Christmas has been and gone in a mass of laughter, tears, food, wine, wrapping paper and new toys. Thoughts are therefore turning to the new year and the ups and downs that it may bring. Resolutions are being planned and it's fair to say that most of mine centre around family and home. The kitchen has to be at the heart of most family homes and this one is no different. I may not be anywhere near as domesticated as I want to be, but that doesn't stop me imagining I am. I love looking through new cookbooks and planning what to make. The only problem is that I'm very poor at actually ... read more
Handle with Care – Jodi Picoult
I have read several Jodi Picoult books over the years and it is fair to say that there is a certain formulaic element to them, but at the same time Picoult's attention to detail is also common across all of the books. Handle with Care is no different. This time the main theme is the question of whether or not a mother would abort an unborn child if they knew that there was something wrong with them that would change their lives. Willow suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta which means that her bones break incredibly easily. Many were already broken before she was ... read more
One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson
To say that my reading has slowed right down since LMC was born would be an understatement. This is only the second book that I've managed to read in five months. Yikes! Years ago I remember reading Kate Atkinson's Behind The Scenes At The Museum but strangely I remember very little about it. When my MIL passed me One Good Turn I again recalled reading BTSATM, but no more. One Good Turn felt familiar from the first page. I'm guessing that the Edinburgh setting must remind many of Rebus and as someone who loved Ian Rankin's detective that was certainly the case ... read more
Book memories
It's funny how some things from childhood can evoke such memories when you see them again years later. Mr C visited his parents with LMC over the weekend and came home with four books that had belonged to him and his brothers when they were all small. The three Janet and Allan Ahlberg books (Peepo!, Each Peach Pear Plum and Cops and Robbers ) are ones that I don't remember (that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't read them!) but they instantly reminded me of one of my favourite books from that time: Funnybones. The Tiger Who Came to Tea is yet another children's book that ... read more
West of the Wall – Marcia Preston
Following Little Miss C's arrival I've not had much time for reading, but when my mum recently lent m a copy of West of the Wall and told me how much she'd enjoyed it I thought I'd try to see if I could find the time to read again and I'm delighted to say that I could squeeze in a few pages here and there between feeds and nappy changes.In this Marcia Preston book we follow the fortunes of Trudy who lives in what was then East Berlin with her young son and mother in law. Her husband Rolf is missing, believed to have crossed the wall into West Berlin. The ... read more
Getting back to “normal”
Little Miss C is eight weeks old today. Eight weeks! Where has the time gone. From a small baby who came into the house and did little more than sleep, eat and fill her nappy, I am instead looking down at a bigger baby playing on her play mat, making noises, hitting the toys hung above her and occasionally breaking into a smile too. The transformation has been amazing and it seems that every day there is some small change that we can marvel over.Now that we're both getting used to each other we're learning to live with each other pretty well. I'm incredibly lucky as she's not a ... read more
One pair of Hands – Monica Dickens
I did manage to squeeze in one more Monica Dickens book before Little Miss C's arrival finishing it only a few hours before I went into labour: One Pair of Hands. In this book Dickens pulls together a series of vignettes of what it is like to be a cook in a variety of households. It's not that she is a career cook or anything like that, but more that she thought she ought to get a job and realised that there was not much that she was qualified for. Some embellishments about what she learnt in various finishing school type places means that an agency soon finds her a first ... read more
My Turn to Make the Tea – Monica Dickens
I'm still here waiting for Baby C to make an appearance so I've been cracking on with some more of my Monica Dickens collection. My Turn to Make the Tea was next on the shelf and was written based on Dickens' experiences working on a local newspaper. Now, I know a few people who either do or have worked on local papers so I was intrigued to see if Dickens' version of events fitted in with the modern day world that my friends have found and in a word it seems that very little, other than the technology, has changed. There may now be computers ... read more
Kate and Emma – Monica Dickens
For some reason (and I'm not completely sure why) I have quite a large collection of books by Monica Dickens on my shelves. All of them old Penguin copies with orange spines. I've no idea what prompted me to buy them all, but I do seem to recall having had them for a while. In comparison with today's books they are nice and thin though which means that when I've been looking for something physically light to read I've been drawn towards this part of the shelf. For those of you not aware Monica Dickens is the great-grandaughter of Charles Dickens and ... read more
The Secret Adversary – Agatha Christie
The pain in my hands has reduced enough to be able to hold some books, but this does mean that my reading at the moment is dictated by books that I have thin, lightweight paperback editions of! The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie is one that falls into this category. I went through a phase of reading Agatha Christie books when I was doing my finals at university. The main reason was that they were just enough to distract me from what I had been doing during the day if I read a few chapters before going to sleep at night. The fact that the charity shop below the flat ... read more