Hayley

I remember picking books from their catalogue at primary school, but I’ve never used them as an adult. I kind of forgot they existed to be honest... They went into administration owing indie publisher Galley Beggar Press more than £40,000 too, which isn’t good. It’s nice to see that people have raised so much money to help save them though: https://www.gofundme.com/f/galley-begging?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet

That is really bad. If you're sick and can't do a job that's fair enough, but he should at least have let you know he wasn't coming, not just turned his phone off! Fingers crossed for Monday. It feels very cold here tonight. We had a crazy burst of hail just as I was nearly home earlier. I bent my head because it was stinging my face and got it down the back of my neck instead! Had to do a little wiggle when I got through the door to get it out of my top

Oh dear, I hope it gets done today!

Oooh thanks Chrissy! I'm really not a good cook, but these sound pretty safe so I might give it a try!

It's funny you should say that because I was literally looking at Jacob's Room is Full of Books yesterday, but I didn't realise she'd already written a similar book! This was bothering me so much I had to look it up , apparently it's from a cartoon that George De Maurier wrote for Punch! https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/163300.html

brilliant, thanks for sharing @muggle not and merry Christmas!

You've read loads in December so far! I'm glad you've enjoyed what you've read too . Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on A Boy Called Christmas, I've heard good things about it and Matt Haig is an author I've been considering reading for a while. I hope the youtube stuff isn't stressing you out too much either. I know a lot of people are having real problems with it. Hopefully they'll realise that they've just confused the majority of creators and sort something out soon.

Wow, that is a lot. It sounds much nicer and less stressful now though! I love peppermint creams, home made ones sound like an excellent present! How difficult are they to make?

It was very windy in the Midlands yesterday and I had heard it was worse in the South. I hope it hasn't caused too much damage! I don't want to jinx it, but it's actually calm and sunny here at the moment!

As others have said, I really hope 2020 will be far less of a struggle for you. Take extra good care of yourself

Exciting! I love new year threads. I should probably get my reading log up to date before it's time to make a new one... I love your festive profile picture by the way

What a shame that both books turned out to be a struggle @willoyd! I hope Christmas, A Biography is more enjoyable. No need to apologise! I hope you had fun celebrating your grandmother's birthday . That was a lot of books you managed to get through too, especially considering you had a busy day! I'm very tempted to read The Gunslinger, but the length of the series is a bit daunting! Have you read all of them? I managed to finish Who Killed Zebedee? by Wilkie Collins (I just had the second story left to read, John Jago's Ghost) so I'm pretty happy with that

You might have seen this already @Angury, but I thought you'd find this controversial interview with Lucy Ellman interesting, especially her views on having children! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/lucy-ellmann-ducks-newburyport-interview

I expected that The Woman in Black was going to be quite cliched horror before I read it, but I agree that it actually isn't. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I'm slightly put off reading her other work after your review of Dolly though!

Pretty well then Thanks, you too! Have you decided what you're reading today yet?

So this weekend has been, if possible, even more mad than I expected, but I happily took my book to bed last night and managed to finish the first short story in Help the Witch. I'll definitely be reading the next one later and, as it's much shorter, I'll either keep going or switch to Wilkie Collins. How's everyone else's reading going?

Yeah I read an extract of it earlier and it does sound interesting. Actually, all the books in that sale sound pretty good!

I've been hoping someone else would read The Corset because I've been dying to talk about the ending! Great review by the way!

Do you know what year it would have been, roughly, that you read it?

Sorry, I forgot to include a link again! It’s on their website here: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit19-ebook-sale-uk/ but it’s also just on the kindle store.

Orbit have their 2019 releases on sale for £1.99. I'm very tempted by The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.

I have Frenchman's Creek on my shelf so I'm glad you liked it and it's good to hear that it's an easy read because I wasn't expecting that it would be at all!

I have four sisters, two nephews and a niece, so that pushes my number of presents to buy up quite a lot! I love the build-up too. I don't wrap things as I buy them, I like to make a pile and wrap them all in one night, with Christmas music on . Has anybody got any Christmassy ideas for a carafe? I basically bought it because it was on sale for £1 and looked pretty. I had vague ideas of filling it with something for a secret santa I'm taking part in, but I don't actually know what. I can't spend more than another £4 on the secret santa either... Aww that's really nice of you! The great thing about alcohol as a present is that nobody expects you to wrap it either

I'm trying very hard to convince myself that I don't need to buy another book, because I have a serious backlog of books I need to read! I'm not very far into Tom Cox's Help the Witch, so I'll be finishing that. I've also got a Wilkie Collins story to read from a collection of two called Who Killed Zebedee? (named after the first short story), but then I'm planning to read some of Dickens' Christmas stories