201

At the beginning of 2017 whenever I finished a book I wrote the title and author on my calendar, to be honest I don’t actually know why I started doing this , maybe I thought I’d forget what I’d read , I really don't know 

By the end of January I’d read 14 books and  I continued writing titles and authors down for the next few months until I thought ‘I wonder if I could read 200 books in a year?’ 

Now the thing is for a lot of people that sounds like a huge amount but I do read a lot and I read very quickly , I can read a whole book in a day and we’re not just talking a small book , the majority of books I’ve read this year have been 350 to 400 pages long , I read instead of watching tv and during the very long nights of insomnia 

So did I reach my target ? I still had 15 books to read during December and obviously it was a busy month ....But I came down with the lurgy on 28th and had to spend a day or 2 in bed so YES I did it , I’m fact I read 201 books during 2017 !!! 

Best book was ‘Between You And Me’ by Lisa Hall 
Worst book was an overly wordy , pretentious book by Sophie Dahl  that I didn’t even finish  and can’t remember the title of !! 


Here if you are interested is the whole list...just in case you fancy taking a look at any of them 

January - Nigel by Monty Don / The Hope Family Calendar by Mike Gayle / Between You And Me - Lisa Hall / The Longest Night - Ernst  Bornstein / Best Man - Matt Dunn / Tell Me No Lies - Lisa Hall / Rosemary & Tom - Ben Watt / A Dogs Purpose - W Bruce Cameron / Lie With Me - Sabine Durrant / Cat Among The Pumpkins - Mandy Morton  / Keep You Close - Lucy Whitehouse / The Christmasaurus - Tom Fletcher    / The Beginners Goodbye - Anne Tyler /Wedding Tiers - Tricia Ashley 14 

February - The Soul Of It All - Michael Bolton / Jennie - Paul Gallico /Lessons In Heartbreak - Kathy Kelly / 3 Girls and a Baby - Rachel Shung / Try Not To Breathe - Holly Seddon / Gray Mountain - John Grisham / My Sweet Revenge - Jane Fallon / A Dog Day Wedding - Rich Amocci / The Importance Of Being A Batchelor - Mike Gayle / The Letter - Kathryn Hughes / If You Love Me - Alice Heal / Meat Market - Rob Radcliffe / Perfect Image - Melissa Heath / Nothing Lasts Forever - Maureen Lee / White Wedding - Molly Johnson / Members Only - Leonie Fox 16 

March - BrittMarie Was Here - Fredrick Backman / Something Borrowed - Martina Reilly / The House On Cold Hill - Peter James / How To Fall In Love - Cecilia Ahern/ Love Out Of Season - Ray Connolly / Beg To Die - Beverly Barton / The Fifth Letter - Nicole Moriarty / Getting Rid Of Matthew - Jane Fallon / Under Your Skin - Sabine Durrant / Fractured - Dani Atkins / If Looks Could Kill - Beverly Barton / Rogue Lawyer - John Grisham / Strictly Between Us - Jane Fallon / Behind Closed Doors - B A Paris / The Husbands Secret - Luanne Moriarty / The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year - Sue Townsend / The Foster Husband - Pippa Wright / Someday I’ll FindYou - Richard Madeley / The Associate - John Grisham 19

April - The Ugly Sister - Jane Fallon / Everything You Told Me - Lucy Dawson / RSVP - Helen Warner / Remember Me This Way - Sabine Durant / Port Mortuary - Patricia Cornwall / Red Mist - Patricia Cornwall / The Bone Bed - Patricia Cornwall/ Dust -Patricia Cornwall / Flesh and Blood - Patricia Cornwall/ Depraved Heart - Patricia Cornwall/ Chaos - Patricia Cornwall/ You Walked Back Into My Life - Hilary Boyd / What My Best Friend Did -Lucy Dawson / Foursome - Jane Fallon / Til We Meet Again- Lesley Pearce 15 

