This is my Sunday ♥️♥️♥️♥️

#wonderouswednesdays
Definitely make it, with ghosts and owls and mummy‘s at a book lovers party hosted by Hocus Pocus in a haunted house, with potions, brew & carved pumpkins!!!

Thank you @DGRachel - you‘re the best. I‘ve only read the first 20 pages and I know this will be on my best of the year pile. It‘s sooooo good 👍🏼

Thank you soooooo much @DGRachel This book is BEAUTIFUL! The illustrations are amazing - can‘t wait to dive in ❤️❤️❤️

You‘ve been in my thoughts a lot @BookNAround … hope you‘re all doing ok ♥️

And a huge thank you for thinking of me on my birthday. I‘ve seen lots of press around this book and excited to try a new to me author. Thank you honey xx

One of my favourite bits of last weekends Jane Austen Festival in Bath was the Regency fair! The opportunity to pick up ribbons and notions and bonnets and corsets!

Dancing lessons at the Assembly Rooms ahead of the ball!
Had a fab weekend at the Jane Austen Festival….. thinking this would make a great Reading Retreat!

I spent last weekend in Bath for the Jane Austen Festival - taking notes for next year when a group of friends and I are going to the ball!

A friend booked my a surprise massage as a special gift! Got time to squeeze in a chapter or two first! 👏🏼

Thanks for the tag @Meshell1313
🎃Loved the tagged book - non fiction book about the influence,political importance and down right feistiness of the Tudor Ladies in Waiting.
🎃Paper always!
🎃At the moment I think it‘s crime fiction and non fiction essays.

How about you @squirrelbrain

This arrived today @iread2much - isn‘t it gorgeous! It was packaged so beautifully and the quality of the paper is lovely. Thank you xxxxx

Oh I‘m going to have so much fun reading this - I think it‘s going to send me straight into the kitchen at every page turn! It‘s wonderful. Thank you so much @Soubhiville ♥️♥️♥️

@TheLudicReader this is wonderful ( Mr K is sending me on a Letterpress printing course for my birthday!) Love the tea towel - it‘s beautiful and will look wonderful artfully draped over the range! Thank you for sharing your hometown with me. And the sea bookmark ♥️ ( you must have liaised with Mr K because there‘s where we‘re spending today! )

Beautiful beautiful beautiful! Thank you @Chrissyreadit - poems about hands that tend gardens … how gorgeous is that! And I‘ve wanted to read McBride for ages. Thank you so much ☺️ 🥰

What a wonderful birthday package @AmyG Thank you soooo much. I love the sound of this book - and the calendar is perfect. That vintage vibe is soooo up my street. Thank you sweet friend. ❤️

Had a very enjoyable reading month - some great stories , with drama and characters as well as some really inspiring and quirky non fiction. 👍🏼

#LLSS
Thank you So much @Cupcake12 for such a thoughtful and exciting package. Can‘t wait to dive into the books! The key fob is gorgeous as is the smell of the hand cream- the smell of summer! Thank you 🙏

Next up…… to bridge the void left by the Olympics!

Love it when the sequel is even better than the first - happens rarely for me but this one is fab!

Forgot to take a picture of the package! But #litsylove package is off on its travels!

My #litsylove swap package has arrived 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

Loving the new monthly wrap up on Storygraph

Set in 1414, this is a really interesting short novel about the imagined intersection of the medieval lives of Margery Kempe ( who published the first ever autobiography) and Julian of Norwich - who wrote the earliest surviving book in English written by a woman.

I love the Wainwright Prize - I think it‘s the one prize that I try to read most of the longlist and end up loving most of them! Got 6 of these so far and working my way through!

I‘m about halfway through so far and loving this one - learning lots about how previous generations and civilisations have shaped how we access land, what paths we take and how the countryside is shaped.

What are you reading now?

Listened to a podcast last week that led me to discovering Ethel Haythornthwaite, a major environmental campaigner in the U.K. on the 40‘s & 50‘s. Cant wait now to read more about this remarkable woman.

The endpapers of this are just gorgeous! #prettybooks

#wonderouswednesday
1- 52 books and 20,000 pages! I try not to make it too much of a stretch so I don‘t shy away from slow reads.
2- By the last 50 pages of my current book I like to be planning my next read. I hate finishing a book and not knowing what comes next.
3- I‘ve learnt so much, walking in other people‘s shoes, helping me connect with a wider world. And of course - bookish friends!

