About a Boy by Nick Hornby
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve been meaning to read this for years.( I Vaguely remember the film, with Hugh Grant, being about in the late 90’s early 2000ish). It was OK. Will amused me and Marcus was cute. The book avoided scmulchz- was quite unsentimental with its characters, which I liked. I was just a bit underwhelmed overall.
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Lanny by Max Porter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was totally captivated by the audio of this absorbing tale with its cacophonous mix of characters, traditional English village setting and delicious mixture of mythical folklore, fantasy and realism.
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Braemar sailed past Stromboli, a small island of the north coast of Sicily, Italy today. The sun was gorgeous, the moon was full and its volcano was smoking!
All photos by Vinny Vinny.
Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Nobody captures senior school days, with all their associated teenage angst better than Davis Nicholls.
I re-lived all those feelings of not fitting in, of difficult parents, of first being seemingly the only one in the school without a boyfriend and then, when the wonder happened and I met someone, all the excitement and agonies of first love. I re-lived the irritation of not being one of the ‘Book Token Kid’s’, of not quite fitting in. I remembered with nostalgia the end of term/ end of school disco. Of revising for and sitting O’Levels and then the long summer with nothing to do while waiting for results.
I loved Sweet Sorrow and I love David Nicholls.
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To get through a very wet and windy Friday in Eastbourne we did some baking. Felt like a rainy morning thing to do.
Then enough was enough and I needed to get outside. I live at the beginning of the South Downs Way, which starts in Eastbourne, East Sussex and finishes in Winchester, Hampshire.
We blew those cobwebs away on The Downs on this typical Autumn day in Sussex, me and my dog.
And took a few photos on the way.
Circe by Madeline Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Having read Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles earlier in the year, it was interesting to read events from the Gods viewpoint, although I had to keep Googling them as they entered the narrative to remind myself of their role in Greek legend, which slowed the reading down a tad.
It was good to catch up with Odysseus and get to know him from another angle- from the female view of Circe and Penelope, which although played up the traditional great and wily warrior role, also showed him in a less favourable and likeable light.
A couple of lines, where Circe is describing the character of Penelope stayed with me:
‘I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. she told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.’ (p.265).
Good advice!
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Today Fred Olsen’s Braemar made history as the longest ever ship to cruise through Greece’s Corinth Canal. The canal is 25 metres wide, with limestone walls and connects the Gulfs of Corinth and Saronic in the Aegean Sea.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be there. My partner was and he took these amazing pictures.
I spent an amazing summer hopping the Greek Islands as a seventeen year old. I am restless for a repeat journey.
