A pile of books

So it is supposed to be NaNo time, and we started with good intentions, several times, but things seem to have stalled for a variety of physical and emotional and practical reasons so we gave ourselves permission to take a sabbatical this year. It feels sad but I have too many other things on my mind. Coinciding with the end of the literature festival was the Manchester Science Festival, where they had a massive adults only ball pool. It was supposedly to allow grown ups to rediscover the joy of play, but the morning that Monkey and I went there were half a dozen young women all taking lots of selfies. But we had a fabulous time, and because it was so quiet we ended up staying in for about an hour until I was completely exhausted. What they need now is a large soft play area and a massive slide and it could be all the fun of Crealy, but without the faint smell of pee.

After repeated complaints about the freezer being full of blackberries I finally got around to doing a second batch of jelly; I had taken too many of the jar collection up to Unicorn and had to acquire some others.

So, in the meantime this intimidating pile of unreviewed books has been collecting, and following me around the house as, each day off, I have good intentions of writing about one or two of them. My November leave has arrived and we have been playing rather a lot of Upwords. The list of jobs does not even include getting these reviews done ... so I think I will add it and then I can tick it off. I may not do justice to all of them but I vow here and now that they will all get a mention.