OK it’s actually Monday but I meant to do this post yesterday which surely counts, right? Two hellish weeks in a row do not make for a pleasant-to-be-around Bernadette so, dear blog reader, be grateful that you only have to deal with me where all the crankiness has been edited out.

I did manage to draw the winners of the first Aussie Author Give Away (although BJ/Moondancer if you’re reading this please contact me as you haven’t responded to my emails and I don’t have a postal address for you). See what people thought about Australia and come back for another round of that give away next month.

Books Then and Now

I have mild photophobia (light sensitivity) which I manage well most of the time but when I spend many successive 12 hour days in fluorescent light it gets considerably worse. This is annoying because it means at the end of a long, tiresome day I can’t indulge in the thing most likely to relax me: reading. So for the second week in a row I have hardly read a word of fiction.

I did incorporate mini-reviews of two books into other posts this week. Death on the Nile featured heavily in my contribution to Kerrie’s Christie Week Blog Tour and I also participated for the first time in Friday’s Forgotten Books by talking about a little-known Australian book called Ligney’s Lake by S H Courtier.

I’m currently listening to Jonathan Kellerman’s Bones (which is in the meh category so far although I’ll keep listening) and reading Colin Cotterill’s The Coroner’s Lunch (delightful).

Work should be slowing down now so hopefully I’ll be able to read something I want to read this week

Arrivals and Departures

I acquired only the one book this week (it’s Graham Greene’s The Quiet American if you can’t see the cover, a book I mooched after having it recommended by Bibliojunkie). I’d like to think this is the start of a new trend of austerity but I know I’m going to buy a couple of books next week as two of my favourite authors have new books coming out on 1 October.

I didn’t manage to rid myself of any books aside from my give aways :(

Link Fest

Barely any time for surfing or reading news feeds this week but I will share my new favourite You Tube clip. A young lady on Bulgaria’s version of American Idol had a little trouble with the English language and created an…interesting…cover of Maria Carey’s song “Ken Lee” (you might have thought it was called Without You). I know it’s not politically correct to laugh at such things but, seriously, couldn’t she Google the correct lyrics before going on national television?

…and one more thing

I subscribe to around 150 book blogs and, due primarily to BBAW, most of them had a post each day last week, with more than a handful posting multiple times per day. I’m afraid I suffered from over-supply and did the only thing I could to cope (consigned the entire lot to the ‘mark all as read’ button). I know it’s not terribly fair given that everyone went to so much effort but 1000+ posts a week is way more than I can process. So I offer my deepest apologies to all the book blogs I love for not helping you celebrate and think in future I’ll do my book blogger appreciating during the other 51 weeks of the year.