May - Got You Back - Jane Fallon/ Blackwater - James Henry / The Stranger In My Home - Adele Parks/ Consequences Of Love And Sex -  Coco Pritchard / Fly Away Home - Jennifer Weiner / The Cry - Helen Fitzgerald / Not Quite Nice - Celia Imrie / Searching For A Silver Lining - Miranda Dickinson / Somewhere Inside Of Happy - Anna Mc Partlin / You Belong To Me - Samantha Hayes / The Holiday Home - Fern Britton / Everything and Nothing - Araminta Hall / The Fat Ladies Club - various / The Friday Night Knitting Club - Kate Jacobs / Knit Two - Kate Jacobs / Hide Tide - Veronica Henry / Sunshine On A Rainy Day - Bryony Fraser / The Love Shack - Jane Costello / The Loving Husband- Griselda Hart 19

June - Our Song - Dani Atkins / Carry You - Beth Thomas / Secrets My Mother Kept - Kath Hardy / Me & You - Claudia Carroll / The Boy Noone Loved - Casey Watson / The Stepmother- Claire Seeber / The Boy Who Fell To Earth - Kathy Lette / The Secrets Sisters Keep - Sinead Moriarty/ We’ll Meet Again- Lily Baxter / Local Girl Missing - Claire Douglas/ Skeletons - Jane Fallon 11

July - Bodies - Jed Mercurio / The Other Side -  Kaylor Ward / The Last Thing I Remember - Deborah Bee / His Other Lover - Lucy Dawson / Paper Aeroplanes - Dawn O’Porter /Goose - Dawn O’Porter /The  Cows - Dawn O’Porter / The Girl With A Clock For A Heart - Peter Swanson / Left Neglected - Lisa Genova / The Things We Never Said - Susan Elliot Wright  / The Sister - Louise Jensen / The Accident - C L Taylor / Another Way To Fall - Amanda Brooke / The Third Wife - Lisa Jewell 14

August - A Tale Of 2 Sisters - Anna Maxted / The Detriment - David Vidcette / Falling - Jane Green / Getting Even - Claude Bouchard/ Make It Happen - Claude Bouchard/ Do No Harm - Henry Marsh  / Hearts In Atlantis - Stephen King / Mr Maybe - Jane Green / Brown Owls Guide To Life - Kate Harrison 9 

September- StarLight and Dreams - Benita Brown / The Breakdown -
BA Paris / Goodnight Beautiful - Dorothy Koomson / Deaths Acre - Bill Bass and John Jefferson / Heart Of The Matter - Emily Griffin / Unknown Means - Elizabeth Becka / The Time Of My Life - Cecelia Ahern / The Silent Sister - Dianne Chamberlain / Before I forget - Melissa Hill / The Book Lovers Appreciation Society - Various / I’ll   Be There - Iris Rainer Dart / The Mistake I Made - Paula Daley / All That Jazz - Dee Williams / The Last Letter From Your Lover - Jojo Moyes / The Girl Who Came Back - Susan Lewis / The Dating Detox - Gemma Burgess / The Missing Husband - Amanda Brooke/ Only In Vegas - Lindsey Brooke / These Days Of Ours - Juliet Ashton 19

October - 100 Names - Cecilia Ahern / One Little Mistake - Emma Curtis / Williams Progress - Matt Rudd / The Woman’s Next Door - Cass Green / In A Cottage , In A Wood - Cass Green / Beautiful People - Wendy Haden / Some Other Eden - Natasha Farrant/ The Next Accident - Lisa Gardener /  Before I Met You - Lisa Jewell / The Boy That Never Was - Karen Perry / Bright Rooms - Jenny Maxwell / Sycamore Row - John Grisham / The Family Tree - Barbara Delinsky / Standing In Another Mans Grave - Ian Rankin / Saints Of  The Shadow Bible - Ian Rankin/Even Dogs In The Wild - Ian Rankin / Rather Be The Devil - Ian Rankin / Don’t WantTo Miss A Thing - Jill Mansell 18

