Hayley

I have Wakenhyrst on my kindle and I'm glad you said it draws on folklore and supernatural traditions because I love that sort of thing!

Oooh I haven't heard anybody else mention the lioness story. I do think that would help. I did remember to send you the link to that article the publisher wrote didn't I? It really made me wish it had won the Booker prize, without even having read the book!

Did you enjoy reading Ducks, Newbury Port all the way through? I've only ever read short examples of stream-of consciousness novels and I don't know whether I'd start to lose focus with such a long book in that style. Especially when it barely ever uses a full stop. I hope you enjoy your next book, whatever it is!

Indie crime publishers Fahrenheit Press have their ebooks on sale for 50p. It doesn't look like they're on sale when you click the book but the discount is applied when you add it to basket. I just got 'Killer Instincts', 'Noirville' (which is an anthology so I felt like that was a particularly good deal!) and 'The Eternity Fund' (because I got Liz Monument's other book 'Iterations' a while ago and I think this one is related, if not a direct sequel). http://www.fahrenheit-press.com/books.html

I actually was quite sad to hear about Anthony Bourdain's suicide because I used to watch his programme (I think it was called 'No Reservations') with my dad. It was a really long time ago so I can't recommend it, but I liked to see all the different places he went to. It sounds like the book kind of highlights why he was struggling so much behind the scenes. It can't have been a good atmosphere for him or anyone who worked with him. I'm glad to see you got a 5/5 book, it's been a while! . Midnight in Chernobyl does sound good. There is something fascinating (in an awful, quite terrifying way) about the impact of nuclear incidents.

I only managed a couple of chapters of Notes from an Exhibition when I tried it a few years ago, I'm glad I didn't keep reading to the end now! I just started reading Help the Witch by Tom Cox.

Thanks for the reminder . December's going to be really busy for me so I'm looking forward to setting aside some focused reading that weekend. Has anyone decided what they're reading yet?

This is why the forum is to blame for me having no shelf space left

I just want to make it clear that I was talking about Macmillan when I said I hope they change their minds, not the library! I think it's crazy that they went ahead with idea of severely restricting library access to ebooks. All they've done is make themselves look greedy.

Oops, sorry! Glad you found it in the end

I had heard about this but didn’t realise they’d actually gone ahead with the idea. Hopefully, once they realise they aren’t getting the huge rise in sales they were obviously hoping for, they’ll change their minds!

Orbit have loads of books for 99p at the moment. Including Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rosewater by Tade Thompson (which won the Arthur C. Clarke award for this year)

Oh good! Where did you manage to get it from in the end?

You have my absolute sympathy, I’ve been exactly the same. The cough and retuning headache just doesn’t want to go. I hope you’re feeling at least a bit better now! It’s been really dull for the last couple of days here. It’s currently raining and something just outside my bedroom window is making a very annoying loud dripping sound! It’s definitely not as cold as it was last week though.

… I feel less organised now . I think eating Christmas nibbles before it's actually Christmas is a tradition in itself, so that makes it ok . I am excited for decorations now. My aunt came over from Ireland this weekend and bought us a lovely sleigh decoration for the tree. So now I want to put it up!

I don't know why we didn't use this thread last year but, as we're still here for Christmas 2019, I thought it was time to revive it . So, how are your Christmas preparations going? I've bought presents for three people so far (my niece, one of my sisters and someone I'm doing 'secret Santa' for), which I don't think is too bad, considering we're not quite in December yet.

I really need to stop buying new books before I've read the ones I have, but I'm very tempted to buy The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale to read in December. I have got a book of Dickens' Christmas Stories to read too. Some of the stories will be re-reads but I'm pretty sure there's some I've never read before in there.

Yay I finally got them all! Thanks . I would never have got the butchers one!

That's very interesting! I didn't know Heartstopper started out as a kickstarter campaign. I wonder if the author tried to have it traditionally published before setting up the kickstarter. I actually just remembered, there is 'Unbound', which is entirely based on crowdsourcing to publish new books, so I suppose the idea isn't really that unusual!

No! I'm still completely stuck on 'Angel's Butchers', the sign that says 'District of Columbia', the two people walking and the greengrocers. I'm just guessing at random at this point, so any clues appreciated

Do you want the answer or just a clue? If you want a clue, look for something you might buy in a bookshop. I did see a post on twitter by caboodle saying that, if you’ve finished the game, you should click to start again to find the extra clue. You don’t have to fill the rest in again though.

It would be against the rules to promote your own book, sorry, but thanks for checking

Do you want any clues? I’m still stuck on the two people walking at the bottom. @Onion Budgie did you get the extra clue, that leads you to a riddle?

I still don’t know what it is but that does help, thanks I hadn’t really thought about the type of car!

Oh, sorry, I thought you had specific people in mind . It would be interesting if a book could be entirely crowdsourced using something like patreon. I wonder how well that would work.