Stack of Books Embroidery Pattern

Today in "PDF patterns that I'm randomly adding to my shops in the week before Christmas"... an embroidery pattern for book lovers!

This design would make a lovely gift for your book-devouring bestie - you can stitch it as it is, or customise it by adding the titles or authors of beloved books to the spines.

The pattern includes two versions of the embroidery pattern: one with the book page lines added and one without in case you'd prefer to stitch those freehand.

Click here to buy my Stack of Books Embroidery Pattern from my Etsy shop (the file will be available to download immediately after purchase).

Reading More Books (But Not Blogging About Them)

My New Year's Resolution last year was to to try to read more books and to blog about my progress.

I managed the first bit okay(ish), but I totally failed at the second part. I started off super keen, photographing all the books I was reading and writing what I thought would be the first of a series of monthly blog posts (haha). I didn't blog about books again until August, but I kept track of my reading all the way through spring and most of the summer.

I bought books from my local bookshop, and second hand. I borrowed them from the library and from my mum.

 

I read books in bed first thing in the morning (sometimes with a cat for company)...

... while eating breakfast...

... on trains, in cafes, on lazy summer afternoons...

 

... just before bed, and late at night when I couldn't sleep.

 

I read fun books and boring books, old faves and new discoveries, some I absolutely adored and some which were so terrible that I'm baffled as to why they are (apparently) so popular.

I kept a draft blog post running with photos and a list of the books I'd been reading. Then when I discovered the joys of audiobooks in the summer I dutifully took screenshots of each book I started, still thinking "I'll get round to blogging about these sometime soon!"

My enthusiasm for reading waxed and waned through the year but at no point did I actually feel excited to blog about what I was reading. It gradually dawned on me that this was because I don't actually enjoy blogging about books that much and the act of keeping track of everything I was reading was sucking a lot of the joy out of the process.

For neatness though, I've had a think and tallied the books I read from June to December. Excluding the books I've forgotten about, all the books I started but gave up on and the many many books which I keep meaning to finish but just not getting round to, I read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett , The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm & Career of Evil  by Robert Galbraith, The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis, and The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham.

I also listened to How to Stop Time by Matt Haig, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, Rack, Ruin & Murder by Ann Granger, Death Descends on Saturn Villa by M. R. Kasasian, A Study in Brimstone & The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles by G. S. Denning, Tales from the Dead of Night: 13 Classic Ghost Stories, Origin by Dan Brown, Murder by Sarah Pinborough, one of the volumes of The Time Traveller's Almanac, and La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman.

So (along with the 13 books I read earlier in the year), that's about 31 books in total for 2017. Not a particularly impressive number but definitely a lot more than I read in 2016.

I don't know how many books I'll end up reading (or listening to) this year. I hope it's more than 31 but it might well be less. Either way, I definitely won't be blogging about them!

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, so if you click through and end up buying something (anything!) on Amazon during that session I get a very small payment for the referral.

Read More Books: February to May

My New Year's Resolution this year was to try to read more books, and to blog once a month about what I've been reading.

Have I actually been blogging once a month about what I've been reading...? Of course not! I did manage one blog post in January and then the days rolled by and suddenly it's August already and I've still not blogged about books (oops).

Soooo... here's a round-up of all the books I read from February-May. I've read more books since then, of course, but there's only so many books you can fit into a blog post before it gets ridiculously long and (I'm pleased to report) I have actually been reading relatively regularly this year (hurrah!).

At the beginning of February I finished reading Dead Cold, the second of Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels (I'd read book one in January). It was a fun little mystery and I zipped through it quite quickly but I definitely don't feel the urge to work my way through the rest of her books. It's funny, isn't it, how some series totally grab you and you want to read them all IMMEDIATELY and others you see why people like them but they're not quite your cup of tea.  

Next I read The Miniaturist, which had a temptingly beautiful cover and which turns out to be a real Marmite book! 

 

When I shared this photo on Instagram and Facebook the comments were a mix of people who ADORED it and people confessing that they absolutely loathed it, hadn't been able to finish it, which I thought was very interesting - it's obviously a book that prompts strong feelings in a lot of people! I loved it to start with and thought it was beautifully written, but I found myself gradually losing interest in the characters as the plot developed. 

