chesilbeach

Ordinary day at work, now at home dreaming of fabric and sewing machines … yes, that's how exciting my life is!

Daily ration of The Big Bang Theory

Just catching up on all the Doc Martin talk … I don't actually watch it, although I've seen the odd clip here and there, but we went on holiday a couple of years ago to the village where it's filmed, Port Isaac in Cornwall. Our cottage had a view over the village, and I could see Doc Martin's house from our window!

It did! Joking aside, it does worry me that I do have a tendency to dislike films, books, television programmes and music if they're very hyped up. I definitely try to keep an open mind, and I wanted to love it. I would say that I did really enjoy parts of the film, especially the scene around Let It Go which I thought was beautiful when the ice castle was being built, and I was chatting at work about it today, and I wondered if I'd have loved it more if I'd seen it in a cinema with lots of kids who were loving it, as that would have enhanced the atmosphere, rather than just the two of us middle aged adults in our own living room.

The 11-plus exam was introduced after the Butler Education Act in 1944, which also saw the introduction of the tripartite system, with grammar, secondary technical and secondary modern schools. This was the start of big changes in the education system in the UK in the post-war years, however, public schools (see below) were responsible for their own intake, and would have probably had their own entrance exam rather than use the 11-plus. Confusingly, public schools in England are actually independent private fee-paying schools as opposed to state-run schools (which the majority of children attend). Malory Towers would have been a public school, and I would imagine the pupils would have had to take an entrance exam and attend an interview along with their parents, as well as provide references from previous schools or character references if they hadn't previously attended school. Very exclusive and very expensive, and only for the professional and upper classes.

That hadn't even occurred to me! Thank you … for The Dynamite Room at least! I'll probably forget to check it as some point, and then won't be bothered to look it up, and before you know it, I've given up on it all completely!

Time for a monthly round up of my reading. I think I've had a good start to the year so far, with my January reading including a book from my J. L. Carr reading list. I also enjoyed the group reading of the Malory Towers books, and I've started listening to the audiobooks of the E. F. Benson Mapp and Lucia books, finishing the first book, Queen Lucia, this month. I've set up my Jar of Destiny to help decide which books to read next, although I'll still need to read certain books outside of these choices, such as my library group book and any group reads, such as the English Counties Challenge books. This has meant rather than separating out my challenge books from my normal TBR, I've included them all, as they've all gone in the jar, so my TBR now stands at 55 books. I bought 6 new books, plus one pre-ordered book was delivered to my Kindle (so that doesn't count, right? ) Favourite book of the month was The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt, and least favourite had to be Perfect by Rachel Joyce. I've read 16 books plus one audiobook, giving me a total of 17 for the month, and a total of 3961 pages. (I've never done a page count before, but thought I'd give it a go … it'll probably last, um, maybe one or two months before I forget to make a note of it! ). So that was how my January reading went. Roll on February!

I started The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton this morning (it was the latest pick from my jar), but I'm two chapters in and I'm not a fan so far. I'll keep going for now, as it's not so unlikeable that I can't carry on, but I'll need to enjoy it more over the next few chapters if I'm going to finish it, and trying to keep an open mind for now

You've read more books than me! I've read 16 books (and six of those were Malory Towers ) and listened to one audiobook. Glad you've had a good month of reading, but now it's time for me to call you a reading machine.

Modern Family - there's a batch of series one episodes on at the moment

We're having another group read for the English Counties Challenge, and this time we've decided on Middlemarch by George Eliot. It comprises eight books within the one volume, so we're going to try and read one book at a time, but we're unsure about timing, so for the first book, we're aiming to read it in over the next three weeks, and then see how the timing has worked, and go from there. We'll be discussing our progress along the way, so there will be spoilers! Synopsis (from the back cover): George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to a pedantic scholar Casauban; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the splendid beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrade, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories entwine, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for grown up people'. Please feel free to join in! We may find we need to change the timescales as we go along, but will update this first post to say what instalment we're currently reading, with links to where each discussion starts, but please bear in mind, there will be spoilers! BOOK ONE: Miss Brooke (chapters 1-12) reading until Sunday 22nd Feb 2015 BOOK TWO: Old and Young (chapters 13-22) reading until Sunday 22nd Mar 2015 - spoilers for Book 2 start here. BOOK THREE: Waiting for Death (chapters 23-33) reading until Sunday 12th Apr 2015 - spoilers for Book 3 start here. BOOK FOUR: Three Love Problems (chapters 34-42) reading until Sunday 3rd May 2015 - spoilers for Book 4 start here BOOK FIVE: The Dead Hand (chapters 43-53) reading until Sunday 24th May 2015 - spoilers for Book 5 start here BOOK SIX: The Widow and the Wife (chapters 54-62) reading until Sunday 15th June 2015 - spoilers for Book 6 start here BOOK SEVEN: Two Temptations (chapters 63-71) reading until Sunday 5th July 2015 BOOK EIGHT: Sunset and Sunrise (chapters 72-85) and FINALE reading until Sunday 26th July 2015 All reading dates subject to change after discussion.

It's February at last! January always seems such a long month, doesn't it? What's going on with you today?

It's just gone midnight, so thought I might as well start the new topic off for February now! I've got a choice of three books to start in the morning, but haven't decided which one it will be yet. What are you reading this month?

I thought those lines were amusing, but not laugh out loud funny, and there were only a couple of them for me. On the other hand, I love quite a lot of Disney (mainly the older stuff) and Pixar films, so I guess it's a case of each to their own!

Finished the last book this evening. It was lovely to go back and read them all again, I read them so many times as a child, and I know this is at least my third set of books, as the first two sets I had when I was little both fell apart from over use, and this set was a reprint from the last 1990s. The only disappointing thing for me in the last book is

They're hardly taxing though, are they? Easy (re)reading, short books, feels a bit like having a week off proper books!

Well, that's the Malory Towers series done and dusted. Just finished the last one, nicely timed for the end of the month.

Just finished Frozen. It was ok, but nothing special. In future, I'd watch Beauty and the Beast again instead.

Yep, never seen it before. I worry that too many people have told me how great it is, that I'll be underwhelmed, but we'll see.

We're going to watch Frozen tonight … wish me luck!

Louis Armstrong's Desert Island Discs http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y1rb. Brilliant.

Good idea! I think there are plenty of other ones for the wish list before that one!

Definitely not!

Love this idea!!! https://twitter.com/booksaremybag/status/561456892070088704 Tea made by @literaryteaco

The House on the Strand was odd, and I didn't really enjoy it - I only read it as it was a book for my library reading group, otherwise I'd never have picked it up! Here's my review, but in a nutshell, loved the writing, didn't like the story!