My kinda reads

If you haven't already made acquaintance, might I introduce you to the wonderful internet world of Goodreads.com?
 

Goodreads will take you on a journey of step-stone recommendations to help you build, in eventuality, that previously notioned higher-than-scope library of your preferred book flavour. You'll get yourself one of those precariously tall ladders, which slide sidelong down tracks the length of narrow mezzanine-style walkways, and we'll earn this reading business the badass extreme sporting title we all know that it warrants. 

Readers are hardcore.

Currently loving Kristin Cashore's Graceling Realm series. Graceling Katsa and Po fights were wonderful. That idea of connecting with someone on a romantic level via the medium of ass-kicking. Oh, it was fantastic (and very hardcore)! I loved Katsa and Po from the off, just finished loving Brigan and Fire's love story, and now I wait with knees-a-knocking for the delivery of Bitterblue. Call me a sap, call me a romantic. You may even call me a YA hippie; I won't deny it. I delight in the words that unfold stories of characters falling all different ways, but ultimately into 'love'.

This is just one of the reoccurring themes on my bookshelves, mostly in and between fantasy novels. I also love those books where, at the end, you deliberately try to slow yourself down when you realise there are just four pages to go, savoring the world you've become lost inside in recent days. I will not leave Narnia, Mr. Lewis! You can't make me. I'm hardcore!

 Oh, but Goodreads; what a wonderful place. I now 'want to read' an impossible and unrealistic measure of trilogies and series that I most likely won't ever achieve - not for want of optimism and try - but if you ever want for that gargantuous library, there is a good source point. 

I will be like a thirsty dog waiting for the postman over the coming days. Poor fellow. If I do turn rabid in the meantime, I shall be sure to have a complaint ready for Royal Mail. 

Tittles and Crosses

P.S. Something of our trip to Chester Zoo last week.

This photo does not do the courtyard justice. I could have sat here all day.

In the reflection: Georgia's connection with the Orangutan infant is too dear.

 

My little Conservationist

 

A weather eye on the horizon

I am a very lucky girl sometimes. 

Of late, I have been particularly affluent to receive an exquisite gift from Mr Quinn. This, below: a stunning moleskin notebook, detailed with Smaug of the lonely mountain. 

 

Inside there is a secret compartment with a two-sided map of Tolkien's Wilderland. The skin is silky soft and the pages are ivory kissed with the richness of gold. It is flawless. There is no sharpness to it's corners; no threat of the paper attacking you with a sly, searing slice. It welcomes your need to stroke the cover and feel it brush down your fingers as you let the pages fall, reminding you of those enchanting fairytale libraries that ascent higher than the building in which they stand and your hunger to consume the infinite amount of literature.

I adore every bit of craftsmanship put into this book. Anyone who panged with jealousy as Belle entered the library of the Beast's castle will understand my appreciation. It is almost too good to write in. I mean, how could my rough scrawl possibly be worthy of such a workbench? It seems I should practice calligraphy before unleashing my unruly pen on it. And, the most baffling of things: I hadn't a clue what to write!

I graffiti on everything lately. Various notebooks, scraps of paper, envelopes etc. Every momentary thought must be captured on some surface, in some illegible writing, to be deciphered and cross referenced against other post-its later, to eventually formulate a sort-of structured sentence. Surely, I wasn't short of ideas?

The answer came off the back of a pointer given on a course I have started. It is a course on writing for children which was purchased from - now, don't you scoff you cynical cats - Groupon. Actually, it has proven itself rather insightful already, and draws you to seemingly obvious practices. For example, keeping a weather diary. Of course, I should already be doing this; noting how the sun and sky work together at different times of day, the actions and severity of different winds against plant life, the cold and warmth, and the feelings that each evoke. What better way, then, to be able to reference appropriate climate settings?

So this is what I will record in my journal. It deserves only the most idyllist and conscious writing, after all. I hope I do it justice.

Tittles and Crosses x