Weekly Rundown: Romance & Reading

Normally on Valentine’s Day Mr Click and I use it as an excuse for a Chinese takeaway and a film night, but with our favourite Chinese takeaway place closed for a couple of weeks (and not having had a chance to get out and find a nice card for him) we agreed to postpone our Valentine’s Day celebrations until we were able to order in our usual. We’ve got a trip to Glasgow next month so we figured we’d treat ourselves to a new blu-ray and would spoil ourselves a month late.

Then he picked me up from work with a bunch of flowers and a Chinese takeaway from the other place on the island. It wasn’t bad food, just different, so we had an enjoyable Friday night eating yummy food and watching The Mentalist. My flowers sat by the sink until we were done and are now looking pretty in the window and we’re still going to have takeaway next month so we’re kind of celebrating twice.

I decided earlier in the week that I wanted a pyjama day on Saturday, so that’s what we did. I wanted to stay in, nice and cosy, and watch films all day. The first we watched was one of the Mel Brooks ones I got for Christmas, called To Be or Not To Be and it was hilarious. I’d never seen it before. It’s about a Polish theatre troupe taking on the Third Reich, which I realise doesn’t exactly scream comedy value, but it is very clever and funny. I’d recommend it.

I’m still reading for my challenge. In fact this week I did a little bit of switching of books. I’d been holding off on settling for my book for Week 7 (a book with a non-human character) and after rearranging my bookcase I figured I’d go with Tolkien’s Roverandom since the main character in that is a dog. I also knew that I could read it in two days (less if I avoided distractions) so it would give me plenty of time to read the next book in the Jack Nightingale series that a colleague is lending me.

The series of Jack Nightingale books are slowly doing the rounds of about half my team at work. I read Nightfall last week and so have just finished the second book, Midnight, which sees Jack Nightingale trying to track down his half-sister. There’s five in the series and I’m expecting to get through them all quite quickly, in between the Challenge books and my side-reads that I’ve got going at the same time.

The one down side to these books is that they are inclined to creep me out somewhat. The main character keeps finding messages written in blood (mostly, occasionally other things) on bathroom walls. Well, it doesn’t make me too happy about going up to the bathroom, alone, late at night. Mr Click is threatening to ban me from reading any more if I don’t keep on insisting on him accompanying me upstairs, just in case there’s something creepy up there.

The other book that I’ve changed my mind about is my Week 8 one (a funny book). I was all set to read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, but I don’t own it and I want to have a book-book copy to add to my Pratchett/Gaiman library. I’d been debating switching it for something else to avoid buying another book so soon after I’d reorganised my shelves and in the end I had a scan through the books on Project Gutenberg for inspiration.

So instead I'll be reading The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, which I saw an adaptation of years and years ago and remembered being pretty funny. It looks like it’ll be a quick read as well, then the books for the next few Challenge weeks will just be pulled from bookshelves at random depending on what fits the bill. I like that I’ve got a mix of planned and random on my list and I’m already onto my thirteenth book of the year (which I started on Friday the 13th, spooky).

This week I’m getting blog stuff in order and trying to decide whether or not I’m going to join in the A to Z Challenge. Part of me really wants to rehash the topic I chose a couple of years ago and try to do it again with different words. Part of me knows that April is shaping up to be a busy month so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get everything organised that I want to.

I’ve also got a girlie day away next Saturday. We’re off to Glasgow for cocktails and Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve not read the books but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s going to be hilarious.