A Quiet Weekend

After the madness that was the past couple of weeks I've tried to take it a little easier this week... and typically have gone down with a virus. Nothing more than an annoying cough and feeling a little under the weather, but irritating nevertheless. And I'm still feeling exhausted after a couple of days of work. Being on my feet all day is really tiring, which I don't seem to notice when I'm busy working but it hits me when I stop. However, we've been back on track with our healthy eating.. same old common sense really, lots of healthy fruit and veg, meals cooked from scratch, not too much bread and pasta... and absolutely no guilt whatsoever when we decided to go out for a pizza and bottle of wine last night!

But I'm quite determined to have a restful weekend not doing very much other than potter about and catch up with some reading. No matter how busy I get I always find time to read a little each day... although I realise I haven't always found time to write about what I've read... not since December in fact!

 

We've had a couple of bookclub meetings since December and our book for January was "Sightlines" by Kathleen Jamie. This book really divided our bookclub like no other. It is a series of essays about fairly unrelated subjects (Gannets, Northern Lights, cancer cells, whalebones...). Described by some as nature writing, it has received critical acclaim and loads of accolades. In fact some of our book club members were totally bowled over by the beautiful prose (Jamie is a poet) but there were three of us, including yours truly who just didn't get it. I found it boring, rather indulgent and when she described various beautiful remote places the result was to totally put me off ever going there. The fictional Lewis trilogy made me want to visit the Outer Hebrides more than Kathleen Jamie! I though maybe I was being a bit dense and just didn't understand the beauty of the writing so it was a relief to find two others in the group who felt exactly like me!

Our February book was The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, an entertaining enough read, with likeable characters set in Victorian London and the Essex village of Aldwinter. It's a bit of a gothic tale of a mythical beast woven around an unlikely love story... several love stories actually. I felt it was a little unresolved but then maybe that is how good stories should be. I don't know what anyone else thought as the meeting coincided with our dress rehearsal.

Apart from bookclub reading I've got through two of my Christmas presents.  A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is as you might imagine about the life of a man called Ove. At first I thought it was going to be really repetitive and tedious but as the kind character of Ove starts to come through and we learn more about his life and what makes him tick, I found myself totally engrossed in this tender tale that made me both laugh out loud and even shed a tear. 

Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain a debut novel by Barney Norris is five separate but intertwined stories centered around a road accident that occurs in Salisbury. Each of the five individuals concerned tell their own narrative. It is both clever and entertaining, if somewhat unbelievable at times, but I was disappointed by the last story and felt it rather weak, letting down the rest of the book.

Currently I'm dipping into and enjoying The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristan Gooley while I do some indoor planning of walks to come. But the book that is keeping me reading until late at night is The Muse by Jessie Burton. I'm about half way through and totally gripped!

And I've just got a few more to keep me going over the coming months! A diverse selection to say the least!

Now if you excuse me I'm feeling a little sleepy...

So I might just have to join this gorgeous little man. How can he be over two months old already!

I hope you have a quiet and restful weekend too!