Books to Read Poster No 41

Not a very good picture but the best of six attempts, after which I decided it would have to do. 

No prizes for guessing this was Animal Farm. It wasn't  necessarily next on my list to read but like Frankenstein and The Art of War it came up on  Audible's free to members list, bundled together with 1984, which is also on the poster but which  I won't tackle quite yet.

I was wary of reading this because I read it as a teenager and found it terribly upsetting, but it wasn't nearly so bad this time round. In part because I knew what was coming, in part because it was read in a light tone (Stephen Fry doing a splendid job, not a phrase that falls from my fingers lightly but credit where it's due) which pointed up the satire more than my teenage brain would have known to do, and partly and sadly because I am no longer surprised at the terrible things people do in the name of ideology which profit themselves and their cronies. 

Did I enjoy it? Actually yes I did. I wouldn't ever have re-read it without the prompt from the poster but I'm glad it was on there. 

We are going away for  few days tomorrow so no blogging for a bit, but the good news is that there will be lots to write about when I get back. 

Baking Subscription October

 

These are Malted Chocolate Millionaire Squares and they're horrible. Partly my fault as the toffee is too runny. Partly their fault as the malted chocolate powder you put in the shortbread base gives it a strange texture and flavour. Partly nobody's fault,  milk chocolate topping would have been nicer than plain. 

They must be horrible because I made them on Friday and 12 of the 16 squares are still in the tin. I hope next month's, which is the last, will be nicer.

More From Wales

One of the nice things about being on Ravelry is that if you go somewhere new you can usually find someone local who you're already in contact with on one or other of the interest forums and Wales was no exception. We had a very nice coffee at the Harlech Castle cafe with someone I know from The Archers board. We might otherwise not have gone to Harlech which would have ben a shame as it's an interesting little town and the castle is not only amazing in itself but renders up some spectacular views.  

The afternoon was not quite so successful. We had found details of a walk nearby which took you down through woodlands to a valley floor from where you had good views of a waterfall and then you could walk back up the other side. Sounded lovely. Sadly it turns out that my vertigo, from which I have only suffered in the last ten years has got distinctly worse. We didn't get quite to the bottom of the valley before we had to turn back as I just couldn't go any further. Actually the thought of going back the way we had come was almost as bad as the thought of tackling whatever vertiginous horrors the other side had in store but we retraced our steps on the principle of 'better the devil you know'. I still have some nice photos of the bits we did do though, although sadly not the waterfall. 

 

Honestly, I felt such a wimp. 

Books to Read Poster No 40

 

Yes another one already. This was serendipitous, as I was browsing the section on Audible that includes titles that are free to members and I saw this one. Since  I know the library doesn't have it and I was loth to spend money on it I was very pleased to see it crop up It was also very short which meant I listened to the whole thing last evening while I was knitting on some socks.  

Apologies for the totally rubbish photo. You might guess from it that the book was James Clavell's Shogun except that that's not the sort of book that appears on lists like this, and it was in fact The Complete Art of War by Sun Tzu. This is an early Chinese treatise on - well - the art of war, and is apparently still looked upon as some sort of mystically amazing text book on warfare, despite the fact that he was talking about archers and chariots and now we talk about missiles and drones. 

You know, I don't want to be snarky about something that is held in such high esteem but really, who needs to be told that if you have to wage war the way to do it is to be properly prepared, keep your supply lines going, keep your troops' morale high, engage the enemy when you know you can beat him, beat him quickly, and don't get bogged down in siege warfare.

I mean, that's common sense, right? 

It did make me recall something I read when I was researching some WW2 campaigns for my Ph D, which was that Field Marshall Montgomery never committed his troops to an action until he knew he could win it. It was part of the reason his men had such faith in him. Funnily enough his name did not appear in any of the lists I found of famous modern military commanders known to have used The Art of War as a personal text book. 

Doesn't mean he didn't. There again maybe he was just a man with common sense and an innate capacity for military leadership. 

At Last! New Nails!

 

All my previous nail art had to be cleaned off before surgery and after my surgery the girl who does my nails was ill for several weeks so I have been walking around with 'naked' finger tips for a long while. Odd to think that a couple of years ago that was standard. I daresay the breather did them good. 

