Autumn Wrap Up

But how is it November already. That means it’s almost Christmas, right? Not that I am going to get excited just yet. I mean, I love Christmas, I absolutely totally do, but I love it in the way that means I want to concentrate that love into a small time frame so that I can love it really intensely whilst it lasts and then tuck it away for another year knowing I’ll love it just as hard when it comes around again which means I don’t ‘do’ Christmas until December 1^st. I won’t even eat a mince pie, which is pretty hard going actually because holy moly I love mince pies. The only exception I make to this rule I think is the festive coffees. Give me all the gingerbread lattes please. Today I had a spiced cookie latte from McDonalds (Maccies is the only coffee place open before I go to work and actually it’s not that bad), the cup had little foxes on it and I was beyond delighted.

Quick Quick Catch Up

People of the blogosphere, dance with me: it’s pumpkin spice season. Or autumn, we could just call it autumn if you’d like. Either way, it is the season of joy and delight. The season of the Pumpkin Spice Latte (Starbucks I love you *other coffee shops are available) and leaves underfoot; of conkers and so many colours; of fingerless gloves and woolly jumpers and delightfulness. The colours of autumn though, are they not just lush!? Last October my pal and I walked through St James’s park and the colours were so stunning they took my breath away a little bit. I went a bit snap happy because I am totally girl of the instagram generation, today (for work related purposes I hasten to add) I photographed my socks. Anyhow. That’s another story.

Autumn is my favourite I think, partly because of the PSL which may well be the most delicious coffee related beverage in the history of time. There’s a pumpkin spice Bailey’s this year, did you know? DID YOU KNOW? Oh, but I am excited to get my little hands on a bottle of that. I also love autumn because it’s perfect for reading. The nights start to draw in and you find that you feel deliciously melancholy somehow and so you (and by ‘you’ I obviously mean ‘I’ and I am so sorry for projecting) feel less guilty for curling up under a blanket and shutting the world away. A blanket, a cozy spot, a cup of coffee and a good book. Is there a pleasure in the world that is equal to that? NO THERE IS NOT. It’s totes a cliché, but it’s a freaking excellent cliché and I am all over it. LET ME BE THE GIRL IN THE OVERSIXED JUMPER WITH THE AUSTEN NOVEL PLEASE.

& so because it’s autumn and it’s a time for reading and because I have been awfully lax of late (my last post was in June and I hate myself a little bit for that) here are some books I’ve read recently that I feel like should be on reading lists everywhere right now, along with some exciting looking autumnal releases.

What have I been reading, then; what do I think you should all read now that it’s September?

The Ship by Antonia Honeywell is a book I was super excited about because when it was released last year it was everywhere and I was hearing All The Good Things. All of them.  & I liked it. It starts of in dystopian London (I love me a good dystopia. Everybody knows it) where everything is bad: Oxford Street burned for week, people are homeless and desperate and squatting in the British Museum and not having an identity card doesn’t only mean you don’t exist, it means you’ll be shot. Lalla is 16, her dad is a (really creepy) visionary and thanks to him she gains passage on The Ship which is kind of like Noah’s Ark for humans – 500 humans, one ship and no talk – ever- of a destination and nobody seems to think that’s weird, except Lalla. It’s good, and interesting and a pretty unique twist on the whole dystopia thing. I liked it. It’s also a pretty cool coming of age story and you cannot get enough of those am I right? I’m right. Anyway, it’s worth a read.

Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire is good. It paints a terrifyingly accurate picture of how crazy and passionate and intense female friendship can be. It’s like, imagine your late teen self (some of us have to imagine that ok, for some of us it was a while ago) and then exaggerate it by some and you have Hannah and Dex and even though it’s really extreme you kind of relate to it because it can be like that, female friendship more potent and intense and under-your-skin emotional than any romance and this book gets that. It’s also super pretty, which, I am always all about the pretty words, and mindblowingly observant, there’s ordinary and also extraordinary all tangled up as one and the same and ain;t that just how life goes sometimes? And it’s set in the nineties. THE NINETIES.  Fascinating, gripping, different. It’s messed up and it’s addictive and full of fucked up characters and destructive relationships and completely unreliable narrators. All those excellent things.

