Excuses, excuses!

My blogging has been a little lack lustre of late and I apologise, Mr S has been berating me for the few and far too short blog posts. I think that I may have got over the Reader's Block and have decided to re-read After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell as I loved this book and I know that it will have me gripped!
I have been quite busy working on ideas for my writing, I have been running ideas past my lovely sister who has been very encouraging and excited! I feel as though I have a more complete picture of the story that I want to tell and I have been doing bits of research here and there and I believe that after the weekend I may actually be ready to start writing. This both excites and scares me slightly; I feel that I have this exciting story to tell but then I worry that I may not be very good at telling it! Mr S and my sister are right though in that I will never know if I don't try and if I enjoy writing then who cares whether it is any good anyway?

What to read?

I am suffering from Reader's Block at the moment! It is a new type of illness that I have discovered in that I just don't know what I want to read. I thought that I fancied a good, long epic like Gone With the Wind but I have given up after the first two chapters as I was extremely bored! I have a whole shelf of books waiting to be read but I just cannot decide which one to pick, so at the moment I seem to just be re-reading through Twilight until something grabs me!

The week so far!

This week seems to be going very fast compared to last week which felt like it was NEVER going to end! I finished The Abortionist's Daughter last night which I loved and will write properly about soon and now I have started Gone With the Wind which I have always wanted to read, I haven't even seen the film. I have only read the first few pages but I think I may need to Wikipedia the American Civil War as I know hardly anything about it although Mr S gave me a very good description and then I can start enjoying the story properly.
Alfie went for his first haircut this morning and came back looking very smart and now HE CAN SEE! Bless him, I really don't think he could see anything before as the fur round his face had gotten so long. Mr S and I were like anxious parents though waiting for him to come home, we were jumping up every time we thought that someone was at the door!

Tonight we are having a little birthday party, our friend Mark is coming over to visit and it is his actual birthday today, so the banners have been put up; our Sometimes Lodger has made his famous Rocky Road and Mr S is busy making a beef and Guinness stew! We have a slight problem in that there will be seven of us but we only have 4 chairs and one of those is on it's last legs- maybe we should have a little party game to see who gets to sit down to eat their dinner!

Booking Through Thursday: Storage

“How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

Hmmmmm I have never really thought about this but now that I have I can see that I have a bit of a system going on, kind of. We have books in nearly every room of our house, but the books that we treasure and want to keep forever are on proper bookshelves which are already full. The book shelf that houses mostly my books is at the top of the stairs and I tend to try to put books by the same author together but they are not in alphabetical or size order at all! The top shelf of the book shelf is dedicated to my TBR books so that I can sit at the top of the stairs and ponder what I want to read next. One of the next projects in our house is to build some book shelves in our front sitting room as there are a lot of books lying around or shoved away in boxes that need a new home!

What a lovely weekend!

Mr S and I went to Dublin on Friday and stayed overnight! We had such a lovely time, we stayed at the Westin hotel which was gorgeous; they have Heavenly beds; I'm not sure what makes them so heavenly but I think it is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. We had champagne and stawberries (very romantic); several pints of Guinness; Irish music and Irish dancing; breakfast and tea at Bewleys and all in all a thoroughly good time! Cheered me right up!

Bring on the Guinness!!!

Ooooooooh I am so excited, Mr S is taking me to Dublin tomorrow! I love it there so much, very excited and the hotel we are staying in has Heavenly beds apparently so maybe that will help me to sleep for more than 4 hours!!!! Ah Guinness, Bewleys Irish Tea, Butlers Chocolates, Temple Bar, Irish dancing............ tell you all when I get back!!

