10 Years On

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary, so rather than a big 'wordy' blog post, I just thought I'd share some photos. Enjoy :)

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

I got this for Christmas, over the past few years I've ended up reading many of the booker prize winners and am yet to find one I haven't enjoyed. Being set in New Zealand, this seemed to be even more of a draw than usual. 

It's taken until now to get around to reading it. Not because I didn't want to start it, but more because I had a couple of false starts. The chapters in the beginning of this book are very long, the first two times I tried to start it, I was tired and couldn't make it to a good place to stop before needing to get to sleep. I need to find a good stopping point when I'm reading, particularly in those first few pages.

I had a few nights where I was heading to bed early to read, so it seemed a good time to give the Luminaries a proper go. So I dived in. Although it is mostly set in Hokitika on the West Coast, I will admit that I was quite excited to find quite a few references to Port Chalmers. (I know, sad to admit that I'd find that exciting, but there you go.)

The story is mostly set in the West Coast gold rush of the 1800's and much of the action revolves around a number of characters who have gone to Hokitika to find their fortune. There is a lot going on in this book. Keeping track of the interweaving story lines isn't easy, and I wasn't sure at all where it was going for much of the time. 

I don't want to go dropping spoilers into this, in fact, were I to try to, we'd probably be here all week, there was so much going on in this book. It perhaps meant that there was no real lead or leads, with so many people taking the main role at one time or another in the book. Would it have been better if there had? Possibly, I would have liked to know more about one or two of those who started out in a strong leading role and then faded into the background later.

I did enjoy it, really enjoy it, but it was far from a favourite. There were still questions left to be answered by the end of the book. Or perhaps I lost them in the circular narrative. I'm not sure. It was a very good book technically, well told but just missing that final spark to make it truly fantastic.

Book Reviews

You may have already noticed, I'm a bit of a book lover. I read. A lot. I keep meaning to write reviews good reads, but so far I haven't, though I've done the odd one on amazon.

I always leave the 'stars' on both amazon and good reads, but I always find myself agonising over how many stars to mark a book. How can you possibly decide if a book is worth out of only five stars? Often I love a book, but is it really worth the 'perfect' five? If it's not, does that mean that books that are good, but not as good as the great ones don't deserve the four stars that it seems obvious to give them. 

On amazon you have to leave at least one star, which surely some books don't deserve. If they're really bad. 

Recently I've been quite  generous on the star front. If I really enjoy a book then it gets five, even if it's not perfect. If I enjoy it then it's usually a four. If it's not so good then a three will do. I don't like to give up on rubbish books, but then I've only read one recently that only deserved a two.

In any case, the star system is just not that good. So the time has come to not give books marks, but to share my thoughts on them on here. Some of them at least. Here's to the book reviews...

Pre-loved stuff

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but there's something deeply satisfying about browsing around a

second hand shop. It doesn't really matter what kind of second hand shop either, from antiques, to junk shops to charity shops, I love them all.

On our way for our trip to Invercargill we discovered that Gore has a couple of quite large, good charity shops, or op shops as they call them over here. (I think that op is short for opportunity shop, which makes sense.) We had already stopped in Milton to have a quick look in the Mill factory shop (yay, cheap wool) and checked out the Salvation Army charity shop there.

As a general rule, I'm not looking for anything specific in these shops, although I have had a bit of a look at the jeans lately, being in need of some for both the kids and myself. Usually though, I tend to ignore the clothes and have a hunt through a few other key areas.

I generally head to the 'sewing section' first, check out what wool and fabrics they have on offer. Then it's time to look at the patterns. I already have quite a large collection of vintage knitting and sewing patterns, but I'm always on the look out for something new. The cheesier the picture or photo on the front, the better.

Next I'll move on to the kitchen stuff for a quick look around. I'm not that bothered by this kind of thing, but it's always worth a quick glance. 

I usually save the books until last. There's often just shelves of rubbish, but I can't resist a browse through second hand books. Second hand book shops are just my idea of heaven. I can spend hours browsing. The selection in a charity shop never quite matches up to it, but it's always worth a look.

Do you like having a browse through a selection of 'pre-loved' items?

Late (again)

More often than not, when I drop the kids off at school, I find myself hurrying through the door

apologising for being late. I never used to be like this, but these days I struggle to get to places on time.

As a child, I don't remember ever getting to school as the bell rang, or worse still, after it had gone. My children are not able to say the same thing. 

Of course, you could say, and let's face it, it wouldn't be far wrong, that much of this is down to lack of organisation. It's also down to an unwillingness to get out of bed in the morning. It's cold, I'm tired still, I don't really want to have to do breakfast, find shoes, locate keys, get everyone into the car without an argument...

Of course, having four children to get ready in the morning doesn't help things. I should really try and get up that little bit earlier, do their lunches the night before (as I sometimes do) it doesn't always work though. Have you ever found though, the more time you have in the morning, the later it makes you.

Those morning when I've been really really late, when the bell has already gone and we're rushing into the classrooms after they've sat down and already done the roll. Those are the days when I've actually had more time, been up early and organised and then something has gone wrong.

I think it's because the more time you have to do something in, the more things that you do, then you end up being late. 

Whatever it is, I think I really need to sort something out and try to be on time again.

Update on the blog challenge

It all started out quite well, I got to about half way through, a post had been written for every day, and

mostly on the actual day itself. But then life got in the way.

On Saturday, when I should have written this (if you happen to check the date you'll notice that I've back dated this and some of the following posts) I spent pretty much the whole day doing work and getting things sorted. Sunday was spent cleaning. Then Monday we went away for a few days. We got back Wednesday, Thursday was pretty much getting ourselves sorted again. Which brings us to today.

It's Friday, a whole week has passed and I haven't got much further with this blog challenge. It's time to try and catch up. I think that I'll write today's 'real' post shortly and then fill in the missing days as and when I can to get back on track. Is that cheating though? I don't really know to be honest.

Before I went away, I had thought I could write all of my posts in advance and then just schedule them to be posted later. Obviously that didn't happen. My plan now is that if I can get to the end of the month and have it all up to date by then, with the rest of the month having a new proper post written on the day, then that's ok and I'll be back on track.

Wish me luck, I think I might need it.

Today it's raining

Today it's raining. It's not the heavy kind of rain that's done with in a shower or two, the large fat drops soaking everything that they come into contact with, filling up puddles quickly and leaving the roads as rivers. This is the kind of rain that's so light it's barely there. The little droplets finer than sand, that whirl and swirl in a gust of wind.

It's the kind of rain that catches you by surprise. You can see that it's grey and wet. You know that the rain is there. You think that it's so fine that it won't be too bad. Seconds after stepping outside though, your drenched right through to the skin. It comes and comes, there's no let up. A wet morning becomes a wet afternoon becomes a wet night.

It is just rain though. Nothing dangerous or sinister about the amount that we've had. Not like the parts of the country with floods or tornados, I'm not trying to drum up sympathy for a bit of wet falling from the sky.

Nice weather for ducks. That's what they always say. I'm not sure that I'd be that enamoured of the rain if I were a duck. The ones I saw early certainly weren't leaping for joy at the sudden wetness. Nice weather for frogs might be more fitting. Or fish. It's the closest to being underwater that we usually get on dry land in any case.

The clouds look as though they were painted across the sky in water colours, much to wet water colours. It's the grey clouds that merge all the way down to the ground that really get you down though, obscuring the view, it isn't very uplifting. Before long you could almost feel that it's never not rained. It's easy to forget that only days ago the sun was shining and all was right in the world.

It's dark now, but then the day was barely lighter. Perhaps I'll awake to something a little more cheerful tomorrow...