bit of an odd situation when we were coming home. We were sitting in the departure lounge, and we could see the bags still being loaded, boarding had started and then we got a text message saying our flight was cancelled! Perhaps someone pressed the wrong button? When we got on board, it turned out that we needed to make a previously unscheduled stop in Christchurch to refuel. When I got back to Melbourne I checked my phone and had another text message from the airline saying that they were trying to contact us to rebook us so that we could get home! I am not sure who knew what was going on but it clearly wasn't everyone!

On Saturday night, we went to see British comedian Rob Brydon's A Night of Songs and Laughter tour. It was a good night without being a great night. It felt a bit like an old fashioned form of entertainment. It was ostensibly a light hearted look at his life through story and song, with a few impressions along the way. All the songs were pretty old, and so were some of the jokes!

Max

I think he was pleased to see us when we got home! He had been outside all day so maybe it was coming inside that he was excited by!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Kiwi Authors

Weekend Cooking: What We Ate on Holidays - NZ Edition

Best Sellers Around the World: New Zealand

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