I had originally planned to have a post op celebratory theme with streamers and balloons and such but by the time they were done the op. was long behind me and I wasn't feeling all that celebratory about it   really, so I went with the season and had Halloween ones instead. Hence the bright orange background and black stamps. 

They are bright and shiny and I love them: I also think I'm developing a bit of a thing for ravens!

Baking Subscription September

 

These are white chocolate and blueberry cupcakes and they're very nice indeed. Texture is more like a muffin than a cupcake but I'm not complaining. 

They were a bit faffy which is probably the main reason that it took me three days to get them finished (the other reason being that I was poorly sick and had to go to A and E at 11.00 pm on Friday night and spent most of yesterday in bed trying to decide if I could stay awake long enough to drag myself out of bed and get dressed. The very eventual answer to that was that I could do part 1 i.e. get up late afternoon but not part 2 i.e. get dressed. Happy to report that today I got up and dressed in a timely manner). 

So you make the cupcake. You put some white chocolate chips into the cupcake and sprinkle more on top. Not sure why you need to sprinkle any on the top since they later get hidden, but that's what it said so that's what I did, Then you make blueberry jam. As is often the case when I am asked to make jam mine left a bit to be desired in the thickening department. I'm beginning to think I should just boil it up as fast as I can and then leave it on the heat  until it sets in the pan, rather than bother trying to follow the directions about heat and timing and simmering and such in the recipe. 

Once the cupcake and the jam are cooled you cut a small amount out of the cupcake and spoon some of the blueberry jam (which at that point in the recipe they suddenly started referring to as syrup, so possibly they couldn't get theirs to set either) and then you put the cut out piece of the cupcake back. Then you make buttercream and split it in half. Half you leave plain, the other half you swirl more of the blueberry jam/syrup into. Then you put the two alternately into an icing bag fixed with a star nozzle and pipe a swirl of buttercream on the top of the buns, and then top each swirl off with a blueberry. Phew! 

I did all that and I hope someone is now clapping my efforts at piping the swirls because I was beyond reason pleased with how well they came out. 

Books to Read Poster No 39

I've just checked back and it was in early June that I last  ticked off one of these. It's been a busy summer and there hasn't been much time for listening or reading I suppose, plus of course there have been some health issues along the way.

However I have just finished listening to another of the poster books on Audible. I am very happy indeed to report that this one came free as part of my membership because otherwise I would have been a bit annoyed at having paid for it.  

Here is the picture from the poster. It will be no help if you're trying to guess what the book is. 

What might be of more help is if I copy my Audible review here. I don't always review things on Audible but this time I did. 

Tedious Tale:Truly Terrible Narration

The book is written in the style of its time so the tedium comes in-built to a certain extent. There is no such excuse for the narration. Was the narrator as bored as he sounded, especially during those parts of the book supposedly told by Frankenstein, or had he swallowed a bottle of Mogadon? Editing should have picked up the words he didn't know how to pronounce. There were several, the worst being tumult which occurred several times. It's tyoomult, not tummelt. As for the voicing of the so called monster, I found the use of a generic Yorkshire accent for this offensive.

This is a trail blazing classic and I'm glad I've finally acquainted myself with it, but oh! how I wish I had just read it rather than put myself through the quite unpleasant experience of listening to it. 

It's true that I'm glad I've 'read it' and I wouldn't be averse to reading some commentary on it as it throws up all sorts of ethical questions about scientific discovery and the rights and responsibilities of scientists and engineers that are very pertinent today. I suspect it's also quite susceptible to a psychoanalytic analysis because you could argue there wasn't a monster, it was all just Victor. I quite like that idea. 

It is though a nasty story with an equally nasty protagonist, and by that I don't mean the 'monster'. Victor Frankenstein is a wheedling hubristic irresponsible cowardly self justifying horror. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Sorry it's been two book posts in a row. Something different next time. 

A Few Books I've Read Recently

They're all crime, so feel free to skip if crime novels aren't your thing.  

