Fun links and good books

For Christmas this year Santa gave me a few good books. They are not really reading type novel-ly kind of books but cookery books so I will not be adding them to the total. I guess that you can call that cheating, but hey this is my blog and I make the rules! One of then was all about how you can combine flavours and which ones go together. I am looking forward to experimenting with that one in the years to come.

On a completely different vein... It is funny how you sometimes come across things via something that you hear or read. I am on Twitter and follow this dishy actor guy called Emmett J Scanlan. He tweeted/twittered.... well whatever the correct lingo is.. he wrote something about this one song so I googled it and listened to it. I have to say... the man may be onto to something here! Ben Howard - The Fear, listened to it and got the album! Also watched Shrek today and there was a song on there People they aint no good. Googled that one and found it was by Nick Cave and the Bad seeds.. got the track as well. Then googled something else I have been meaning to google for ages now. There is this add on telly and the song on it sounded really good. Every time I just hard a snippet of it but was intrigued as it was a version of a Stevie Winwood song that I like called Higher Love. So, I found out who sang, listened to the full version it and was blown away by it, almost cried so beautiful. I now have the guy's album on order. He is called James Vincent Mc Morrow in case you are interested. I love this about life.. how one thing leads into another and you discover some beautiful things on the way. Hoping for much more of that next year.

Gotcha

On top of having completed my first assignment for my OU course on Friday, today my quest to find a certain book ended. After months of looking I finally found a decent copy of Faulks' Birdsong! Hurrah! I read Charlotte Gray ages ago and really liked it. Then I found out that together with The Girl at the Lion D'or and Birdsong it was part of the War Trilogy and now I have all of them!! Bliss. Just in time for Christmas.

I also ended up buying another Agatha Christie one so have two more to add to the total.
Books bought: 2
Books to be read: 79
... will I make it into the new year below 80?

Inspirational

It has taken about one and a bit afternoon of solid thinking, writing and re-writing, 6 cups of tea, three cups of decaff, 5 custard cream biscuits and half a bag of cheesey-whats-its but the first draft of my assignment is now done. I only have to chop about 500 words and go through everything again and then I am ready to hand it in. I did send of a mail to my tutor about one of the questions and he will have to come back to me on that one and then I have to amend that question but apart from that it is 99% there. I think... it's hard sometimes to know if you are doing the right thing and thinking along the right lines. I am now in the dangerous process of going through it all again and seeing where I can cut some words to hit the 3000 word target. When you go through it again there is always the risk you realise that you got it wrong (or think that you got it wrong) and redo things.. I am working very hard to resisting that temptation. Perhaps another custard cream will allay those fears?

Another one that almost got away

Is it too late to declare a book I got given by someone at work when it has been about 3 weeks ago? Nah, did not think so. One of my colleagues was having a clear out and came across a few books. He asked if I wanted any and most of them were chick lit which I am not into at all. But.. one of them looked good. It is called Talk to the hand and claims to be about the rudeness we all encounter in everyday life. It looked interesting, it was free, someone offered it to me.... what can I say? I am a sucker for a book sob story and this one was going to be left all alone in a box somewhere if I had not rescued it. Now it a spacious living environment and 76 other friends to talk to... and I have another book to read. Win, win!

Books given to me: 1
Books to read: 77

Gone but not forgotten

Bet you thought that I had won the lottery and decided to pack a suitcase filled of books and jet off to a deserted island to finally give myself half a chance of getting through the 70 odd books I still have left to read! Alas my friends... no such luck. I have not even bought a lottery ticket in ages (note to self: remedy that situation). Life is still mainly determined by working on my OU course just about every evening. I do not get round to reading anything else but my course books, and the weekly TV guide, and Twitter... and my emails, oh and Facebook.
Actually... It is amazing how much reading you actually do in a day. You would almost start to wonder why people would want to read more in their spare time. How many of our jobs and things we do in our daily lives do not involve reading one thing or another? Be it e-mails, proposals, letters in parcels from loving family members, cards from the best sister ever, websites, information on phone and computer screens, subtitles on telly and so on and so forth. Perhaps it is a miracle anyone wants to read in their spare time at all? But they do, for otherwise why would there be books and magazines, and all the other printed and digital media we have at our daily disposal?

I am thoroughly ashamed though of not updating the blog for so long. What's a little post amongst friends? I have mentally put a "Must do better" in my school report on updating my blog. I will now go stand in a corner for a few minutes. Partly so I do not have to read any more and partly because I am ashamed.