On decluttering

 I see a lot of references to decluttering on social media. Perhaps it's the circles I'm in; plus, of course, as soon as I clicked one link on the topic, I was inevitably going to see a whole lot more similar posts. Clutter is something of a divisive subject. There are people who like collecting a lot of things, and are comfortable around boxes, bags and other unsorted items. There are people who would like to be organised, but have difficulty finding spaces for things, or who don't have sufficent time and motivation to do anything about it.

There is also a third category of people who somehow manage to get things away, and tidy, without any apparent effort.  I aspired to be one of those as a young adult, but was firmly in the second category. The spirit was willing - well, mostly - but I was working full-time, and then had small children.  It was far more important to spend time with them - and they seemed to acquire a lot of stuff, too, mainly gifts from generous friends and family - than to keep the house tidy. 

Moving to Cyprus in 1997 forced us to be quite radical about our stuff. We donated some things to charity shops, although we had a large room and a couple of closets full of things we had stored, in addition to what we brought out. We also stored a lot of things in a friend's garage. In subsequent years, we moved more and more things here (mainly books), and when we sold the UK house, we gave away a lot of things that we had not used for nine years, and evidently didn't need.

It's still January...

What is it about the first month of each year? While time usually races by, more rapidly each year as I get older, January seems to last forever. The humorous poet Brian Bilston captured it perfectly. Well, perhaps it's not quite 6184 days, but I'm sure it's a lot more than five weeks since Christmas. I took the decorations down on Saturday 4th January so I could clean properly - they had been up for nearly a month - but I didn't do a whole lot else. 

I had such good plans for my time. Not 'resolutions' - I don't really see the point of them. Just a realistic way of trying to ensure I made the best use of my days, without over-scheduling or stress. I more-or-less followed that in the first full week of January.  On the Monday, I did some work on my recipe blog. I added a new recipe, edited some older ones, and added in some photos. I played around with the theme, too. It's not ideal, but I think probably better than the previous one. 

On the Wednesday I walked to my favourite haberdashery shop, and bought some new yarn for knitting baby hats, and then went to the thrift store, where I found a couple of DVDs that looked good. On the Thursday, I spent a couple of hours working on photos. I did some writing in the afternoons, too, though not as much as I had hoped. 

On the Friday, we didn't need to do any extra grocery shopping, but had decided that we would upgrade the rather rickety bookshelving in our guest flat living room, replacing with an Ikea Billy bookcase with glass doors. We were also thinking about a dedicated TV unit. So we drove (in the van) to Nicosia, and found not just the bookcase we needed, but a kitchen unit thing in pine which, we knew, would make a good TV unit. 

On Friday afternoon, Richard put the bookcase together...

After I had removed all the books from the old shelving: 

The TV was still on its old shelving along with a lot of other books which had become quite dusty over the years. And we agreed that we would need a second bookcase to match the first one, since we had too many books to fit in just the one. 

We didn't want to go back to Ikea, and we knew what we wanted, so we ordered online. We quickly realised that it was better to make two orders, each one less than 35kg, rather than all in one, from the postage point of view. The site said delivery would be 3 working days to Larnaka... 

.. although when the order was sent, it said that delivery would be 'within 6 working days'. Our first guest flat visitor of the year was due to arrive on Monday 20th, and we had hoped to get everything ready and tidied before then. Still, we hoped it might arrive on Friday or Saturday...

On the Monday morning, January 13th, was the first writers' group meeting of the year. And on the Wednesday I had planned to do a thorough clean of the guest flat, hoping to get it ready.  Our last guests were friends who left towards the end of October. Since then, the flat has been used by Richard to work on his PA system, and, in early January, for items from his boat, which was out of the water for a couple of weeks, for its biannual 'dry dock'. And it still had tools for building Ikea furniture, and wood varnish for the unit which Richard put together: 

I was becoming a bit concerned about getting everything ready for our visitor (who is staying for about eight weeks). So it was something of a relief to hear, on Wednesday, that there had been a delay, and he wasn't arriving until Wednesday 29th. 

Still, I did clean the main bedroom on Wednesday 13th, and made up the bed.  On Thursday morning I did more in the flat: washing cushion covers, and the sofa throw, and cleaning the bathroom. I also sorted the books better, calculating how many would fill up the two billy bookcases. I wanted to remove the books which had been taking up space in the bedroom, too, and the ones occupying space, rather precariously, on a spice rack in the kitchen. 

