Stuff I've Been Reading June

Crikey I've been a bore for the last month. I have done pretty much nothing of interest. I've barely even read:

Conversations with Friends - after really enjoying Normal People I jumped on Sally Rooney's debut. I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much. Oh well.

The Name of the Wind- is one of those books that I've been meaning to read for a while. When the second person told me it was their favourite book ever, I thought I ought to give it a go. And it's good. It's really good. Rattled through it pretty quickly for a book of such girth. But:
1. It's a fantasy. Proper magic and other lands fantasy. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
2. It's the first part of a trilogy, of which:
2a. Book two is a thousand pages long and has an elf with a magic sword on the front cover; and
2b. The third part hasn't been written.
A resounding hmmmmmm.

Right, I'm off to do something worth writing about.

It's So Bracing

I've been to a fair few places around the world but I have not been to the archetypal British seaside town that is Skegness. Until now.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. We based ourselves in Mablethorpe, which - whilst a hotbed of kiss-me-quick and Carling cliches - proved to be John the Baptist for Skeggy's Jesus.

Skegness. Oh Skegness. With your amusements and your footputt and your family funpubs and your manicured beaches amd your whipping sands. You were more than I could have hoped for.

Aside from that the Lincolnshire coast was ace: enormobeaches, Global Hypercolor sunsets and birds that sound like mid-nineties techno breaks. What more do you need?
__________

Stuff I've been Reading - May

Bit of a poor month for books with only two completions:
California by Edan Lepucki is one of those dystopian books that I was reading heaps of a few years back, but seem to have petered out of late. Have I grown out of them? Hmmmm.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They is a classic that I knew almost nothing about. Turns out it's about a marathon dance competition. I wouldn't have guessed that.

Keys

I went to the Ceremony of the Keys. Turns out that's a thing. I was loosely aware that it happened but really didn't know too much about it.

The ceremony itself was the kind of thing that Britain does well, but being in the Tower of London after closing time was brilliant. It was like being in a fairy tale. I'd been to the Tower before, a decade or so back, but really didn't remember all that much about the grounds. It was so much prettier than I remember, possibly due to the lack of bodies. I spent the evening wandering round with a big, old, uncynical grin on.

Stuff I've been Reading April 19

I never did go back and talk about the March books. There were some great things in there,  not least a blank verse werewolf novel. I know, right. There was also a Zadie Smith. I seem to enjoy every other novel she writes, Swingtime was a good un, far more enjoyable than the Ulysseslite of N-W.

Anyway, April:
Educated- Tara Westover
Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton
Moneyball - Michael Lewis
Normal People - Sally Rooney

I meant to join a bookgroup that was reading Educated. I didn't bother. But I read their book, which I believe is the opposite of people that are in bookgroups. Educated was scary, it was an autobiography of someone roughly my age, but it read like a cartoon.

Seven Deaths was ace, it had me on the edge of the proverbial seat, largely as I had no idea what was going on.

Talking of having no idea what was going on: Moneyball. It's one of those books you're supposed to have read, right? The fact that I know nothing about baseball (It's just rounders in uniform, right?), meant that I didn't understand about ten percent of it and didn't care about another twenty. Still found it quite interesting which probably says a lot about Michael Lewis.

And Normal People was brilliant. Entirely not what I would normally read, but brilliant. If I say too much more about it I'm going to sound like a literary critic and that was never the idea.

Beer Pilgrimage

Huddersfield. Now there's a place I've not been to before. And. Place were you can get a decent beer. We went up to visit the Magic Rock brewery. Turns out Magic Rock is great and that Hudsersfield has somewhat embraced the craft beer scene: Arcade, Grove and The Sportsman's Arms all had selections designed for the Magic Rock pilgrims.

We've joined the English Heritage, because that seems like a grown up thing to do. We broke both journeys at country estates: Brodsworth Hall with its weird grotto garden and Kirby Hall with its peacocks and missing roof. Well grown up.

We also broke the journey north with a trip to Stilton. I wouldn't bother.

City Walls

Ooh, a new city. Although it probably shouldn't be. Given how long I lived in the Northwest it's weird, maybe even embarrassing, that I never made it to Chester. Turns out it's alright. It has walls and ruins; a river and a clock. Everything you need for a city, right?

Talking of ruins, had a visit to Beeston Castle too. Now there's a ruin on a hill. The views are spectacular; makes the whole of Cheshire looks like a model trainset.

Pop (Goes the Weasel)

And a weekend of things that I've only heard about in the last six months but really should have known about for ages.

Mothers' day and three generations of selfindulgentnonsense headed down to the British Wildlife Centre. You heard of that? Well you should. It's ace. It's a zoo but all the animals are local. None of this elephant lion nonsense. Here the apex predators are badgers.

It meant I got to see those animals that, to date, I'd only seen from a passing car. I saw a badger doing a snuffle, a weasel looking like a tiny, teleporting meercat and an ADHD stoat. Plus some harvest mice, which are tiny.

Saturday was the Bermondsey Beer Mile. Now you've heard of that, right? Turns out Bermondsey has gentrified whilst I wasn't looking. Who'd have thought? Best beer of the mile - Brew by Numbers. Best discovery - smoked lager.

Stuff I've been Reading - March:

Stellig - David Almond
The World Made Straight - Ron Rash
Sharp Teeth - Toby Barlow
Help - Simon Amstell
Siege Mentality - Christopher Brookmyre
Swingtime - Zadie Smith