First up is Sanctum by Denise Mina. Denise Mina is one of the darlings of the Scot Lit world despite being mainly a genre writer. Her recent novella Rizzio was praised to the skies by many of the people I know. I read it and while I wouldn't say it was bad, because it wasn't, I don't really know what all the fuss is about. My reaction was mainly 'Meh!' It was short and didn't take long to read so that was a plus really, but it wouldn't make my short list of the top ten Scottish books of 2021. 

I have read some of Mina's crime novels and again my reaction was generally, yeah, but. Sanctum I enjoyed despite it being one of those twisty turny thriller type things where the writer feels obliged to spring a major surprise every 50 pages and fasten off with an ending no-one saw coming. I'm not a huge fan of that sort of book, but this one held my interest, mainly because of the unreliable first person narrator, and the skill with which Mina had him reveal himself, warts and all (although there wasn't much other than warts really) through his own words. And the ending did surprise me, so again, that's a plus. 

The next two are the previous and current choices for Saturday Slaughters, the crime reading group at the library. Last month was Tony Parsons' Girl on Fire.  Given that we had an excellent turn out last Saturday and everyone present, young and old, male and female absolutely loathed this book I think I'm safe to say it's not worth the effort of reading. It was a page turner, but it was illogical, badly constructed, glorified guns, was full of acronyms, and had long sections which made us all suspect that the author was getting payback for  a bitter divorce. It did explain the difference between an AK 47 and an AK 74, but honestly if you really want to know, Google is your friend here. 

The current one which I read vey quickly as I took it to Glasgow and back last weekend is Claire Mackintosh's Let Me Lie. This is also a twisty turny thriller type thing where the writer feels obliged to spring a major surprise every 50 pages and fasten off with an ending no-one saw coming. I quite enjoyed this one too, although I did foresee several of the surprises - although not, to be fair, the one on the final page. And that one was a cracker. I did find the book  a tad long in places and my interest levels did drop for a while about 75% of the way through but if this is your type of book I think you'll enjoy it. Although if this is your type of book you have probably read it already. 

(images from e-bay)

Well I finally found some energy somewhere

last week and used it up mainly on the crafting table. I made some Christmas tags and a Halloween card both for swaps

I finished a pair of socks for myself which were part of a Halloween Knitalong, These qualified because the yarn colour was Godric's Glory and the label told me that Godric was a character in HBO's series True Blood which is all about vampires apparently. Who knew? Not me. Nice socks though.

I did a jigsaw puzzle, not a particularly challenging one but I wasn't really up for jigsaw challenges. I'd done this one before and enjoyed it, so I did it again. 

And a couple of bits of knitting from earlier in the year that never made it here. First up a top down short sleeved top which I tried to get finished to take to Wales - the knitting was done but it took too long to dry when I blocked it for me to be able to take it. Shame as it would have come in handy as  the weather in Wales was glorious. As it hasn't been since we returned to Orkney. Certainly not lovely enough  to wear a t-shirt type top. Next year perhaps....?

And another pair of socks I made for myself with a skein of wool bought for me for my birthday by my grandsons. 

I've also been doing some very fiddly cross stitch but there's no point in posting a picture of that. It's so fiddly that even if  I posted a picture only once a week it would be hard to see the progress made. 

Tanybwlch

 Because I have no wish to inflict my on-going post-op problems on anyone, least of all myself when one day I come to read this again, here is another instalment from our Welsh holiday.

I suppose even I can't go to North Wales without some steam engine engagement. After we'd finished at Plas Brondanw the OH suggested that we go to Tanybwlch for lunch as it's his favourite station as far as narrow gauge goes. There didn't seem any reasonable way of saying 'Have you not already had more than enough  steam engine action for one week?' so instead I said yes. And so we went. 

We were lucky enough to catch two steam engines doing their thing while we had lunch, although these photos are both of the same one

It is a very pretty little station 

there's a memorial for the men from the Ffestiniog Railway lost in two world wars. Naturally enough it's made of welsh slate, and I find the design very pleasing. I tend to go for clean and simple lines in monuments as well as buildings, furniture etc. Definitely not a Rococo Gal. 

So although I don't quite get the steam engine thing it was quite a fun round off to the day really.