And... shock, horror! - I decided that we should probably get rid of about fifty or sixty books which we were never going to read, and which, we're pretty sure, none of our guests has ever looked at. We gave our local friends first refusal (and they took a fair selection) and I chose about fifteen of the remainder that were in the best condition for the church book sale. The rest, to our relief, were eventually taken by the Larnaka thrift store. 

But that's leaping forwards. On Friday 17th we went to Superhome store, then on to the nut shop (for five or six weeks' worth of nuts, seeds and dried fruit) and then Metro (for dried cat food and one or two other items). Richard had a phone call from Ikea while we were out, letting us know that the new bookcase would be delivered on Sunday. When he was hoping to be out sailing, and I had planned to go to the church service. But they didn't give any other options.

As it turned out, we were both at home. On Friday evening, Richard didn't want any food, and said he felt queasy. He slept most of the evening. In the morning I got up to walk with Sheila but after a short distance I knew I wasn't feeling well, so we turned around and I came in. 

I won't mention the details; suffice it to say that we both had a very miserable 24 hours with what we assume was an attack of norovirus. Richard felt a little better by Saturday afternoon, and got up. Sheila had brought us a loaf of bread, as I'd mentioned in passing that we'd run out and I was going to make some but wasn't sure I would cope with the smell of baking bread. We were very, very thankful for her thoughtfulness as the only thing either of us wanted to eat at first was toast with Marmite. I don't usually eat Marmite as it can be a migraine trigger; thankfully it wasn't on Monday, which is the first time I wanted to eat anything at all. 

The new bookcase arrived on Sunday and Richard was able to let the men in. He had cancelled sailing, and there was no way I could get to church; even if I'd been feeling up to it, I wouldn't have wanted to pass on such a nasty bug to anyone else. By Monday 20th, he felt a bit stronger, and put the bookcase together. And since I didn't want to remain in bed (and my worst symptoms had stopped, although I was still very tired) I did organise and sort the books. 

We were very pleased with how it all looked when we had finished. 

We were also extremely grateful that our visitor was not arriving that day!

On Wednesday some friends from Limassol were coming to dinner. We were past the infectious stage by then, though being extra careful with hand-washing still. I had started eating again, but was still incredibly tired, so it took me most of the day to organise the food for the evening. I had to keep sitting down every ten minutes or so. 

Then on Thursday I basically collapsed in a heap (after walking about half our usual route first thing with Sheila) and vegged out. On Friday we took the remaining books to the thrift store, and on Saturday I finally managed to clean the kitchen, and even sort and tidy the area over the washing machine which somehow accumulates a lot of random stuff. It still looks a bit cluttered: 

But I filled an entire bag with almost-empty long-expired bottles of suntan lotion, and hair spray, and body wash, and so on, to get rid of.  It's probably three years since we last did a proper spring clean of the flat, so it was good to do. 

And on Monday morning, this week, I took our carpet shampooer downstairs and thoroughly cleaned the rug in the living room, which had been looking very tired. 

That's the difference after I had cleaned the two stripes nearest the bookcases.  

Our visitor is now here, and the flat is going to be occupied almost continually for the next five months, with a variety of different people. We're very thankful to have it, and love being able to make it available to family, friends, church workers and friends of friends. 

It feels like we've done a lot this month, and there's still another day of January remaining. Today, Thursday, I worked on photos for an hour or so, for the second time this month, and this afternoon am updating this blog. Maybe in February, when it eventually gets here, I'll be back to the supposedly regular schedule...

Buying Billies

 Before I ramble about on our recent experience, I should explain that when I talk about 'Billies' I'm not referring to:

• The lightweight pots (billycans) used for outdoor cooking, popularised in one of the versions of an Australian song, featuring a swagman who 'waited 'til his billy boiled'. 
• A male goat, as, for example in the fairytale 'The three billygoats gruff'.
• A stick or club - known as a truncheon in the UK - which, I learned when checking for meanings of the word, may also be known as a 'billy' or 'billystick'. 
• A group of adults called Billy (or Billie), which is usually an abbreviation of the name 'William' or (possibly) 'Wilhelmina' 

Instead, I'm referring to a brand of bookcases that can be bought in the Swedish furniture chain Ikea. It's one of the few brands that we are able to pronounce. 

