A look at my current 'to be read' pile

I've been doing very well recently with working through my 'to be read' pile. In particular, before Christmas I made a massive effort to read through the enormous stash of digital books that had accumulated on my Kindle. So I thought I'd share a quick look at the books that are still waiting for me to get to them!

The biggest one on my shelf is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy which I do really want to read. But I keep putting it off! I did start it and I found it quite easy to read but it's just so big! There are a couple of other long reads on there too - Twenty Years After and The Count of Monte Cristo both by Alexandre Dumas. Twenty Years After is a sequel to The Three Musketeers which I really enjoyed and I've heard good things about The Count of Monte Cristo so I just need to bite the bullet and crack them open! They are both lovely old copies which have been passed down through the family and made their way to me.

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder is a book that I remember enjoying as a teenager and had a hankering to re-read. I'm thinking that Harry might enjoy it too. Books Burn Badly by Manual Rivas is the last of a small pile of books which I picked up in a charity shop a few weeks ago when I needed change for a £20 note. I chose it mainly because I liked the cover, so I hope that the story lives up to it!

There are three books that you can't see in the picture which are the ones on my Kindle. Every month as an Amazon Prime member I'm able to choose one or sometimes two newly published books to download for free. Currently in my 'to be read' collection I have The Direction of the Wind by Mansi Shah, Night Angels by Weina Dai Randel and The Karma Map by Nisha Sharma. I don't know much about these books, they were just the ones that caught my eye from the lists, but I think they are probably quite quick reads.

My to be read pile looks very achievable at the moment, I just need to get on and start some of the longer books without getting distracted by more charity shop purchases! 

If you have a 'to be read' pile which is getting out of control then I've written a blog post to help - How to conquer the "to be read" pile in 2023.

What the Facebook algorithm thinks I want to see

I use Facebook much less often than I used to. I usually log in for a few minutes first thing while I'm eating my breakfast to check the local village group for morning traffic updates and to have a quick scroll through the home feed. But nowadays one in every three or four posts that I'm given is an advert, and I hardly ever see the personal posts that I want to see. I think that people I follow just aren't using Facebook as much as they used to.

Predictably quite a few of the adverts that I see are related to my interests - Hobbycraft, The Works, craft subscription boxes and craft e-courses, all that kind of thing. But for some reason every now and then Facebook gets itself fixated on something that it thinks I want to see (usually based on one curious click) and then it's impossible to get rid of. 

Currently Facebook is desperate to spam my home feed with terrible advert filled photo roundup pages. It's difficult to describe if you've not seen them yourself (and I'm not going to link to one because they'll think I like them even more!) but it has a title something like 'These entitled people got what was coming to them!" and it's a long page filled with screenshots from social media, text messages and photos to fit the theme. I must admit that I have clicked on a few in the past, and now I just can't get rid of them!

I am really trying to control the algorithm by liking any advert that reflects my interest, then using the hide and block function to remove the ones that I'm really not interested in seeing. Sometimes I even log out of Facebook as soon as I've blocked the offending post, just to show it what's what. But it's taking ages to sort itself out, and it definitely doesn't seem to want me to use Facebook!

Do you get annoyed with the Facebook algorithm? What does it think you want to see?

Photo credit Solen Feyissa via Unsplash

Why I always have a book on the go

There are lots of reasons that I always like to have a book on the go. And as I come to the end of a book I already know which one I'll be picking up next, and I have a sizeable to be read pile to choose from.

I need to have a book on the go because I'm always turning to it throughout the day - when I'm waiting for other people to get ready, when I'm cooking dinner, when I'm eating alone, when I just want a distraction from what I should be doing. I prefer to pick up a book rather than my phone, and I love arriving early for school pick up and having some time to read in the car.

But one of the main reasons that I like to have a book on the go is because it means that I always have something to think about. I spend a lot of my time doing things that need my attention but not my full attention. Like driving to school and back, exercising, doing housework, chopping up food, sorting out washing and so on. My mind is always active, and I much prefer to have something positive to be thinking about!

