CuppaTea

Everything seems to be moving so rapidly now! Since my last update , when I was one book behind the schedule, I experienced a rapid completion of a few categories, and have now completed 20 out of the original 26 categories, and a total of 39 out of the complete list of 52. That is 75%! Although now I have less than 2 months to go and quite a few categories to complete! One of the books I read left me in the odd position of not liking the main character very much.

I had the house to myself at dinner time tonight, so I thought this would be the perfect time to attempt the 'dish of death' (according to Masterchef Australia), as no one else would suffer if I failed. I love risotto. I love the idea of it, I love the variety of flavours that may be included, but I have never attempted to make it before. And so I turned to a chef I trust to have wonderful recipes: Jamie Oliver.

So, now that June is ending, and we have reached the halfway point in the calendar, how far have I progressed with the 2017 Reading Challenge? Since my end of the first quarter update , I have been able to check off another 3 categories on the 26 book long list, including a self-published book. And when it came to reading a book with a character who has the same first name as me, wow! What an odd reading experience, seeing my own name on nearly every page in a book! Definitely a first for me. Which makes me wonder how people who have more common names than I do feel when they read a book with a character who shares their name. Are you used to it? Or is it still a bit odd?

I decided to attempt a new recipe just for my friend's birthday last week. Apparently lemon meringue pie is their favourite, so I got hold of the recipe the family usually uses, and gave it a try. The recipe had three parts: the pastry, the filling, and the meringue. I had been told it was a pretty easy recipe, or was I told that it was straightforward? Either way, I was expecting the newness to be hard, not following the recipe.

We all deal with pain differently, and we all respond differently to the pain of other people. I remember once sharing with a close friend about some of the things I was struggling with at work, and she responded to my pain with attempts to fix the problems. As a testament to how good our friendship is, I stopped her, and told her all I needed was for her to listen, to let me tell how I felt about the situation, because she couldn't help me 'fix' anything. As further proof of how good our friendship is, she did. Because I wonder how often I have had someone respond unhelpfully to my pain, and never said anything. I wonder how often I have deliberately chosen not to share my pain because I expect that the person's response will be unhelpful, perhaps even hurtful, even when they actually really want to help.

As you may have seen already, I have taken up a reading challenge for 2017 (if you haven't seen this, you can read the first post , second post , and third post about it), and I am thoroughly enjoying approaching reading in a different, more deliberate way. This has affected how I think about other things in life, which led to discussing with a friend recently the idea of setting a recipe challenge. And so, over the course of walking to, ordering, and eating at a wonderful Italian restaurant, we outlined a recipe challenge.

Nearly two months have passed, so I thought I'd write an update on my reading progress this year. When I last wrote , I had started a novel with nearly 1500 pages. I was pleasantly surprised that in the end it took less than two weeks to read the whole thing! And it held my attention the whole time - I didn't start reading anything else until I'd finished it. Since then, I have read one other novel for the reading challenge, bringing the total to 11, just shy of halfway for the 26 book challenge. And then I diverted to reading books just because they were there, or I felt like reading them, while waiting for a book to be available from the local public library.

I have now read 9 books for the reading challenge - getting ahead of schedule, which is fun. I have just started the book I have chosen for the category 'a book with over 500 pages'... This one has nearly 1500! But the characters are fascinating, and I'm already drawn in. I have really enjoyed reading a wider variety of books than I would normally choose. While I enjoy quite a few different genres, I tend to read mainly classics, fantasy and detective fiction. I tend to avoid non fiction, especially biographies. So far through the books I have read this year I have read historical fiction, mystery, young adult fiction, a memoir, a biography, a glimpse into poverty in a particular time period, and a glimpse into deep grief and the impact it has on a whole family (contemporary fiction). So many new authors, or authors I haven't read in a long time! And stories set on four continents! A few of the books have been very emotionally wrought, and it has been important for

Yesterday I used a recipe I've never used before, one from my great-grandmother. I have no personal memories of this woman, as she died when I was very small, and the main reason I chose the recipe was to use some of the huge amount of plums we have at the moment. My Mum has fond memories of this cake, so I was really looking forward to giving it a go and tasting it for myself. Only to find that it is difficult to follow a simple recipe if the woman who passed it on to another generation was the kind of person who deliberately gave less than the full information required...

One of the habits I have started this year is keeping a diary. The main purpose of this exercise is to improve my writing skills in Spanish, rather than recording the events of each day, as I know that my speaking skills are far superior to my writing skills at the moment. I set myself what seemed a low target of 100 words a day, and was surprised at how difficult this was, especially for the first week.

A few friends have completed (or at least attempted) various reading challenges in recent years, and while I read a LOT of books, I don't generally have a reading plan in place. So I thought this year I'd have a go at one of these challenges, and while tempted to dive into attempting something like this in Spanish, I think I'll give it a go in English first. The challenge I have chosen to undertake is to read 26 books fitting 26 categories. I'll try to focus on some of the more difficult categories first. I have started a list with possible titles for a lot of the categories.