I read Sarah Pinborough’s The Death House last year and adored it so I was ridic excited when I saw she’d got a new book out there: Thirteen Minutes. Totally different to The Death House but still quite, quite excellent. AND SO DAMN CLEVER. So clever. Natasha is pulled from a freezing river. She was dead for thirteen minutes. She has no idea how she got there, what happened or why but the more she tries to figure it out the more it looks like perhaps somebody tried to kill her, and perhaps that somebody is a person she loves. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that, but what if you can’t tell them apart? Reading this made me question why I don’t read more psychological thrillers because I do love them so.

You should also look at Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours which I read last week and plan to come back and review properly because I have feelings. It freaked me out.

As far as new (and upcoming) releases go I feel like you should keep an eye out for these babies. I haven’t read any of them, yet (although Today Will Be Different is next on my list) but I want to, because they all sound marvellous.

Today Will Be Different – Maria Semple who wrote Where’d You Go, Bernadette (which I haven’t read but feel like I should) is about a day in the life of one woman, about tackling the little things, and about life often gets in the way of doing just that.

Holding Up the Universe from Jennifer Niven who wrote All the Bright Places because would I be me if I didn’t hit you with a YA rec? It sounds a little Eleanor & Park.

Here I Am, the new novel from Jonathan Safran Foer sounds interesting and relevant and rather excellent and I really liked Extremely Loud so you know, fingers crossed.

The Wonder is the latest from Emma Donoghue which I shall likely read even though I am mad at her because I watched Room recently and my heart broke a little bit.

Ali Smith’s Autumn because hello, it’s called Autumn.

And, GARY OLDMAN and Douglas Urbanski’s BloodRiders. GARY OLDMAN. COWBOYS. VAMPIRES. VAMPIRE COWBOYS. Do I need to say more. It will either be incredible or awful. Or incredibly awful. Frankly, I don’t even care.

So there you have it. I’m back, I think. I have Only Ever Yours to talk about, and I’ve been trying to get my thoughts about The Cursed Child in order for weeks so expect to see me talking about that at some point and I’m reading the new Chris Cleave right now (and I love it, don’t wait for my review: read it now) and my BFF’s baby is one now and is making me want to talk about picture books so that might be a thing and I feel like I might be back to having Things To Say. Hurrahs.

in which it's a blustery day

I say blustery. I’m aware it’s considerably less blustery here than it is further south, and as such I am sending hugs and cookies to all the people that are not having a very happy Windsday.

I’m writing this from the point of almost-asleep actually, mainly because I had to get up at numbers starting with a 5 (a 5!!!) today to drop my boyfriend off at the airport. He’s gone to stop with some friends in Arizona for a week and you may colour me green. 
Can you believe the temperatures are in the high 80’s over there and I’m here wearing fleece lined leggings to the office because *brrrr* - not that I mind, really. I mean, I mind being cold and I am absolutely not a fan of the whole getting up in the dark and leaving work in the dark which is very nearly upon me, but I do love autumn. I love the colours and the smells; I love that I can dig out woolly jumpers and fingerless gloves (and fleece lined leggings); I love that somehow autumn just feels like fruit crumble and custard and reading under a blanket and getting ready for Christmas.  I just, I love it a little less when I am helping my boyfriend decide how many pairs of flip flops he needs to take on his holiday in the sun. (The answer was one, if you wondered. I swear that boy is actually Imelda Marcos – has anybody actually had eyes on her lately? No, I thought not….)