It was quite a light read though so I did finish it, and I enjoyed it enough to get Jessie Burton's second book (The Muse) out of the library to try. I'm also rather looking forward to seeing the TV adaptation - I love seeing how people tackle the challenge of adapting books for the screen.

In spite of my lukewarm reaction to these two books, my New Year's Resolution was beginning to have its desired effect and I was rapidly falling back in love with reading (hurrah!). I enthusiastically got a whole pile of books out of the library...

... then proceeded to read something totally different! I needed something light to read on a train journey, so I grabbed Unseen Academicals from my "to read" pile and totally neglected my library books while I worked my way through it. 

As I mentioned in my previous book-themed post, I've been slowly re-reading all the Discworld books over the past couple of years. Unseen Academicals is definitely not one of my favourites and I ended up reading it incredibly slowly, reading a bit here and there and wondering if I should skip it altogether instead of sticking it out just for the sake of completeness. I'm glad I finished it, though. I might not love this particular chapter in the Discworld series but the process of revisiting them all in sequence has been so enjoyable I'm glad I resisted the urge to skip ahead. 

After Unseen Academicals I dipped into that pile of library books, starting with Image on the Heart and other stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This turned out to be a compilation of some of his early stories, not remotely his best work but still with flashes of his delicious style. I zipped through these, reading them in a patch of sunshine on a couple of warm spring afternoons (totally blissful!). 

Not being able to sleep one night I picked up the next book on the pile, Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham, and honestly if this hadn't been a library book I would have thrown it across the room (probably waking my neighbours in the process). Uggghhh, I hated this book so much. The characters! The plot! The dialogue! Pretty much everything about it! A friend whose book taste I tend to trust likes Maugham though so I'm planning on giving his books another chance but I wouldn't bet any money on me liking them.

After another library trip I made a start on some more F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories (The Love Boat and other stories), reading them on more relaxing sunny afternoons... but I bogged down partway through one of the longer ones and didn't pick the book back up again after that.

On another visit to the library I was tempted by a trio of Vintage books with their delicious red spines.

I started with Picnic at Hanging Rock which is not just the best thing I've read in ages but one of the best things I think I've ever read. I adored it, gobbling it up in one sitting and practically beaming with happiness the whole time.

My New Year's Resolution to try and read more books has (gradually) helped me get back into the habit of reading - carving out a space for it in my weeks, and enjoying the process of sitting quietly with a book and letting myself get absorbed in its pages. But it wasn't until reading Picnic at Hanging Rock that the real love of it came back - BAM! - like it had never gone away.

Spring brought some stressful things with it so I ended up doing a lot of comfort reading. I read a vast quantity of Harry Potter fan fiction, which isn't something I've read much of before but I fell down a rabbit hole of the stuff and didn't get out for quite a long time. It was exactly what I needed and quite delightful.

I also decided to reread one of my all time favourite books (and certainly my favourite romantic novel), Gaudy Night... but of course you can't just reread Gaudy Night, you've got to go back and enjoy the whole Peter Wimsey / Harriet Vane romance and really savour it. So, I started with Strong Poison...

... then moved on to Have His Carcase, and took a short detour from the Wimsey/Vane novels to read Murder Must Advertise (because it's just so funny, though that whole Harlequin plot is the wrong kind of ridiculous). If you're a fan of murder mystery novels and have never read the Wimsey novels I cannot recommend them highly enough. They get better and better as the sequence develops and the introduction of Harriet Vane is an absolute joy, I love her so much.

At the end of May I took a break from Wimsey to make a start on The Muse...

... but quickly abandoned it for a book of Ghost Stories by E. F. Benson, which I hugely enjoyed.

I often associate ghost stories with dark winter nights but most of these are set in the blossoming spring or on sultry summer evenings. The stories are full of ancient, dark, nameless things lurking in woodlands and streams, of terrible things at your open window on hot, sleepless nights. All rather dated, of course, but gorgeously written and full of incredibly creepy moments.