The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

This is one of the best books that I have read so far in 2009. I had heard quite a lot about this book before I bought it, especially the comparisons to The Secret History and Rebecca. I believe that it is definitely worthy of those comparisons but in no way is Lucie Whitehouse trying to copy those books; her storytelling has very much a style of it's own.
Lucas inherits Stoneborough Manor from his Uncle, both of Lucas' parents are dead and he is haunted by the suicide of his uncle who had been a father-figure. However, Lucas decides to use Stoneborough as a place where he and his small group of friends can escape to from their busy lives in London. The group of friends is incredibly close and the relationships between them are all extremely intricate.
Lucas gradually becomes increasingly obsessed with Stoneborough and with the cine films that he finds of his Uncle and his friends in their heyday. The similarities to Lucas and his group are startling and the secrets they reveal come to have a bearing on all of them.
This book had me gripped from the very start, the suspense stays with you right until the last page. Even when events in the story take a positive turn you know that something must be waiting just round the corner. The house plays a pivotal role in the book; I love books set in large houses with their many secrets and memories hidden away in the attic just waiting to be discovered. This was a really excellent book, especially as it is Whitehouse's first novel, I hope she writes many more!

A Valentine's Surprise!

Well I have had a lovely surprise! Mr S is whisking me away to Dublin for Valentines! We are going on Friday morning and staying at the beautiful Westin Hotel and then dinner and dancing at The Arlington! In between I am hoping to fit in several pints of Guinness and a trip or two to Bewleys! Mr S' plans had a few glitches and he probably didn't get the initial reaction that he had hoped for but it really is one of the loveliest things that he has ever done for me and I think we will have a wonderful time!

To believe or not to believe??

Hmmmmmm, my lovely sister and I went to see a spiritualist yesterday for a reading; I have only ever been to one before but I do quite strongly believe in them. Mr S thinks they are all evil tricksters! I think I go expecting too much though; no I don't expect them to give me the winning lottery numbers but I would like them to be a little more specific. At first I thought this lady was ok, she was spot on about how I was feeling at the moment and the kind of person that I am (Mr S would say gullible here), and she told me things about my parents that I still cannot work out how she would have known. She did the whole, 'You have two guardian angels, one sitting on each shoulder' thing, now some people might find that quite comforting but personally it just freaks me out, are they there all the time; do they look away when you are on the loo?? Anyway, I had my reading first and then I had to go and pick Mr S up and so my lovely sister went next and I didn't get to speak to her until later. She was of the opinion that this woman was really not very good, she had not picked up on the fact that we were sisters even though you can clearly see that and then she told my lovely sister completely different things about our parents then what she told me! So unless one of us was adopted or the milkman's then I think this lady probably was having us on! She also told me that I had THE GIFT and that I could do her job; at the time I laughed but now that we know she was a bit dodgy I am starting to consider it as a possible career move!

Too Much Information?

Well it's that time of the week again, thought this was a good one:

Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse - a biography has made you love an author more?

I always try to find a bit of information about the authors I am reading but to be honest this is normally just a quick google or wikipedia search. The only biography that I have read is Margaret Forster's of Daphne Du Maurier; I love her books and Rebecca will always be at the top of my favourites list. I have to be honest though that I didn't greatly warm to Du Maurier after reading about her but in no way has this put me off her books. At the end of the day an author's writing is normally greatly influenced by the life they lead and the personality they have; so I may not be greatly enamoured with Du Maurier as a person but I do love her writing and that is what matters isn't it?

Love Letters of Great Men edited by Ursula Doyle

My lovely sister bought me this beautiful book after receiving it as a gift herself; we had both seen it on the Sex and the City movie. Doyle has created a collection of love letters from some of history's most prominent men. There are politicians, writers, composers, poets, lords and kings. The letters are all very different in style but the sentiment of running through all of them is unmistakably love. Some men wrote of their love to one woman over a length of time and some men had many women to correspond with.

I really, really enjoyed reading these letters, mainly due to the fact that they are letters. Today, messages are too often conveyed in abbreviated text messages; instant chat conversations or speedily written emails. Maybe I am old-fashioned but I still write letters to those closest to me and pop them in the post. You can take your time with a letter and really make the effort to get your feelings down in words.

The letters in this collection are all well before email and telephones and that makes them even more poignant. You have Nelson writing from on board HMS Victory to Lady Emma Hamilton; they had probably not seen each other for months and his only comfort were the handwritten words that he could send her and those he would hope to receive in return.

This book is a brilliant idea and a lovely present to receive. I am off to look for the love letters of great women; I am sure there is a book of those out there somewhere.