Our first introduction to Billy bookcases happened in the summer of 2006 just before we moved out of our rental house in Cyprus, into the one we bought. Some colleagues were leaving Cyprus around the same time, and offered to sell us some dark wood bookcases. 

At the time it was rather difficult to find bookcases locally. Sixteen years ago, there was no Ikea in Cyprus. The thrift store had some bookcases, but they were a bit flimsy. We had been able to buy two large ones second-hand from the organisation Richard was seconded to, some years earlier, and we had some rattan bookcases we had brought out from the UK. 

But they were starting to overflow. And we had shipped another five hundred or so books out when we sold our UK house. So the offer from our friends was timely, and since they were asking a very reasonable price, we had little hesitation in buying the two bookcases. They told us they were 'Billies' and we probably looked blank. They had been brought to Cyprus by another family who had moved from France but returned a few years earlier. Billies, we were told, were quite popular in countries where there was an Ikea. But we were not familiar with them. 

It's possible that we had the first two Billy bookcases in Cyprus. We rapidly filled them. 

(As an aside: the same folk were also selling four ceiling fans. They were exactly what we needed for four places in our new house. We didn't know that they were available until we went to see the bookcases, and our friends didn't know that we were looking for something to replace the fancy chandeliers that the previous owners of the house had taken away. It felt like a divine appointment; those four ceiling fans still work well, and are a tremendous blessing in the warmer months). 

We had visited an Ikea in the UK a couple of times, and hadn't found much that appealed. But we very much liked these bookcases, with their adjustable shelving, and the little metal knobs that fit into holes in the sides. They hold a lot of books, too. 

A year later, in September 2007, Ikea launched in Cyprus, just outside Nicosia. We visited a few months later, and acquired two more Billies: a tall black one for our DVD collection, and a smaller black one, which ended up taking our recipe books... for a while.  I wrote about the experience in this post. That's when we discovered that the 'new' system Billies were not only a darker colour, but ten centimetres narrower. However, that was ideal for our DVDs, and had plenty of room for more. 

Another year later, in September 2008, we visited Ikea again. This time we bought three shorter Billy bookcases for our dining room. The rattan cases were not only running out of space, they were being progressively destroyed by our cats, who thought they were convenient scratching posts. I wrote about that experience in this post. 

Nearly three years later, we were contemplating adding to our Billy collection due to books, once again, overflowing their shelves. Perhaps they were breeding when we weren't looking. And then we had another divine appointment: friends were getting rid of three bookcases, one of which was a Billy. It wasn't a dark wood one, but that didn't worry us. We did some major re-sorting of books and DVDs, as explained in detail in this post so that the light wood Billy took our DVDs, and the resulting arrangement looked like this:

There was still plenty of space for more books and DVDs, and we also acquired two non-Billy bookcases that we used elsewhere. 

Time passed, as it usually does. 

At some point we bought another tall black Billy, so we could move the light coloured one upstairs to a bedroom, and use one of the original - wider - Billies to house our growing DVD collection. 

We had a slightly annoying gap for a while, due to lack of planning on my behalf, which remained for some years. 

Although the books were mostly under control - the rate of acquiring new ones slowed, and I even managed to give a few away to the local church book sale - our DVD collection didn't stop. It's not that we watch all that many, but we aim to see one film per week, and an episode or two from a classic sitcom or a more modern tenser or heavier television show (most recently Father Brown; we're about to embark on the 13th Doctor Who series). And Richard has a growing collection of DVDs which are thrillers or political dramas that don't interest me at all, but which he sometimes sees on his own if I'm away, or if he is up late. 

So, in 2019, we looked at the Ikea catalogue again. To our joy, they were selling a narrow (20cm wide) Billy, the same height as our bookcases, but with a lot more shelves, intended for CDs or DVDs. We did ponder buying two, but were pretty sure that just one would last us a good long time. 

And in the process of re-organising the DVDs, we decided to move the second older Billy to the kitchen to house the recipe books (and also some of my children's fiction) meaning that the three matching black ones could sit in a row, without any annoying gap.  

We were pleased with the result.

In the corner was a gap of just over 20cm, where we were pretty sure that, one day, we would need a second narrow Billy. But not just yet...