I think I’ll be doing a lot of reading-under-a-blanket whilst Ian is away this week. That is the plan at least. Pate on toast and reading-under-a-blanket. I have Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl on my Kindle which I have been saving especially for this week, and I’m very excited about it. Eleanor & Park is perhaps my book of the year this year, so I’m excited to see how Fangirl compares, especially as all I’ve seen of it suggests it might be a book I can relate to on several levels. Ha. Watch this space as I’m sure I’ll be back to tell you how much I adored/loathed it. 
First though, I must finish Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman because I have a very bad habit of not finishing a book before I start a new one. Whoops. I feel a resolution coming on...

Ian’s autumn sun break is also the perfect opportunity to finish the scarf I am crocheting him for Christmas, it’s looking rather lovely if I do say so myself – a deep grey shade of aran weight wool made up of row after row of dc.  Lush. He will be handsome and snugly. I shall knit it up whilst watching lots of Once Upon A Time which is my current television love. I do love a fairytale re-telling and this show has Robert Carlyle popping up every so often as Rumplestiltskin which is awesome. I have a Pinterest board full of crochet ideas. It's my new love, I can see my house becoming overrun with wool if I'm not careful, and I already have at least 3 projects on the go: 2  scarfs and a purple and cream blanket for my bed. Again, whoops. 
I also have a big Granny Square project in mind, which might be my 'big thing' for 2014. Check me out with my 2014 plans already. Woop.

So, there we have it, my time boyfriend-less: a OUAT marathon; crochet; reading-under-a-blanket; a catch-up with my girls; and a beading workshop with my Mum and Granny. This week will fly by; he’ll be back before I even have time to miss him. 

in which i am preparing for Christmas

It's very autunm-y in my neck of the woods at the moment, which is awesome because of all the seasons I think I love autumn the best. It's all pretty colours and woolly jumpers and spiced coffee and mulled cider and being a little cold but still being able to be outdoors and I lovelovelove it. I wish, actually that I didn't have to work because I pretty much just want to be outside with my camera taking lots of photographs of the pretty trees and stuffs.  Perhaps I'll do that on Sunday; it's Ian's birthday on Monday so this weekend we're celebrating that - we're having a small gathering at the house on Saturday night, which will be lovely, and then a couple of people are sleeping over so maybe on Sunday we can all wrap our hangovers up in gloves and warm coats and go for a walk in the woods. Yes. This is now my plan. Hurrah. [I bet this doesn't happen. I bet nobody wants to wrap their hangover in anything other than a blanket and we shall remain indoors.]

In other news it will soon be Christmas. Hush now, don't get all agitated, it will. And people [for 'people' read 'me'] need to get prepared because I like to enjy December and the festivities and the excitement and not get all stressed about what presents need sorting etc.This year it's a little trickier - obviously with Ian setting up his own business money is a little tight and so I am aiming to make as many presents as I can. I am officially getting my craft on. That means, if you read this and are lucky [unlucky?] enough to be on my Christmas present list there is a very good chance that your gift could be made by my own fair hands. Wow.

In that same vein, I've become a little addicted to Pinterest of late. That website is such a time suck, seriously and I have pinboards for food and clothes and weddings [I'm not even getting married any time soon, go figure] and pretty stuff and booky stuff and of course, crafts. I just keep pinning; I can't help it. I was home alone last night - the boy took advantage of Orange Wednesday to go and see Taken2 [colour me jealous] and so I had a shower and put on my big fleecy poncho, which is amazing comfy by the way, and settled down with a bar of chocolate and my iPad. 'Ill just spend 5 minutes of Pinterest' I thought and then suddenly it was an hour later and whoops. I have loads of ideas though, it's such a good resource and I can't wait to get started. SO MANY IDEAS AND PROBABLY NOT ENOUGH TIME. This may become a semi-crafty blog for a while, so be warned!! 

This afternoon I'm off to see my Mum. It's my Grandpa's birthday today [love you G'Pa] so I want to make sure she's ok, and I have my sewing kit in the car because you know, getting my craft on, so I shall drink tea and sew with my Mum and oh my goodness I am unregonisable to my own self right now, and then I'm seeing Helen and there will be culinary delights and films and gossip. That will be a nice time.

I leave you with this autumny photograph of love. Happy Friday.