This week #2

I enjoyed writing a This week post last week, so here I am again. It means I finally get to write down the books that I am reading, albeit in a minimal form. Maybe someday soon I'll get back to writing posts about individual books ;)

This week has been tiring; the two days of the weekend were not quite enough for me to recover from the ravages of the week before. Mr W and I enjoyed a trip on Sunday to see Strictly Gershwin, a theatrical spectacular with full orchestra and the English National Ballet, although we remain unconvinced by whether or not ballet to Gershwin works (the tapdancing did though!). I was intending to go to London today to meet the lovely Claire from Paperback Reader again and sell/buy books in the Notting Hill Books and Comics Exchange and see the Once upon a wartime exhibition at the IWM which I missed earlier in the year. But I decided that I needed to stay at home and be quiet so that I don't end up battling this tiredness all through the term.

This week in reading.

I read another Maeve Binchy, The copper beech, not one of her better ones, or maybe I was just a bit too tired to enjoy another saga, and this one is more short stories than novel, although the same characters recur.

I read The understudy by David Nicholls of One Day and Starter for Ten fame. I found it rather tedious and certainly not as gripping as either of his other two. I wouldn't suggest that anyone seeks it out, even on the basis of having enjoyed the other two.

I was initially disappointed by Gervase Phinn's Little Village School. I guess I was hoping for Miss Read or Rebecca Shaw, which it wasn't, quite. But I did get into it after a bit and ended up enjoying the tale and the characters, although I didn't think it was as good as his more autobiographical books.

I was hooked by Sinead Moriarty's Me and my sisters. Light reading at its best - characters which I cared about, a plot which kept me reading, and believable.

I also enjoyed Bethan Darwin's Back Home. More than just a story about a modern woman and her relationships, it interweaves a beautiful story of a Welsh war bride and her families. I would really really recommend this to anyone who likes both "chick lit" and second world war stories; chick lit isn't a great way to describe it as it is so much more than this, but I guess I wanted to emphasise that it is an easy and enjoyable read with plenty of depth.

Finally, I have reread Sleeping Beauty by Elizabeth Taylor, a Virago Modern Classic which I shall blog on my other blog soon, it's being reissued at the start of next month and has a beautiful pink cover!

This week in the house

Mr W has been revising hard for his Open University exam on Monday, but he did start to paint the hall walls. And he finally bought and fitted a light into the bathroom so we no longer have a bulb dangling from the ceiling. We've also been grown up and bought two smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide detector, but we haven't been grown up enough to install them yet. A job for the weekend.

This week in cooking

Unfortunately we ate most of the things that I'd got in the freezer last week. I did make a fish pie over the weekend which did for two nights, and a large couscous salad for several weekday meals, as well as a large veggie chilli for the freezer. I've done some baking too from a new cookbook and with my mincemeat and I'll be sharing those recipes in due course.

This week in training

I definitely overdid things a bit last week, so a much gentler week this week. I cycled a total of 52 miles this week, a little less than last week as Mr W picked me up from my late shift at work on Thursday. I've only managed 19km in the pool (over 8 sessions) due to being tired, but also due to starting the pre-Tenerife training. This involves some interval training rather than plodding up and down, and I think it is actually harder work even though I don't swim as far as the aim is to do different exercises and then do short bursts of swimming as fast as you can. I've done the other two Week 4 Couch to 5 k runs and today went out on a longer run. I wanted to try a new route which I can only do at the weekend as it's not very well lit, and I started with the first Week 5 session, but then continued running/walking until I got back. It was over 3.5 miles so quite pleased with that!

Time for a rest....