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2018 in Books

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Right folks, I'm back to blogging, and first up is this long overdue post which has been sitting in my drafts all year!  It includes affiliate links. I lost my reading mojo a bit in 2017 - I didn't make much time for it, and the books I did read were either not that great, or audiobooks, which I enjoy but take much longer to get through.  After reading only 10 books in 2017, I set my Goodreads challenge for 2018 at 12, in the hopes that I could manage one book per month.  I can safely say that setting the bar low helped and I've rediscovered my voracious appetite for reading, as in 2018 I read 26 books! 1. La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman ( The Book of Dust  #1) The His Dark Materials trilogy is my enduring all-time favourite set of books.  I've had other favourites over the years, but these three are always right at the top of my list, and I feel the magic again every time I re-read them.  I was so excited to hear that Philip Pullman was releasing anot
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2019 Plans

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Happy New Year!  I hope you had a lovely festive season and are excited to get stuck in to a shiny new 12 months. As a skinny malink, the 'lose a stone' guilt resolutions have thankfully never felt particularly relevant to me.  Instead, I tend to write an annual bucket list of enjoyable things I'd like to do.  It's helpful to give me something to look forward to during the first couple of bleak, snowy months, to remind me to actually make the most of any sunny free time in the summer, and then to look back at the end of the year and see how many of my exciting ideas I was able to make happen. 1. Travel Step 1 of this goal is already mostly booked and I could not be more excited.  Our neighbours Dee and Lewis moved to Vancouver a year ago and we're off to visit them for a few days in May, followed by a week travelling around the local area including Vancouver Island.  Canada has always been right at the top of my list of dream destinations, and I can&#
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A Fresh Start

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Blogging has brought me a lot of good things. I made two online friends, both of whom inspire me with their stories and make me laugh and feel like I belong. One of them lives in Canada so we haven't met yet, but her first novel is coming out next year and I think you should order it if it sounds like your thing :) The other one , happily, lives right here in Aberdeen, and has become a proper real-life friend. She set up a book group including me and four other women who didn't know each other but liked her and liked books. We're an awkward bunch but we stuck it out and now I have a surprise bonus group of friends, who make me laugh and think and read good books. I'll always be grateful too that she patiently let me learn, basically by trial and error, how to interact with kids, since hers were the first ones I've known since my cousin, who's now 22! I feel fairly equipped for auntie duties now, which is lucky because wedding season might be over b
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