This blog might also be about books

Specifically, books I'm reading, want to read and books that are trapped on my Kindle which my Mum has borrowed and taken to Africa. Here's a tip - don't let your Mum borrow your Kindle and take it to Africa. It's very upsetting.

Anyway, aside from knitting, reading is probably my favourite pastime. As a kid I was obsessive, and wouldn't leave the house without a book. It got so bad that I annoyed my parents. Yep, I read so much that my book-worm parents got annoyed and told me to read less. And it isn't like I was neglecting other things, I was always an active kid with lots of interests. The real demonstration of the obsession took a while to show though. At 16, I got my learner's permit, and my Dad thought it would be a good idea for me to drive to my Auntie's house, around an hour away. I'd been going there my entire life. I knew vaguely which direction to go in, but beyond that I was totally lost. It seems I'd never bothered to look out the car window on any of the hundreds of trips I must have made by then.

So, what am I reading right now? Crown & Country A History of England through the Monarchy, by David Starkey. I don't love it. To be honest, I was expecting more, which is probably a hard ask when the book considers every single monarch England has ever had. Each one only gets a few pages and it just feels like something, or possibly a lot of things, are missing. It's also kind of dry, which is disappointing when the subject matters seethes with intrigue.



The bookshop I bought it from is one of my favourite places in the whole world. Hill of Content, in Bourke Street Melbourne, is a lovely place to be. Everyone that works there knows lots about books (which should be a given, but we all know it’s not) and it is quiet and smells like books. Not like Borders, which is where I think books go to die. At Hill of Content the books are alive.