And, indeed, four years later the DVDs were still fitting in the available space. Well, mostly. I had moved all the younger children's DVDs to the bottom shelf of the nearest bookcase. We also had a drawer under the television crammed full with our Christmas DVDs and the ones we haven't yet watched, and the series we are currently watching...

Then, a few weeks ago, we received a couple of Christmas parcels from one of our sons and his family, containing, among other things, a new and rather large DVD series. So that sat on a shelf under our television for a while, and we began to think seriously about a new narrow Billy. 

The decision was cemented when a friend, moving from one flat to another, decided to get rid of her DVD collection since she mostly watches online now. She gave us the first refusal, and since she had a lot of older classics which we hadn't seen, we selected a few. And a few more... and ended up adding another 25 DVDs to our household.

But where could we put them...?  The drawer was choc-a-bloc, the shelf also crammed with DVDs. It was starting to look rather untidy and we're pretty sure we'll acquire more DVDs in future.

So I went online and searched the Ikea site. I read that Billy bookcases had been discontinued for a while, but were back, better than ever. 

But there were no 20cm ones. The narrowest was 40cm, and that was clearly meant to be a bookcase rather than a DVD case, as it didn't have extra shelves. DVD shelving seems to have gone out of fashion, possibly because more and more people are using streaming services rather than physical DVDs. 

Then, due to an inner prompting - you can call it intuition, or the voice of God - I looked on Facebook marketplace. It's not somewhere I normally look, but I thought someone might have some kind of DVD storage that they were getting rid of.

I found someone just outside Nicosia who was selling TWO 20cm black Billy CD/DVD cases. They weren't advertised as Billy, but I was certain they were. Richard made contact, and a couple of days later we took his van and drove to collect them. I wasn't at all sure that we needed two, but since they might be the last two available narrow Billies in Cyprus, we bought them both. One of them is fitted where we planned, the other behind the TV where it's housing Richard's thrillers and other series that I have no wish to see. 

We moved the rest of the TV series DVD sets and the Christmas ones to the side cases, and there's now, once again, plenty of room for more.  

That corner looks much better without the gap:

As well as the two narrow Billies, the folk in Nicosia were also selling 18 children's DVDs, very inexpensively, some of them modern classics that we didn't have... 

...so we acquired another fourteen. So I'm now a tad concerned that we have almost filled up the shelf of children's DVDs. 

But that's a problem for another day.

Family visiting Cyprus

 It feels like a LONG time since I last wrote. It's only four weeks, but our generally relaxed empty-nest routines were thrown out for a while. The house looked more lived-in than usual, with the coffee table piled high with books. The usual weekly cleaning didn't happen. The Roomba only ran sporadically, and I barely managed half an hour at my computer most days. We didn't watch a single film or even an episode of a DVD series. I usually read at least two books per week; in the past month I've only finished three full-length books, although I read a large number of shorter ones....

It was awesome. 

Our family - son, daughter-in-law and their two children - came to stay over the Easter holidays, with a few extra days each end (authorised by the children's school) so they could find affordable flights.  For just over three weeks they were with us, in Cyprus for the first time since the summer of 2017. 

Life is very different with children in the house.  At eight (nearly nine) and six (and a quarter) our grandchildren are a delight. At times they are noisy, and they rarely sit still, but they're loving, curious, and interested in everything. They love playing games, too - so we played a lot of board games. 

The Lego proved popular... though it only came out a couple of times.

They love books - they can both read fluently, but they like listening to books too, as my own sons did, well into their teens. My grandson discovered Garfield for the first time. We have quite a collection of the books, and I loved hearing his chuckles as he devoured them, one after another. 

In the first week Richard took them out sailing, and we had an afternoon on the beach. I thought we might have had more beach afternoons, but somehow they didn't happen... sometimes it was too windy, or even wet; more often there were simply too many other things to do. 

Cooking was an interesting challenge: my son is vegetarian, which is fine; I have leanings that way myself. But others like to eat meat at least a few times each week. My husband is dairy-free, but eats meat: so normally our house is dairy-free, but we bought cheese and yogurt for the family. Then the grandchildren won't eat any cooked vegetables, though they love raw ones. They also don't like strong flavours such as hot curries, and are reluctant to experiment too much with new foods although they're pretty good about trying things they're not sure about. 

