appreciate good book reviews

I love to read.  Insomnia means I read an awful lot, it means I read an awful lot of crap but I sometimes find something that makes me think 'wow'.

Crime fiction, that's my favourite genre......and I prefer American crime fiction, I don't want to suffer my sleepless nights reading about murder and mayhem in the UK, I want to be transported somewhere new.

I have never been to the USA (I've never been abroad - apart from a school exchange trip to France in the late 70's, but I don't think that counts.......I did shoot Nathalie's brother out of a tree but that wasn't a crime, he was trying to teach me how to use an air rifle.....with hindsight, if you want to teach anyone to use any kind of weapon it's probably best to choose someone who has the same native tongue as you......I am digressing, I do that a lot) but through fiction I feel as though I know some of the states rather well.

I don't normally read anything remotely sci-fi but a while ago a friend pointed me in the direction of J D Robb and I got sucked into the slightly futuristic world of Eve Dallas and Roarke.  I read all the books, and then a new one was released so I had to start from the beginning and had to read them all again.  I get sucked into characters and find them hard to let go, with forty-odd books in the series - read twice - I didn't have to let go for a while.

I tried to read a Nora Roberts book recently (she's the real J D Robb.......or J D Robb is the real Nora Roberts) but it didn't float my boat, it seemed to go on way too long and I was impatient for it to finish.  It had really good reviews.  I wouldn't have given it one.......I wouldn't have given it a bad review as it's all down to personal taste and the author is only human and trying to make a living......

That's not to say I don't leave bad reviews.  I recently left a very negative review for some clothes pegs I had bought from an online retailer......think warrior woman......they were rubbish.  My review may have been slightly sarcastic, I may have said something along the lines of: - If you live somewhere where more than a slight breeze tickles your washing line, or your laundry is thicker than the average tissue then avoid these pegs like the plague - I admit I didn't consider the seller when I wrote this review and I felt a little bit guilty when they got back to me and asked why I hadn't contacted them directly to try and sort the problem.  To be honest it just hadn't occurred to me.  I thought the goods were shoddy and that was the end of it.  I apologized to the seller for my wording of the review but stated that it still stood.  Then they asked me to email them photos of the pegs.  Photos of the pegs??  I was bored with the correspondence by this point and chose to ignore their emails, we were going nowhere.  Then Amazon (whoops, I meant warrior woman) emailed me to tell me they had removed my review because the seller didn't like it.......well, sorry, it wasn't subtle but it was honest.......if they delete honest reviews that the sellers don't like how can we trust any of the reviews??  Oh fucking hell, I am digressing again.......didn't I start off talking about books??  I think I did, maybe I'll come back to books another day......right now I'm going for a cig and to get another Stella.......

Oh, before I go........ Finding Claire Fletcher.......that was the book that made me go 'wow' this week........just in case you were wondering.......

get seriously pissed off on soggy Saturdays when sport dominates the telly

This is my first ever blog......woo hoo, go me.

I have thought about it before but have been too bone idle to actually swot up and learn how to set one up.  It involved a fair bit of googling, a few head scratches and a little bit of cursing but I seem to be up and running now.

I'm not overly sure what I'm supposed to do with this blog but I shall hopefully
a) learn as I go along
b) not forget about it after a couple of days
c) treat it as an online, public diary
d) not get blacklisted because of inappropriate comments/language.

Initially when I thought about blogging (my spell check is not happy with the words 'blog' or 'blogging', I have had to educate it - oh, if only all things in life could be so easy) I thought I would do one almost entirely based on cooking.  I love to cook, I love to cook poncy food that takes hours to prepare, I love to read new recipes and bone up on new techniques but.......well, it'd be a bit bloody boring wouldn't it?

So, I have decided I'll just see how it goes.  I shall say whatever I feel like saying on the day and see where it takes me, and if I share recipes along the way then........well, not sure 'then' what.......but, if you're interested I do have chicken soaking in buttermilk in the fridge, this will then be turned into Southern fried chicken for tea tomorrow......