Monday Malarkey

Recent arrivals (left, above - click on image to enlarge):

• The London House by Katherine Reay - from Harper Muse for tour

Recent arrivals stacked above (all purchased), top to bottom:

• The Complete Two Pints; Charlie Savage; and, Love -   all by Roddy Doyle
• The Burning Chambers by Kate Moss
• The Autumn of the Ace by Louis de Bernières
• Stories from Suffragette City by various authors, ed. by M. J. Rose and Fiona Davis
• Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

The Autumn of the Ace is the 3rd in the Daniel Pitt series. You might remember if you hang out here often that I recently read the 2nd. It was the desire to finish this series that compelled me to look Autumn, etc. up at Book Closeouts and I was utterly shocked to find the final book in the series. So, I looked up the Spy School series and found almost all of those books, as well. Then, I just kept going, looking up favorite authors and then flipping through fiction. I can get myself in all sorts of trouble that way. 

Books finished since last Malarkey:

• Throwback by Peter Lerangis
• The Boatman and Other Stories by Billy O'Callaghan
• September Moon by John Moore
• The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
• The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

Throwback and The Apothecary are both the first in a series by the same name as the title. I don't have any more of The Apothecary series but I have two more Throwback books. They arrived with my last order (blessed by spouse) and I've posed them with the first book so I'll share that photo when I review Throwback. 

The two books of short stories were both fabulous. I've already reviewed The Boatman (link below) and hope to get to The Birds, soon. And, September Moon (also already reviewed with link below) was also a terrific read but an unusual one because we're so accustomed to the worst possible outcome in fiction, I suppose. Bad things happen but they always work out in September Moon. I so enjoyed how relaxing that made the reading. The Apothecary was good, clean fun, very adventurous and magical with a touch of romance (YA). The rest of the series doesn't get quite the positive reviews of the first book so I'll have to think about whether or not I want to eventually read on. 

Currently reading:

• Lost Love's Return by Alfred Nicols (e-book) - for F2F discussion

Still also reading How to Astronaut by Terry Virts. Also still getting hollered at by the cat while I read and bike. 

Posts since last Malarkey:

• The Lighthouse Witches by C. J. Cooke (book review)
• Gobbolino the Witch's Cat by Ursula Moray Williams (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Wants on lap, plz (cat photo)
• The Boatman and Other Stories by Billy O'Callaghan (book review)
• September Moon by John Moore (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Izzy is helpful (cat photos)

In other news:

We watched a couple episodes of Blake's 7 and I'm pretty sure that's literally all I watched. Husband asked for subscription to a sports channel for his birthday so the rest of the time the TV was on, it involved some sporting event or other. 

Wait, I'm wrong! We watched one episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and the spouse got a recipe that interested us from that particular episode. I hated it. Nice try, though. 

Most of my spare time has been spent on art videos, although I haven't done all that much. There's an annual event called "taster sessions" — which is pretty much what it sounds like, just two weeks of free videos that give you a taste of the courses you get if you buy the year-long membership to this thing called Lifebook. I've only actually tried a couple of the projects. Some I just watched. I found the sheer quantity so overwhelming that I just chose the few that interested me. Two were abject failures; two went well. I haven't decided if I'm going to buy the yearly membership because many of the tasters lean "crafty". But, I have learned a few new techniques and there are a couple artists whose classes pique my interest enough that I think it might be worth the annual fee for the sake of being able to watch them over and over again, even if it's just 3 or 4 artists whose courses I want to keep. Once you buy a year's membership, you allegedly have access to the classes for life (I don't honestly trust the words "for life" when it comes to online content, but . . . a year of access is fine). Anyway, still thinking about that.

I also took a course from London Drawing School on the art of Julie Mehretu and did the warm up and the regular exercise. I'd never heard of Mehretu but I really love the London Drawing School courses and I found this course particularly interesting because her art is so very, very different from anything I've done. It looks chaotic and meaningless, just crazy-looking stuff. But, the instructor, Lucy McGeown, did an exceptional job of explaining the meaning of Mehretu's abstracts and showing how to imitate her art. I came out of it just glowing with the joy of having learned something completely new to me.

Meanwhile . . . the only other thing I've been up to of any significance is trying to get Christmas gift purchases done and dusted because of the anticipated shortages and the new rules slowing down the mail (massively peeved about that and hope it can be undone, at some point). I made good progress on that, this week. 

I'm also already pondering my goals for 2022 reading and I think I've settled on a personal challenge that will be fun, the "Pick a Pile Challenge". As if that isn't obvious, it has to do with the fact that I have books stacked on the floor and those stacks line two walls of my home library. It occurred to me that there's a lot of variety in each stack, so why not challenge myself to pick a pile and stick with it till I've read them all? What do you think? Sound fun? 

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