Unusually for us, we ordered takeaways via Foody about once a week, since both of us had discount vouchers. Besides, I needed a break from cooking sometimes, to be able to enjoy an afternoon out.  Sometimes I cheated, too, with ready-made burgers (meat or vegetarian) or breaded fish (or chicken or vegetables). 

But I prefer to eat 'real' food (enchiladas, perhaps, or spanokopita, or chicken pie, or a jalfrezi curry and rice...)  and on the whole it wasn't too difficult to suit everyone's tastes, it just took some planning - and a lot of oven space - if I was making two or even three different main courses, some added form of carbohydrate if needed, and two or three cooked vegetables. 

Before the family came, I made a mental list of places that we could visit. There are local playgrounds and parks, of course, but our first bigger outing was to Cyherbia. We weren't entirely sure what to expect, but the children were thrilled to hear about the famous maze, apparently the only one in Cyprus.

We took a twelve-year-old friend with us, which is a good thing as the children raced around the maze, and our young friend was the only one who could keep up with them. 

Cyherbia also has a walk in the shape of the island of Cyprus, where we could see different landmarks, and there's a beautiful fairy village which we all admired: 

We spent a couple of hours walking around (or running, in the case of the children) and would have stayed out longer, but it started to rain. So we went to find our complementary hot herbal tea in the tea room, and the children spotted that there were ice creams. Ice cream was quite a feature of their visit; we lost track of how many they ate when out at various places.

Over the Western Easter weekend, our son and his wife drove part way into the mountains for a couple of days by themselves, and the children moved upstairs to what used to be our younger son's bedroom. It's become an electronics room for Richard, so although he tidied it up prior to their arrival, it's not ideal... however the children liked being with us upstairs so much that they slept there at nighttime for the rest of their holiday. 

While we had the children on our own, we had our second further-away outing, this time to the Camel Park.  It's somewhere else we'd never been, although we'd heard good things about it. We were very impressed with the wide range of activities: a playground for younger children, exercise equipment for slightly older ones, plenty to see including a terrapin pool: 

We bought fairly inexpensive bags of animal feed (carob pods) which were doled out to the many different animals in the park. Perhaps the enclosures were a bit small, but the animals seemed contented and very eager to reach out for their food. 

The highlight was a camel ride, which both the children enjoyed thoroughly: 

They even went in the swimming pool, although we thought it rather chilly. I felt a bit anxious the whole time, since neither of us are good swimmers and we had no intention of going in. I would, of course, have jumped in fully clothed had either of the children got into difficulties, but thankfully they stayed in the shallow end, splashing about and enjoying themselves until they finally admitted that it really was too cold. 

We'd been at the Camel Park for two hours and it was past noon, so we thought we would go to the restaurant for an early lunch. We had checked the menu in advance: they offered sandwiches of various kinds, and a children's section as well as quite a wide variety of Cypriot foods.

Then we had a disappointment: there was a big party at the Camel Park, so the restaurant wasn't serving meals. They did say that we could have something from the buffet (although it wasn't available for another half hour) but they couldn't tell us what it would consist of - and the cost was quite high for something that we probably wouldn't want, and the children most likely wouldn't eat. We asked if they would at least make sandwiches, and they said no - they weren't providing any other food until 4pm! 

So we bought bags of crisps at the kiosk nearby, as we were all surprisingly hungry; then we left to have our cold lunch back home. We would have stayed another hour or more if we'd been able to eat there. Picnics are not allowed in the Camel Park, so we couldn't have taken our own food. 

As often happens on holiday, the second half of the visit seemed to race past. The children went to local parks several times, and visited the fort in the town. On Greek Good Friday (a week after the Western one) my daughter-in-law organised a hunt for small chocolate eggs for the children around the house and side yard; they took some finding as the hiding places were quite creative. 

I made hot cross buns (I never can get the flour paste on the top to look right, but they tasted good). In the afternoon, the children went to our friends' house to experiment with dyeing and decorating hard-boiled eggs. It's  something my grandson had read about but they had never previously tried.

For the next four days, the family was even more enlarged as our younger son and his wife made a short visit, staying in a local AirBnB, and bringing the warmest weather we'd had all year. Just as well, since my new daughter-in-law is very allergic to cats, so they couldn't come into the house. 

On the Saturday, they all visited an interactive science fair not far from Nicosia, which we'd seen advertised.  I decided to have a day to myself, so I didn't go. The children enjoyed it, but overall the adults felt that it was a bit disappointing. 