Wow - how is this a debut! Fantastic story telling, amazing working and characters that will live with me for a long time. The best I‘ve ever read on intimacy, complexity of character and what it means to be a woman. Add to that trauma, historical legacies and the power of memory and place and you‘ve got a cracking novel.

Loved this biblio mystery. It took me into a world I knew little about, and reimagined that world so brilliantly I could smell the leather bindings, feel the creaks of the wooden floors amongst the shelves and imagine the thrill of the ‘chase‘. It was a great delve into obsession, greed and the ugliness of arrogance. I feel it should have had a content warning though for desecration of books - my heart didn‘t like it!!

I‘m never usually lucky at the Goodwill - but today was my day! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Perfect combo!

Just discovered this website - it has a huge collection of replica books jackets heaps of golden age crime ones…. Might be tempted the get one and frame it for my little reading space.

Loved having this read to me by Nigella whilst following along in print. Her enthusiasm for food is infectious & her passion for pleasure, adaptation & full flavour. Each chapter begins with rumination on a theme, then chat recipes, and then the recipes themselves. She swops things in and out with availability and seasons and sent me back into the kitchen excited to see what was in the fridge! Also appreciated her contentions to ‘solo supper‘.

Good start to my new book! 🤩

Loving this so far. The ‘painter‘ Gainsborough was born and work a few towns over from where we live and I know his work well. It‘s really engaging to read the fictional story of how some his most famous pieces were painted - a real behind the scenes type tour!

One shirt (c8,000 ! Memories of the film - priceless!

I loved the beginning of this - Miss Marple in the early 1960‘s with new housing reaching the village, a self service supermarket, and vacuum cleaners taking over from carpet sweepers! There‘s a really humorous take on what changes and what stays the same in a community over time. The mystery was very guessable - and I don‘t like that. I never even try to guess but this one just falls on your lap early on!

Perfect bookmark pairing for this one!

Very sympathetic biography of a pioneering Victorian plantswoman. Told with wit and generosity, this story of inheritance, love, friendship and daffodil bulbs is well researched and engaging. Each chapter begins with an archival object and that really brought to life the process of retelling this amazingly unconventional woman‘s life. I will never look at a daffodil the same way again. Loved it!

I‘m really enjoy this - I‘m listening to the audio and reading along. Never done this before with a cook book and it‘s a really a lovely experience. Highly recommend it.

An enjoyable mystery superbly written. The characters are lively and well drawn - with many quirks and oddities! Put these characters into an equally complex setting where the smallest details create atmosphere and builds a strong, visual stage and it becomes a much more complex and engaging mystery than many. Written in 1932 it is evocative of its time.

Interconnected stories of the lives touched by a particular house in Delhi. The power of this slim book is in the detail brought to everyday activity - a range of characters doing small things against the evocative backdrop of the city. It‘s full of longing, sadness, class issues and politics - played out in everyday minute scenes. The food and heat bring a welcome warmth to the reading of this book. A fab debut.

The atmosphere of this novel, with its Victorian parlours complete with buffet tables laden with blancmange & walls bursting with taxidermy was fun! The characters were memorble & they gave a window into the spiritualism scene in early Victorian London. Especially liked seeing a ‘mature‘ female leading character. How a séance would have been conducted and how mediums create the atmosphere for these was fascinating. A fun read. Not too taxing!

Love a book and bookmark set!

Love this list! I‘ve read two, loved them both and have a further 2 waiting on my shelf! Feel pretty chuffed with my reading choices! 👍🏼

Cooking from this book this month - pleased to discover Carlin Peas - a U.K. native pea a bit like a nutty chick pea. Great to see heritage crops back on the shelves. 👍🏼

This is the second new bookshop near to us that has opened in the last 6 months - so happy to see bookshops revived and breathing life back into the high street 🙏

Really wanted a lie in this morning and a hour with my book - but I just couldn‘t concentrate with Woodford‘s eyes boring into me! Needless to say I did one chapter then we did a 10k forest hike! He won! 🤣

There are advantages to a rainy Saturday afternoon!