So when I'm reading a book I'm always thinking about what's going on, the characters, the issues that they are facing and how it relates to my own life. I like to run through what has happened, what might happen next, whether I would behave in the same way to the book characters or not. All the books that I enjoy have something in them that appeals to me, whether it's a particular location or activity, and I like thinking about how I could incorporate that into my own life. Like spending more time on a particular hobby, or planning somewhere that I want to visit.

It means that I can keep my mind active even when I'm not actually reading, and it gives me much more interesting and positive things to think about than worrying about unimportant things in my daily life!

Photo credit Joel Muniz via Unsplash

Do you always have a book on the go?

Review - Geomag Supercolour 42-Piece Magnetic Building Set

I received this set in exchange for a review.

My son has always been fascinated by magnets and construction sets, but he's never had a magnetic construction kit of his own to play with. So when I was offered the chance to review the Geomag Supercolour 42-Piece Magnetic Building Set I couldn't resist seeing what he would make of it! This 42 piece set is aimed at all ages from 3+.

The set comes with two bases, a hexagon and a square, and a selection of magnetic balls and sticks. The pieces can be fitted into the bases to build the shapes or they can be put together separately. The solid plastic pieces are made of 100% recycled plastic and I really like the fact that the set comes with a couple of small bespoke storage boxes to help keep things neat and tidy.

The magnets are very powerful and it's easy to understand how they can be fitted together to make different shapes. When a model is complete it's sturdy, and for an older child it makes a great desk toy for them to fidget and play around with.

The set comes with detailed instructions to help children learn about the different shapes that they can make, along with several different designs that can be copied. It is worth noting that the instruction leaflet features a few more detailed constructions that it isn't possible to build with the pieces from just one set. I don't think that this would be a problem for a younger children, but if you are looking for a construction set for an older child then that's something to bear in mind.

My son had a lot of fun with this set and I think that it's a great toy for any curious child that is interested in how things fit together and learning about how magnets work.

A fabric stash project - drawstring shoe bags for travel

One of my goals this year is to make a decent dent in my fabric stash. I have a huge drawer filled with fabric of all sizes and patterns, some given to me and some that I've bought. I have a number of larger pieces which I've been trying to work through, and my latest project was some fabric shoe bags for travel.

We are lucky enough to travel quite a bit, and I've got the packing down to a fine art. I always pack a spare pair of shoes for each member of the family, and I usually pack them in a plastic carrier bag. But these days I don't have such a stash of plastic bags, and it feels so wasteful to use them, especially as I don't like to reuse them after putting dirty shoes inside.

So the obvious thing to do was to make some fabric shoe bags. They hardly take up any extra room in the suitcase, and they are made in different colours and patterns so that they can be used to identify shoes belonging to various family members. They can be put in the washing machine after a trip ready to use next time, and when we are away at our destination they can be used to store the spare shoes neatly in the wardrobe or on a hook.

There are lots of tutorials for simple drawstring bags available but I just made mine up as I went along! I used a piece of fabric that measured 15" by 34" which makes for a roomy shoe bag. I sewed a seam for the ribbon along the long side, then folded it in half and sewed up the sides. The drawstring is a piece of long ribbon from my stash, threaded through and tied in a knot. They were so easy to make and I'm really looking forward to using them on our next trip!

Trying out some new running routes

At the beginning of the year I set myself a few goals. One of them was to do with fitness, specifically to find myself some new running routes. I try to run three times a week and I've maintained that fairly consistently for several years now. I like to run from my home, but although there are lots of houses my village is small, and I don't have much variation in my running routes - 5k only just makes a loop around the edge. I wanted to come up with some new routes to keep things interesting, as I enjoy using my run as a way of exploring the local area.

At university I spent a year living in Germany. There wasn't much to fill the time - no television, no phone, I only had what I could fit in my suitcase! - so at the weekends I started taking myself off for walks. I bought a big map of the area and I would pick out something interesting, maybe a church or a park, and plan myself a long walk there. I'm trying to do a similar thing now, having a browse on Google maps for a place that I've not been to before and taking myself there on a run.