The advertising said that visitors would need at least two hours to interact with all the different displays. In the event, about 25% of them were not working - or not working properly - but there were no staff available to assist.  Not that it was crowded - despite being Greek Easter Saturday, there was almost nobody else there.  So they spent as long as they wanted to at all the working exhibits, and still finished in under an hour. 

On the Sunday, we barbecued lunch outside after going to church services to celebrate the Resurrection. Our local friends came over in the afternoon for games followed by a cold evening meal, with 14 of us in all sitting around tables in our side yard. I think it's the most people we've had sitting down to eat out there at one time, and probably the maximum we could accommodate from the point of view of comfort.

On Monday they had a morning of sailing. On Tuesday morning, our friends came over for games, then one of my sons treated us to lunch out in the town. In the afternoon we took a walk by the Salt Lake... and in the evening our younger son and his wife departed to return to the UK overnight. On Wednesday afternoon we took the children to St George's Park, followed by ice creams, and our other son treated us all to food in the Metropolis Mall. And so, time gradually speeded up in our perception as their imminent departure was measured not in days but hours... 

When they left I was sad, but not as devastated as I felt five-and-a-half years ago when they departed after staying all summer.  That's mainly because, in 2017, they were going to join a ship the other side of the world, and we had no idea when we might see them again. Now we see them more often, and video chat fairly regularly so it's not such a wrench. 

I wish we lived closer and could see them more frequently; I certainly hope they come again before another five or six years have passed. But for holidays to be special, they need to have their own everyday lives with their own routines.  And I was quite tired; much as I miss them, it's good to have my own space, with time to relax on my own to recharge my psychological batteries. 

Re-reading and Re-homing of Books

As I wrote in a post nearly two weeks ago, I have a somewhat overcrowded shelf of books which I haven't yet read. I just stopped typing to count, and there are thirty-eight of them. That includes five for the reading group I mentioned in that post, and three or four from my birthday earlier this year, or possibly even last Christmas. 

The rest are almost all from the St Helena's monthly book sales, some of them bought as long ago as November 2018. At fifty cents a book, it's very tempting to pick up all kinds of books I might not otherwise think about. If I decide I don't like them, I can donate them back the following month... or year, or whenever I get around to reading them.

What I didn't mention is that we also have about 3,500 books, most of which I have read at least once, in various locations around the house. And since I have some favourite authors whose works I like to re-read regularly, I try to intersperse around three or four new-to-me books with six or seven old favourites. 

I'm told I started reading books when I was about three or four. My first favourite books were by Enid Blyton (as was the case with most of my generation in the UK). For all her many faults in style and attitudes, she engendered a love of reading in many thousands of young children. By the time I was about ten or eleven, I had a couple of hundred books of my own, and during my teenage years I used to spend most of my birthday or Christmas money on inexpensive Armada paperbacks, which were popular in the 1970s, often on special offer during the January sales.

There wasn't much 'teenage fiction' in those days; I still re-read my older children's fiction (Malcolm Saville, Elinor M Brent-Dyer, Noel Streatfeild, Louisa M Alcott etc) and I also began reading 'grown-up' fiction when I was around twelve or thirteen. At school I discovered Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. My father introduced me to PG Wodehouse, my mother introduced me to Gerald Durrell, and my aunt, who worked in a bookshop, introduced me to Georgette Heyer. These are still amongst my favourite writers. 

It wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that I came across authors like Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy, and the whole world of so-called 'contemporary women's fiction'. I gradually collected some, many bought second-hand or given to me for a birthday or Christmas if I requested them. When I like an author, I try to collect all their works. 

By the time we had moved all our books to Cyprus, I had around two hundred volumes of 'my' fiction, mostly character-based saga novels, light Regency romances, contemporary fiction, some Christian fiction, and some oddities like Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' series.  We also had perhaps a hundred biographies, two hundred or so Christian non-fiction books, a hundred or so of Richard's fiction (thrillers, spy fiction, and so on) and around five hundred children's books, mostly from my childhood and teens, and the ones given to our sons. And some general non-fiction, of course: dictionaries, reference books and so on. 

