Madeleine

Give unto Others by Donna Leon - this is the 31st book in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series,and though I haven't read all of them this one is one of the weakest. It starts off promisingly enough, when the daughter of an old friend of Brunetti's mother comes to ask if he will privately try to find out what is going with her son-in-law, after her daughter tells her he has frightened her,although no physical harm has been done. Brunetti, partly for sentimental reasons, agrees to try to help, but there's only so much he can do on his own, so he brings in his 2 trusted colleagues to "discreetly" help him and he gradually comes to realise that very large sums, supposedly donations to a charity, are involved, and he soon starts to realise he may be compromising his career, and is no longer sure how far he can go. And that's generally the plot, which becomes repetitive, with long parts of the book not really going anywhere, and at times I felt the book could have been called "The Musings of Guido Brunetti", as there are several of his flights of fancy and thoughts on various subjects, which after a while started to feel like padding. Coupled with a slightly open ending, which isn't unusual in these books, I felt somewhat cheated out of a decent storyline, as to be honest it's not the most exciting plotline anyway, and I did almost give up halfway through. Very disappointing, though Brunetti is likeable as ever. 5/10

Love on your side - Thompson Twins

Top of the World - The Carpenters

Same Old Scene - Roxy Music

A New Flame - Simply Red

song Sung Blue - Neil Diamond

Blue Suede Shoes - Elvis Presley

Get on your feet - Gloria Estefan

thank you, the colour in the middle one is coming out a little bit more now that it's drying.

thank you!

And the 3rd one, not sure which one I like best out of this one and the blue one.

Managed to download another pic, this one is a bit insipid though!

Did some more paint pouring today, for some reason I can only download this picture, I was really pleased with it, I used a glue spreader to spread the paint around a bit as I haven't got many bright colours left so tried to use the royal blue one sparingly.

Hunting high and low - Aha

I enjoyed this one, I think it was the last one of the series I read, I still have the others' somewhere but they are so big! Sadly he's no longer with us.

With a little help from my friends - Beatles/Joe Cocker/Wet Wet Wet etc

Falling into You - Celine Dion

Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Currently into mosaicking, here's a sunflower I did today - the pointed petals were a bit difficult to cover exactly,so the grouting is a little uneven - and a coaster I did the other week. But at least the tiles are all pre cut.

Has anyone been having trouble with Library Thing lately? It no longer seems to save my "currently reading" selection.

Many rivers to cross - Cher/loads of others

How to find love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry - this is one of the author's earlier books,and after a slightly depressing start, with the main character Emilia, sitting by her father's hospital bed, promising him that she'll carry on running his bookshop in the Cotswold town of Peasebrook, and the back story of how her parents met, the story finally starts properly. For Emilia, still wrestling with her grief, finds the bookshop, though it's much loved by the town's residents and visitors, is deep in debt and as she struggles to find a way of making it pay it's way whilst keeping her father's ethos, we learn about the other users and locals. In the meantime, an unscrupulous property developer is desperate to get his hands on the shop, so that he can build even more flats. Secrets are revealed as various people's back stories are revealed, and the reader can play the guessing game of wondering who will end up with who by the end. I must admit I got one of these plotlines wrong, and overall it wasn't a bad read once it got going, though perhaps some of the various storyline endings were a little too neat, but as a piece of escapism it's fine. 6.5/10

Love will tear us apart - Joy Division

Love is like Oxygen - Sweet

Butterfly on a Wheel - The Mission