I use Strava to track my running but for planning routes I use MapMyRun as I find the interface really easy to use and it's free. You can choose your starting point and then click along the roads that you want to take, it even automatically follows roads for you. It tells you the distance that you've plotted and then you can save the routes to refer back to. I think that if you use the app on your phone while you are running it will also direct you, but I've managed quite well with remembering the way I want to go. I sort them by distance so I can select my run depending on how fit I feel that day!

Last week I ran a new route which I had been putting off because it involved going over a level crossing twice and I don't like having to stop and wait mid run. But there was no train in either direction and I discovered a new park! It was a bit muddy at this time of year but it's somewhere to return in the summer when I can run across it properly. 

I challenged myself to map out five new runs, but I've already come up with lots more. Some of them are admittedly variations on a theme but even running a familiar route in reverse switches things up a bit. Now I'm going to think about how I can incorporate my run with the school run, stopping somewhere on the way back and doing a run from there that might be a bit more interesting. Hopefully this will help with my motivation when I'm really not in the mood for my run that day!

What I've been up to lately

 A little look at my life recently!

Reading

I've been busy working away at my to be read pile, although I did have a bit of a fail when I dropped off some donations at the charity shop and came back with four more books. I read quickly though, and they will probably end up back there when I'm done with them! I've been reading a wide range of books - longer classics, young adult, contemporary fiction and older books by some of my favourite authors. 

Watching

I've hardly watched any television this month! We had a binge over Christmas working through our watch list, and since then we've been doing other things in the evening. We did watch Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which was released on Disney+ last week. It was very good, I found it so sad as the plot had to deal with the death of the main actor Chadwick Boseman.

Crafting

This year I'm determined to do more crafting from stash, in particular my fabric stash. Something that I've been enjoying making is some scrunchies for an upcoming cruise. I used some anchor fabric and some fabric from the bandanas that Disney Cruises give out on the pirate themed night. Two smaller ones for Mia and her plaits and a larger one for me and my pony tail!

Eating

I'm doing very well with eating more healthily over the last few months, and it has definitely paid off with some weight loss. I've not been snacking between meals and I've been limiting the sweet treats (although I did manage to eat my way through the enormous bag of Lindt balls that my husband bought me for Christmas). I've been using my soup maker a lot to make soup for my lunches and I've also been trying out some new dinner recipes. I've never really thought of myself as a good cook but I've had a few successes with recipes recently which have given me some ideas for ways that I can make our usual meals more varied and interesting. 

Working on

I've been having a big go at getting the house sorted over the last few weeks. We have a guest room on the top floor which the children took over during covid and filled it with all their Lego and Playmobil sets which they haven't played with since. You couldn't see the floor, and it was stressing me out with all the little lost pieces everywhere. So I had a good sort out of the Playmobil - we don't want to get rid of it all but I have packed it up and sorted out which pieces go with which sets. The Lego has either been removed for display in their rooms or taken apart and packed away in sets for them to deal with in the future. I've given the room a good clean and hoover, and although there are still boxes of toys around the walls it is looking so much better and ready for guests.

I have become a regular at the charity shop near their school as I keep turning up with more bags of things to donate while I'm doing the school run. I find it a bit stressful dropping things off but I think they are good quality items so hopefully I can help out the charity and pass things on to a good home.

Planning

I am loving using my new Bullet Journal! I enjoy planning my week in advance and then scribbling through the tasks as I complete them. It has definitely helped me to get myself more organised, especially when it comes to the housework and working on my goals.

Feeling proud of

I'm very pleased with how my health and fitness has improved over the last couple of months. I was running regularly but I had got myself stuck in a rut with a couple of 4K routes which I was running over and over. I've managed to up my distance to 6-8K three times a week and I've been enjoying getting out and about to some new places. It's been very cold so it has been difficult to get out sometimes but it's always worth it. 

Looking forward to

I am very much looking forward to some warmer weather. We have the heating on in the house but some evenings I just feel so cold that I get into bed in my thick pyjamas with a book and a hot water bottle. Hopefully it will only be getting warmer from now!