Friday Catch Up #16

On the train home, getting nice views of the Cairngorms.

Okay, let’s try and get back into this. I have a lot of catching up still to do on the blog, with my visit Up North and Christmas presents still to post about. The above is from my train journey home – the Inverness-Glasgow train gets such lovely views of the Cairngorms. Very hard to photograph from a moving train at dusk though!

Things I’ve enjoyed this week

The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds by J.M.R. Higgs (buy)
I bought this last autumn, got super excited about it after one chapter and then forgot all about it. I raced through the rest this week and it’s one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking books I’ve read in ages. Much like the KLF themselves, it’s equal parts hilarious, intelligent and deranged, and not a biography but more of a carefully constructed tale of the KLF’s history of coincidences, influences and random acts of madness. Most interestingly, he builds their story alongside that of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which I am not even going to attempt to summarise. I was a little unsettled after all the book’s talk of coincidence to realise that I too have had an unread copy of The Illuminatus! sitting on my bookshelf for decades. It would seem the time has come to read it.

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (buy – for 95p!)
The first volume of The Cazalet Chronicles, which tells the story of an extended middle/upper class family starting just before World War 2. I’ve had this a while but finally started reading it over Christmas, just a week before the author died. I’m not sure if it’s just a fault of the ebook version (as it’s also riddled with typos), but the narration jumps from character to character without any break so it can be a little hard to follow but, much like Parade’s End, you’re best to just go with the flow until it makes sense. Anyway, I liked this a lot as you get into everyone’s heads – the kids, parents, grandparents and a few friends and servants. Not a huge amount really happens, but I like that in a book. Definitely picking up the rest soon.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (buy)
I read this back in November, but I just found a review in my drafts so bonus! I read an excerpt of this on Tor (good resource for SF & Fantasy related books) and decided to pick it up. It’s a fairly typical YA book about a girl trying to fit into college, but what’s interesting is that she’s famous on the internet for writing fan fiction about a Harry Potter-esque series of books. There are excerpts from the “real” Simon Snow books, as well as from her fan fiction and it all ties into more usual plot threads like dealing with her twin sister, roommate, love interests and estranged mother. Worth a read! I actually enjoyed the  Simon Snow bits so much I borrowed all the Harry Potter ebooks from the library. I found the first 2 quite boring (probably because I’d already seen the films), but the rest were pretty great and perfect for my too-many-Christmas-orders panicked brain. They don’t stand up to much scrutiny though – way too much of characters not telling other characters things because plot and figuring things out/escaping due to sheer luck, but at least they were entertaining.

I also just bought S, the JJ Abrams book. It looks so intriguing but I’m going to save it for a rainy day (not literally, since that’s every day in Glasgow…).

Animal Crossing New Leaf (buy)
Yes, I am still playing this every day and still loving it. Winter has been amazing fun with snow and auroras and FOUR types of snowmen to build who give you different gifts. One of them gave me a snowman hood the other day and now I’m a snowman too. I’m pretty sure that snow season will end just as it starts snowing in real life and I’l be totally disappointed that it isn’t as good. We’re still blogging over at Quincy & Usagi too.

Added to my Wishlist

wishlist

Hello Kitty Mt Fuji cushion | Threadless Bread & Butter t-shirt.

News and Reminders

- Seasonal Fruit & Veg Magnets are back in stock! I did have to raise the price a little, but hopefully I can keep them in stock now.
- Banana brooches are on their way and should be back next week.
- My Christmas Holiday Sale ends on Sunday night so don’t miss out.
- My sale at Not on the High Street is on all month with up to 40% off, but I’ll be removing some discounts soon.
- Free worldwide shipping in my Society6 shop this weekend using that link only.





Creative Commons License
All content in this blog post is by Marceline Smith, unless stated otherwise. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.




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Comments

  1. Rebecca says:

    My three year old has become obsessed with Hello Kity, I really want to find her that Mt. Fuji cushion, I love it! It would probably be more for me than for her though!
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