November - Growing Up Twice - Roman Coleman / The Increment - Christ Ryan / Never The Bride - Charlotte Fallowfield / The Devil Wears Scrubs - Frieda McFadden / Until We Collide - Charlotte Fallowfield /Made For Me - Kathryn R Biel / You Had Me At Hello - Mhari McFarlain / No Place To Hide - Susan Lewis / Stalked - Kate  Brennan / Annie Mays Black Book - Debby Holt / How Not To Murder Your Mother - Stephanie Calman / The Man Test - Amanda Askell / After The Party - Lisa Jewell / Perfect - Rachel Joyce / Summer At sea - Beth Labonte / The Appeal - John Grisham / Mince pies & Mistletoe at the Christmas Market - Heidi Swain / My Favourite Husband - Pat McCutcheon/ Christmas At Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop - Jenny Colgan / Christmas Surprise- Jenny Colgan / The Christmas Thief - Mary Higgins-Clark / Deck The Halls - Mary Higgins-Clark / He sees you when You’re Sleeping - Mary Higgins-Clark / The Rose Petal Beach - Dorothy Koomson / The Christmas Killer - Jim Galloway /All I Ever Wanted - Lucy Dillon / One Small Act Of Kind was - Lucy Dillon / Miss Kane’s Christmas - Caroline Michelson / Crying For Help - Casey Watson / Beating About The Bush - Linda Taylor / Wrapped Up In You - Carole Matthews 31

December - Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner / Friends With Partial Benefits - Luke Young / Friends With Full Benefits - Luke Young / The House We Grew Up In - Lisa Jewell / The Day I Lost You - Fionnula Kearney / Chez Stinky - Susan C Daffron / Three Wishes - Lianne Moriarty / Miss Adventure - Geralyn Corallo / Cold Purauit / Judith Cutler / Too Close To Home - Susan Lewis / You Sent Me A Letter - Lucy Dawson / Holding - Graham Norton / The OneThat Got Away - Lucy Dawson / Her Perfect Life - Sam Hepburn / Little Sister - Lucy Dawson / Paper Hearts And  Summer Kisses - Carole Matthews 16 

so there  they are , all 201 books with subjects ranging from murder , Auschwitz,&  domestic violence to weddings , love and dogs and pretty much everything in between 
(Please note , any miss spelling of Authors names is purely because I can’t always read my own writing on the calendar !!!) xx

Knitted yoghurt t

I like crafting , there I've admitted it and if you don't already know me maybe you have got an idea of what I am like from that statement 

I've tried my hand at most arts and crafts , some starting when I was a very small girl and some that I have come to later in life , I have learnt some of them from my Mum ,but many I have just instinctively done 

My current favourites are acrylic painting and wood burning , the latter being one of the most relaxing things I've ever done , but sadly one that can only be done in the summer as the fumes are too much to do inside ! 

So getting back to my initial statement , you may now have a vision of me based on my hobbies 
Long hair , clogs , mismatched clothing , my living areas covered in second hand furniture painted every colour under the sun , random items from skips turned into sofas , picture frames or mugs ? 

Well that is the vision of crafters that you seem to get from television programmes 
Kirsty Allsopp routinely scours skips turning oil cans into chandeliers , ladders into beds and other random impossible things 
A new programme on Channel 4 tonight made a variety of mismatched 'Cuban' themed items for a dining room , clashing colours , many of the items costing more to make than their shop counterparts 

They all portray crafters as people who don't like things neat or matching , who make EVERYTHING in their lives and who never throw anything away 'just in case' 
I know some crafters are like this and that's amazing for them but where are the programmes that portray crafters as normal people who just like to make things for their own enjoyment but don't have to make everything ? 

I feel I fall into that category, I like making things , I do it because I like it but if something can be bought better or for a comparable sum of money then I buy it !! No crafting or 'upcycling' just for the sake of crafting or upcycling 
I do have long hair and like pattern on my clothing but clogs aren't my thing and I've never felt the need to knit my own yoghurt !!