However, I'm not entirely sure how the 1200 or so books we had on our shelves around twenty years ago have managed to multiply to nearly three times as many. But we are finally running out of bookcase space, and - more worrying - of places to put new bookcases. I hate getting rid of books, though I don't mind passing them on to other people who I know will love them. So, until recently, when I need to make space in 'my' bookcases, which are in our dining room, I have moved a few more down to our guest flat. 

I've been keeping track of all my reading on GoodReads, LibraryThing and my book reviews blog for a little over twenty years, and in that time I've apparently read 2171 books.  That's not very many.  Since the boys left home the amount has increased, and I'm aiming to read 120 books this year, though I'm a bit behind schedule at present.  

But I worked out that if I read 120 books per year, and simply re-read all our book collection, without anything new, it would take me 30 years to finish. Now I'm not going to read Richard's books (around 1000, including both sailing and thriller-type fiction and some of his theological and missiological books) and I'm not going to sit down and read reference books, of which we have many. 

Even if I just include 'my' fiction books there are probably well over 1000 of them, and there are some I want to re-read at least once a decade.  I read some non-fiction too, and there are some of my children's/teenage books that I like to re-read regularly. In my planned ten books per month, I usually aim for one Christian non-fiction, two or three new-to-me-books, one or two re-read children's books, and five favourite authors from 'my' fiction whom I'm re-reading. Sixty per year. 600 in a decade...

Thus I don't need to keep more than about 600 of 'my' fiction. And that's about the number I have on our dining room shelves.

So for every new book I read, and want to keep (and probably re-read eventually) I can move a book to the guest flat. Of course it doesn't quite work that way; usually I fit more and more in the gaps until I have no room at all, then select a dozen or so to take downstairs. That's what happened on Saturday, although I was more ruthless, and removed thirty books from the shelves. 

They were so squashed together that I spread them out a little.. I blew off some dust, too, and cleaned the shelves properly.  They do look cleaner, but while there are now one or two slight gaps, it doesn't look as though thirty books have been removed.

Then I looked at the guest flat shelves.  The bookcases are becoming over-full. And since guests usually only stay a week or two, they don't need many hundreds of books, so it finally occurred to me that I could actually pass a few of the guest flat books to the church book sale. A radical thought. There are books down there which I know I will never read again. There are some which I have never read at all. There are some I don't recall ever having seen before... 

I found about thirty books which I plan to give to the book sale. Here's a selection, two of which are duplicates of books we have elsewhere, some of which I read and didn't like, some of which I read and thought were okay, but I won't read them again, and at least one of which I am quite certain I have never seen before. Indeed, when I went to remove these books (and the others I found) from my GoodReads and LibraryThing catalogues, three of the ones I didn't recognise weren't there at all. Maybe books breed when I'm not looking. 

Or maybe a guest bought a book at the airport, read it, decided they wouldn't read it again, and left it behind. If that's the case, I just hope they won't look for the book when - in some futuristic post-pandemic world - they visit us again.

Expanding my Reading Repertoire

 Richard went to the PO Box this morning, and retrieved four parcels - all of them for me. 

Each parcel contained one book. I ordered them nearly a month ago from the excellent Awesome Books site. The prices on that site are usually better than those on Amazon UK, with the huge advantage that there's a fixed postage cost of £2.99 per order, throughout Europe and most of the world. (Postage within the UK is free). 

But perhaps more importantly, Awesome Books claims to be the 'no 1 ethical retailer' for books, as well as CDs and DVDs. They donate books to schools all over the world, and they also rescue books from being thrown away. Not that they're poor quality. They sell new books as well as lightly-used second-hand books and the ones they call 'bargain bin' quality: but even those are in good condition. If I can buy something in the bargain bin, I do so.

Those familiar with my preferred reading genres might be a tad surprised to see what was in these four parcels:

They are not the gentle pastel covers of modern character-based novels about families and relationships, which are my favourite reads. Other than the one by Fannie Flagg, they are not by authors I have ever read before. They weren't even recommended to me via Amazon, based on my wishlist and previous purchases.

Instead, they are the books for the first four months of 2021 which will be discussed by the reading group I joined nearly a year ago. One was new, and three were second-hand. They are all, as far as I can tell, in perfect condition. 

I suppose it's rather strange that, in five-and-a-half decades of being an avid reader, I have never before belonged to a reading group. I had heard about them - I was even invited to one, about ten years ago - but they always seemed to me to read a selection of books that did not appeal to me at all.  

