01. All my prayers since 1982 have been answered.
02. Related: Australia is allowed to compete in Eurovision 2017.
03. If mince pies in the supermarket by October weren’t enough to piss me off, there’s this. Seriously, there’s still two months worth of reading left in the year…
04. Enough cranky, how about some shitty recorder tunes to brighten your day? Hard to choose between Whitney and The Bangles as best.
05. Which celebrity cookbook should you own? Apparently I need Freddy Prinze Jr.’s (didn’t even know he cooked…).
06. Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies mentioned an app that could unlock a War & Peace achievement for me… in just 235 short reading bursts!
07. Bought some of their very lovely whiskey glasses last year for the husband and now they have gin glasses… Huzzah!
08. I’m making a plan for next year based on what Susan did here and what Cleo did here.
09. This story about a book group.
10. We had a lovely four-day-mini-break at Inverloch with friends this week – it included sand dunes, beach walks, gin and tonics, board games, and the kids discovering a ‘jigsaw‘ that was my friend, Emma’s, when she was a kid.
Bookish Thoughts is hosted by Christine at Bookishly Boisterous. Swing by, say g’day.
I mostly avoided Abba first time round though I remember sitting with a mate’s kids to watch them on Countdown (1974?). However, 3 years ago I listened to a very long (18 hours I think) biography by CM Palm, Bright Lights, and was impressed, so now when they come up on old people’s public radio I pay more attention.
Very interested to hear that you ‘read’ an audio of the Palm book – I’ve had it sitting in my TBR stack for ages and have been nervous about picking it up, in case it shatters all of my ABBA dreams!
As much as people can ABBA, they’re widely acknowledged among musicians as masters – their music is incredibly complex and very difficult to replicate (but I just like to sing along badly with it).
Are gin glasses like beer goggles? Spumante spectacles?
Haha! If they are, I probably need a permanent prescription 😁
I may be the only one in the world who thinks so but “I Will Always Love You” by WH is probably the worst record of all time and when it came on the radio or wherever, I had to turn it off. The song itself isn’t too bad, a bit mushy, but the performance of strangulated tonsils – ghastly.
I suspect I am alone on this.
David B.
Is the Dolly Parton version more bearable?!
I’m loving your bookish thoughts this week, with you on the mince pies in October and best of anything at all for 2016 when we still have 2 months of the year left. Enormous thanks for my shout out – I’m actually pondering on how to put a bit of a twist on 2015’s nostalgic posts in 2017 too!
My pleasure – I really enjoyed your retrospectives. I haven’t done any posts like that before but figure my five year blogversary demands it!
Ooh definitely 😊
Thanks for the link, Kate. I’m looking forward to seeing your blasts from the past. Cleo’s idea had caught my eye, too, although I have a while to go until I’m five. I’m with you on those mince pies – I saw a heavily decorated Christmas tree in a shop on October 1st. Made me want to weep!
Ah, Inverloch! I grew up in Koonwarra (where my parents still live), so Inverloch was the beach we went to in the summer for swimming. I still go there every time I visit Australia!
I hadn’t been down that way for years (not since I was working in coastal planning 20 years ago!) and was shocked to see the extent of the erosion at the beach – the stairs to the lifeguard lookout finished two metres mid-air, where the sand had completely washed away!
Oh yes, I get regular updates on the erosion from my dad. He goes walking down there quite regularly.
I got Cravings by Chrissy Teigen (I don’t know who this is) because ‘even supermodels can (and should) cook’. I think their algorithm is on the fritz….
Either on the fritz or very closely aligned to whichever publisher sponsored the post… 🤔
The gin glasses are so pretty! I haven’t had gin since I was very young, and only did gin martinis, the kind everyone raved about back then. (I really hated the gin!). But I might need to try it with other mixers.
I love the idea of spotlighting favorite books from the past….and that book group looks like one I’d enjoy.
Thanks for sharing, and here’s MY BOOKISH THURSDAY POST
03. Lmao someone just was too excited to share their favourite reads of the year. Like, I look forward to these lists too but there’s still November and December books to check out and such…
08. Looking forward to what you come up with! 🙂
3 – Yesterday I smiled at the beautiful Christmas decorations that are around because, truth be told, I do love Christmas decorations so much. But then I remembered that these are one of the many early warning signs (along with mince pies in the supermarket), that all of the idiots will be out soon in their masses. It made me sad.
6 – I’ve seen loads of people around using Serial Reader and I think it sounds great. I think it would be ideal for W&P.
9 – I love that story so much.
10 – Hooray for weekends away!
Did you just finish W&P? How did you tackle it?
I did! And I made a big show out of slipping the ribbon from my bookmark in between the last page and the back cover so that everyone near me on the train would see that I was finished. But I don’t think anyone was paying attention.
By tackle do you mean what was my game plan to read it? (I’m going to assume yes and answer you based on that.) I pretty much just focused on it in the earlier months of the year, but then didn’t pick it up for about two or three months. But lately I’d pick it up maybe in the last week of each month and read a couple hundred pages, or I’d read it at the end of the week if I’d just finished a book, rather than starting a new book on a Friday.
I just chipped away at it when I felt like it really. It’s got just over 1200 pages though (in my edition), so it’d be good for a long year reading project if you just aimed to read 100 pages a month.
I think I’m going to do a similar thing next year with Shantaram, which I’ve had for ages.
If you’d been sitting next to me on the train I would have high-fived you.
I was thinking of starting the book via the Serial app and then, if I get keen, dive into my hard copy. Although I’m a bit conflicted because when I bought my copy I did a bit of research into the best translation (I have the Pevear & Volokhonsky version) so the problem is the Serial version might be different…
(Sorry I’m a month late with this response.) I can see how this might be a problem, but I think the general storyline won’t have changed too much – so I don’t think you’d need to worry about that. It would probably just be little things that would be different across translations. I remember the first time I read it I had a different translation, and I don’t recall there being that much humour in that one compared to the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation (which is what I read this time around). P & V also don’t translate the French in the body of the novel – they leave it in there and have the English translation in footnotes, but then apparently other versions do translate the French in the body of the text. So it’s things like that which would be different – but I don’t think they would alter the spirit of the story too much. The P & V translation is apparently the most accessible though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the one Serial uses.
The mini break sounds lovely. I’m really struggling at the moment and keen for some time out. I know my life is hardly that hectic but think I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff I SHOULD be doing and feeling guilty!
I’m actually not a fan of Christmas so will start to get grumpy (ier) soon!
The Melbourne Cup weekend holiday is perfectly timed – a break before all the Christmas-crazy begins. I don’t mind Christmas in principle, I just wish it didn’t start in September! That said, I usually find Christmas Day a bloody nightmare!
1. Yes! (But I’m also a bit weary because there’s rumors that it will all be just cut-and-paste/digitial and there is no actual reunion, but still, anything ABBA is worth celebrating)
2. I’m very excited about this.
3. Exactly! Any list made before the year is over cannot be trusted.
5. Apparently I must buy Cravings by Chrissy Teigen (although I’m pretty sure there’s about a hundred cookbooks that would suit me better). I seriously doubt the scientific merit of this quiz.
Ive seen references to Serial Reader quite a few times and it feels like you either love or hate it. I like the idea of it but the reality is that I would find reading on a phone too difficult.
I don’t like reading on my phone much however I do have a number of 5-10 minute blocks of time during the day where I could do it (as opposed to carrying around the huge copy of War & Peace!). I think I’ll give it a try and if no good, will switch to hard copy.