Thanks to this book I also discovered that reading ghost stories on busy trains weirdly makes them (the stories, not the trains) even spookier. I totally expected it to be distracting but actually quietly reading a ghost story in the midst of all that noise turned out to be extra chilling. It is a teeny bit awkward though when you realise you're pulling "oh my goodness, this story!!" faces in public.

So, how many books is that in four months? Ten, I think? Plus a whole bunch of fan fiction and a tiny bit of The Muse.

Ten books in four months is nothing to shout about, but, still! Reading is happening! And continues to happen! Woohoo!

What have you been reading lately? Have you read any of the books I've been reading? What did you think of them?

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, so if you click through and end up buying something (anything!) on Amazon during that session I get a very small payment for the referral.

Read More Books: January

My New Year's Resolution this year was to read more books... and part of the challenge I set myself was to blog about my progress, so here we are!

January turned out to be one of those super-busy months where I was juggling so many things that it would have been incredibly easy to not make time for reading. I still would have wasted time on social media of course (falling down a rabbit hole of interesting links and seemingly endless news) and crashed out in front of a DVD in the evenings, but I'd have said "Oh, I've been too busy to read!" and let the book on my bedside sit neglected.

But first month into my new challenge I was determined to make time for books, even if it felt at times as though I had none to spare.

So far, I have been completely failing to read first thing in the morning. I confess: the call of the internet (and so! many! bits! of! news!) has just been too strong. I must try harder to resist this in the coming months.

I've been reading occasionally at lunch but I've mostly been reading in the evenings, either in bed or just curled up with a blanket. This is where having just moved house has helped me out: my television is still in a box, under lots of other boxes and likely to stay there for a while.

OK so I still have a few DVDs I can watch (the rest are, again, in boxes under boxes) and I can stream catch-up TV on my laptop now my broadband is working... but it's not the same as just being able to sit down in front of the telly and find endless things to watch to while away the evening. Similarly, most of my personal craft projects are packed up in boxes too. So instead of spending my evenings knitting or sewing while watching TV, I've been writing letters to friends (another old and neglected habit) and reading books (though, of course, not at the same time!).

Basically, I'm pleased to have found time to read this month but very aware how easy it would be to slip back into my old habits.

So, what did I actually read in January?

At the turn of the year I was part way through Making Money by Terry Pratchett. I've been slowly re-reading the whole Discworld series over the past couple of years, mostly on trains and in cafes while on Nice Days Out. This is a series I've been reading since I was about 11 (over 20 years ago) and not yet had enough of. It's been a joy revisiting both well-worn old favourites and the titles I've only read once or twice. It's also interesting actually reading all the books in order as for many years I only bought the ones I found second hand, filling in the gaps in my collection when the opportunites presented themselves.

Now I'm getting to the later books in the series I find myself wanting to ration them, to make the process last as long as possible before I get to the end (I am saving the Tiffany Aching books until last but have no intention of ever reading the final one as I think it would just make me too sad). This is impossible to do while actually reading the books, of course, they're such a delight to read.

This was only my second read of Making Money. I'd forgotten most of the plot (always a bonus when it comes to re-reading a book) and really enjoyed rediscovering all the twists and turns of Moist von Lipwig's second adventure in the world of business. It can't touch Going Postal (one of my all time faves) but more time spent with one of your favourite fictional characters is always a good thing. All in all, a perfect start to the year - though sadly I shall have to be honest and count it as just half a book in my tally of books read in 2017!

Next up: The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay.

I bought myself a whole stack of British Library Crime Classics last year, after falling in love with the beautiful illustrations on the covers. I read a few but they were a real mixed bag: one quite fun, one a bit weird and one a total snooze. It's possible I may end up liking the covers of these books more than the books themselves, but I'm determined to work my way through the rest of the ones on my bookshelf to find out for sure.

I'm very glad I started with The Santa Klaus Murder as I really enjoyed it! It's exactly what you want from a vintage murder mystery: a whole bunch of posh people in a house, a baffling murder, a likeable detective on the case, and lots of amusingly dated dialogue. Hurrah!