Time for the image of crafters to step out of the 1970s xxx 

The beautiful game

Right , this blog post is a bit of a departure from the normal as I'm going to moan and possibly rant a little bit but there's something I just don't understand

If you are doing a job , say working in sales , and you don't meet the target for sales or even cost your company money then it is a fair assumption that you will be given the required number of warnings and then you will be sacked , given nothing more than a reasonable reference (most employers still do this even if you are a bit rubbish) and a pint down the pub on your last day 

However if you are a football manager then these rules don't apply 
You are given a contract , same as a normal job and then you try to manage your team into winning games , progressing through the various cups and hopefully moving up the league you are in , okay so far right ? 

But if you lose games , lose the confidence of your players , crash out of the cup to a non league side (which will lose the club revenue) and generally give the impression that you don't really care about the job , the club or the fans then you should expect to be sacked the same as anyone else in any other profession 

But no , football doesn't work like that 
If a manager is sacked he gets a lovely little bonus , the rest of his contract brought out which can amount to quite a hefty sum
Some clubs have a clause whereby if the manager gets a new job within the time he's been paid off for then some money has to be repaid to the club , but not all and this just doesn't seem fair 

He is getting rewarded well for doing a bad job , he's not going to resign as that would mean kissing goodbye to the money , even if everyone thinks and hopes that he will 

I can't say that I understand this and I think it's unfair but hey what can I do about it , except maybe a naked pitch invasion to protest but thankfully I'm never going to do that!! Xxxx

Need anything from the Post Office ?

I may have mentioned on here before that sleep and I have an uneasy relationship , don't get me wrong , I LOVE sleep with all my heart but it sometimes doesn't love me back 

When I do eventually fight the insomnia and get to sleep I tend to sleep very deeply and as such I dream , I dream a lot !! 

Now I know we've all had that conversation with someone where they are telling you about that 'crazy mad dream' that they had last night , the conversation that lasts for ages and to be honest is anything but crazy mad , but bear with me 

The one thing I don't ever understand is the random people that appear in my dreams 
I can have people pop up that I haven't seen since my school days , some 30ish years ago , people that I didn't particularly like back then and certainly wouldn't have counted as fiends 
Then I can have people from my twitter feed , like the other night 

My dream was basically going into this room with all of my family and it was staged like a perfect Christmas , beautiful tree , professionally wrapped gifts , just the most beautiful decor ever ....and a pile of books which one of my Twitter friends was selling 
Now I have never met this man and I don't think he hangs about in 'Christmas rooms' flogging books so it was a bit odd 
I introduced myself , we had a cup of coffee and I admired his decor ......and then I woke up , see , nothing amazing but my point is why did this person appear in the dream , I don't think I had tweeted him recently so he wasn't in my mind, very bizarre 


Last nights dream was me preparing to give birth whilst in the consulting room of Noel Fitzpatrick (The Supervet) , with a person a knew from school with me .
Now I don't particularly like children so the thought of giving birth in a vets practice might mean I would prefer cats or dogs (definitely) but the next minute I was queuing up in the Post Office with no sign of kittens , puppies or babies and then I woke up !! 
Some might say it's my body clock telling me to have children but I have taken the batteries out of that clock and put it in the bin so nope , definitely not !! And the person from school wasn't someone I was ever friends with so that was random and I don't need to buy anything from the Post Office thank you very much 

I may add also that none of my dreams are of an adult nature so if you find yourself in one of them , it's okay , we didn't do anything ....except buy/sell books or go shopping !! Xxxxx

Go With The Cake

Wow , I can't believe it has been nearly 11 months since I have written anything on here 

I started out thinking that I would blog about random things that I liked , but I blogged quite a bit to start with and basically have run out of things I like !! 

I've had several ideas in the last few days but they have mainly occurred last thing at night , just before sleep and the one rule I have is that anything that seems a great idea just before sleep probably won't be when you wake !! 

That goes for a lot of things in life , never send that last text at night , yes you know the one , when you are feeling sleepy , romantic , maybe a bit nostalgic and the 'ex text' seems like a great idea - DON'T DO IT ! 

Never post that FB post or tweet (reasons as above!!) 

And NEVER eat the last cake in the cupboard ............... okay  
maybe go with the cake , cakes are okay 😉 Xxxx