feather_ghyll

This year, I’m only watching week 2 in the evenings, which means watching little live tennis. On Tuesday, ( Read more... )

As for the football, as one of the S4C commentators put it, we’re sad, not disappointed. What a championship after all those years! Nothing quite came together on the pitch – experts can better tell if the loss of Ramsay was the key or if it was more Portugal’s play; it did seem to me that there was little that could have been done to stop the two goals. But I think we’re all very proud of the ‘bois’ every one jack, even the ones who are defnitely not Swansea Jacks.

I’ll post an overview of a few books I’ve read over the holidays eventually, but this post is a look back at 2015, following a tradition started by my first post of 2015 when I said I looked forward to the next adventures of Wells and Wong. Well, Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens (in which the 1930s schoolgirls investigate another mystery, this time in Daisy Wells’s country house home) lived up to my expectations. I enjoyed Kate Saunders’s Beswitched, originally published a few years ago, but taking the reader back to a 1930s boarding school, a fraction more, even. I loved reading Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery and Gail Carriger’s Etiquette & Espionage.

Turning to hadrbacks, I enjoyed The Little Betty Wilkinson by Evelyn Smith, even though I think she’s written better books. I did read a book each by the ‘big four’: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chudleigh Hold, Sally’s Summer Term by Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Tomboys at the Abbey by Elsie J. Oxenham, which I didn’t review, and For the School Colours by Angela Brazil.

(In the first paragraph, I build up to my favourite and do the opposite in the second.)

Perhaps the best book I read this year was ‘Rose Under Fire’ by Elizabeth Wein, which is wonderful and harrowing, and I feel incapable of writing about it. I also really loved Helena McEwen’s Invisible River.

I reread Katherine L. Oldmeadow’s The Fortunes of Jacky, which stands the test of time, and now I have no more Oldmeadows to reread. I am, obviously, looking out for more by her in all the shops that sell second-hand books! I hope to read the next case Hazel Wong writes up and the second in the Finishing School series, but I expect to read EBD's 'Fardingales' as I have a copy in the depths of my 'to read' pile.

The Fortunes of Jacky: Katharine L. Oldmeadow The Children’s Press (This impression 1968)

So, we come to the last of my Oldmeadows, a collection that’s increased by one since I took to rereading them (see the tags). I’ve owned this book for many a year, although it was fun to reread it as an adult, while ( Read more... )

I have started watching the Great British Sewing Bee from the beginning this series. ( Read more... )

A Dancer from the Abbey: Elsie J. Oxenham Collins 1953

The Abbey Girls books ( Read more... )

The reason why I didn’t watch the tennis yesterday was that I went shopping and successfully bought mumble books (all hardback girls own apart from one paperback D.E. Stevenson) for mumble mumble pounds. Actually, it worked out as being about £4.40 per book and not one of them cost more than you’d pay for a first hand paperback. It’s just the volume that makes me want to mumble. I’ll be posting many reviews about this haul, I hope.

While I wasn’t watching tennis, plenty happened on the women’s side, with seeds falling everywhere. Williams (Serena) and Li Na are the biggest surprises, but many others have gone. I suppose it's the cumulation that's the surprise, although it's telling that so many women have won the French recently. That is, nobody has come close to Nadal's domination.

I came home today to ( Read more... )

Carolynp mounts a well-argued defence of the Chalet School's Mary-Lou (I have to admit that my initial response was ‘Huh?’ at Mary-Lou needing to be defended)
here

Here's a blog post about slang and its use to include and exclude.

The other day, I experienced something that has never happened to me before when buying a book - I watched bemused as the shopkeeper wrapped it up in brown paper, stuck some tape to keep it together but then cut off a piece of string and tied it up with a bow. It was one of Maria's favourite things. It was at a shop that sold 'vintage' goods and was partly a tea shop - too knick knacky to be an antiques shop, and with all sorts of objects lying in front of the mainly hardback books that were for sale in a bookshelf. The book in question was in quite good nick, so I suppose it's what they do with everything they sell.

Last week, I visited – I was going to type ‘bookshops’, but one of them was a charitably run book recycling project. ( Read more... )

Monday - week 2

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Tuesday - week 2

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Wednesday - week 2

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Thursday - week 2

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I’ve never been one for making resolutions. But, over the past few years, I have made two low key ones, which I haven't been particularly great at keeping. Here are the 2013 versions.

1. I will take my list of the Chalet School books I have yet to own with me whenever I go shopping, because last week I saw a copy of Shocks for the Chalet School, but didn’t remember that I didn’t have it. I couldn’t justify the time or expense to go back to that shop in that city some other time. Sticking to this should help me with my real resolution, which is to get the full set of CS books (and, one day, without breaking the bank, the unabridged set).

2. I will go to the theatre more often to see plays, musicals and/or dance shows. The sum total for last year was dismal, and every time I went, I enjoyed myself and thought ‘I must do this again’. Granted, that was because I went to see things I really, really wanted to see, but I could look at what’s coming up locally a little more assiduously.

This post is looking forward, the next will look back and be an overview of what I read over the Christmas holidays.