Full of renewed enthusiasm for the series, I picked up another one from the pile: The Z Murders by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

This was a very different kettle of fish: a particularly florid thriller in the style of the (excellent) Thirty-Nine Steps. There was not a single believable character, incident or piece of dialogue in the whole of this book and the entire plot was utterly ridiculous... but it was kinda fun? I think if you read this slowly it might drive you bananas but I zipped through it in a couple of sittings and rather enjoyed it (regular eye-rolls included).

In the comments to my New Years Resolution blog post someone mentioned Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache novels. I've been meaning to try these for ages, so when I joined the local library the first thing I did was check their catalogue for Louise Penny's books. Happily, they had the first two titles in the series: Still Life and Dead Cold.

I love a nice cosy mystery novel, and these definitely fall into that category: a charming detective, a small village in Quebec populated by quirky characters, and lots of loving attention to the details of village life.

I enjoyed Still Life but having seen the made-for-TV movie adaptation a while back I remembered the main threads of the plot and whodunnit, which was a little annoying. Reading the book was a far richer experience though, especially as the author often switches points of view mid-scene so you get internal monologues and feelings and reactions from multiple characters not just a plain narrative with one point of view. I'm not sure I've ever read a book that dips in and out of the different characters brains quite like this, it's interesting but sometimes makes it a little tricky to follow exactly which voice you're reading.

My mum ended up borrowing Still Life after I'd read it. She came to visit and finished her own book, so we had a Louise Penny reading session - her reading Still Life and me making a start on Dead Cold. The murder in Still Life is committed with a bow and arrow, and as my mother is an archer she had opinions about the archery in the book and the correctness (or otherwise) of various details!

As I'm still midway through Dead Cold I'll chat about it in next month's post. That's another half a book to add to January's tally though, hurrah.

Books read in January: 4 (3 books, plus half a book finished and half a book started!). Not bad.

What did you read in January? Have you read any of the books I've been reading - what did you think of them?

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, so if you click through and end up buying something (anything!) on Amazon during that session I get a very small payment for the referral.

My Resolution for 2017: Read More Books

I grew up surrounded by and addicted to books.

Every birthday and Christmas as a kid, I asked for new books. Most weekends as a teen I was either down the library or browsing my local second hand bookshops. I read widely and voraciously and didn't really understand people who said they didn't like reading, or weren't "interested" in books. There were whole worlds in there, both real and imagined and I wanted to explore as many as I possibly could.

Then, somehow, gradually, I stopped reading. I don't know if it was just the distractions of exams and Uni and the internet (and writing things of my own!), or the number of books I was told I "should" read as I got older and loathed but kept on trying to like because they were apparently "the best books" (so foolish!). Either way, books stopped being my constant companion and became something just for lazy holidays or long train journeys.

In recent years I've made efforts to try and get back into reading - with mixed success.

My Nice Days Out have helped, as I now always take a paperback with me for reading in cafes and on train journeys (and during train delays!) so I always have at least one book that I'm slowly working my way through... but I have resolved and then, er, re-resolved to make more time in my regular life for books and it just hasn't worked out.

Lots of people swear by audiobooks, but I find that unless I'm doing something really, really mindless while listening to them I can't concentrate on the task and the narration and I tend to suddenly realise I have no clue what's going on in the plot (is this a sign I am getting old? It probably is). I used to listen to them (and BBC radio dramas) quite a lot when I was doing repetitive work tasks like cutting out felt shapes or making up felt bundles for my shops, but these days my schedule involves a lot fewer tasks like this!

So this year I am determined to try to read more actual books. To read a chapter in the morning instead of checking Twitter on my phone. To have a proper lunch break, paperback in hand. To turn off the telly or the internet in the evenings and pick up a book instead. To go to the library more often so I'll always have something I can't wait to start reading...

... and, of course, to blog about my progress to try and keep myself focused.

So, I'll be blogging once month about what I've been reading (I've started the year with some of the British Library's Crime Classics) and how/where/when I'm managing to make space for books in my day - what works for me, what doesn't. I hope you'll enjoy following along with my progress throughout the year.

What are you looking forward to reading this year? And when do you find time to read? Have you ever fallen out of love with reading like I did? Maybe you've even made the same New Year's Resolution as me and are embarking on a similar journey to fill your life with more of the joy of books? Leave me a comment and let me know!