But two things came together at the start of this year. Firstly, I decided that it would be a good idea to expand the genres of books I read. I was experimenting with one or two different authors, and had even read a couple of literary fiction books which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I didn't really know how to go about finding suitable books, other than by trial and error. And I wanted to continue reading new books by my favourite authors, as well as re-reading some which I hadn't read for a decade or so. 

Then, looking at books at the St Helena's monthly book sale at the end of February, I was chatting to one of the helpers, and saw a book I had very much liked, though I hadn't expected to. 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'We liked that in the reading group, too.'  

'Reading group?' I queried.

I then learned that there was a local reading group which met once a month, and discussed the book they had agreed to read. And one of the aims of the group was to encourage people to read books they would not otherwise read. I would be very welcome, I was told, and the lady took my email address so she could send me the 2020 list. 

It was serendipity. Or perhaps synchronicity. Or, as I prefer to think of it, a gentle divine prompting to try something new.  

The list was a little daunting; I had never heard of any of the books, and some of them didn't sound very interesting. But I went to the Awesome Books site, where I found two of them inexpensively second-hand, and one in the bargain bin. I also found another book I had been looking for in the bargain bin, so I made my order immediately.  I found a couple of others on Amazon, in the Marketplace, and ordered those too. And I put the rest on my wishlist. Generous family members bought them for me for my birthday a couple of months later.

None of the books had arrived by the first meeting, early in March, so I had only read the 'sample' section of that month's book, downloaded to my Kindle. Yes, I could have bought the entire book for my Kindle, but I prefer to read real books if at all possible. I read a summary online, too, and some reviews. I eventually read the book - 'All We Shall Know' by Donal Ryan - in the summer. I can't say I particularly liked it, but it was well-written and interesting enough that I kept reading. 

By April, Cyprus was in lockdown. The group could not meet. I read the recommended book for April anyway, and was glad I did so, despite not being able to discuss it with anyone. I then started the recommended book for May, but found it a bit heavy-going and repetitive; I still dip into it occasionally - it's a kind of memoir rather than fiction - and if we ever do discuss it, I'll make the effort to finish it. But I didn't at all mind that the group was still unable to meet in May.

In June we were once again able to meet as a group, albeit in a larger room with chairs set over a metre apart from each other, and hand sanitiser on the way in. And since then we've met and discussed books every month other than August, when it would have been too hot and humid, and everyone needed a break. My favourite book so far from the reading group selection is 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo', which was this month's choice. 

I have loved being part of this small, friendly group, and have thoroughly enjoyed discussing the books we have read, some of which have been excellent. They try to introduce books from a variety of cultures and genres, some light-hearted, some heavier; some fairly short, some quite long, most of them highly reviewed. 

And so, when the list for 2021 was agreed, I went straight to the Awesome Books site, and ordered the first four, putting the others on my Amazon wishlist. 

I was delighted to see the books which arrived today, although it seems that my unread-books piles are growing rather than shrinking:

And this despite my reading three new-to-me books every month, in addition to re-reading six or seven favourites.

I suppose I could stop buying books at the St Helena's monthly sales... but there's something very reassuring about having a good number of books still to be read. I would hate to get to the end of the pile. 

Twenty year anniversary of my home education site, and a new book

Ten years ago exactly, I wrote a post about the ten year anniversary of my home education website. I described its gradual evolution from a few pages on a long-gone platform to a site with over a hundred pages, and around 500-600 visitors each day. I even found old versions of the site and uploaded screenshots on that early blog post. I wondered, then, how much it would change in the next ten years.

Those years have raced past, and today, is the site's twentieth anniversary. I haven't made so many radical design changes, but I did - with Richard's help - move it to being powered by wordpress.org a few years ago. This makes updating it so much easier.  Here, for what it's worth, is what it looks like now:

Perhaps a little more modern-looking, but not, I think, so very different from the 2009 version:

I still update the site when people ask me to include suitable resources, or links to local home educators' groups, or when I spot a relevant article from an online news site. And occasionally I write a new subject-oriented page. From time to time I re-write a sentence or two and check for broken links, but on the whole it doesn't need much maintenance.

However, back in the early days of the site, several people asked me to write it in book form. I didn't have the time or inclination then but the idea never went away.  About five years ago I downloaded the entire site onto my computer and tried organising it, but quickly realised that there was far too much content which could not possibly work in book format, such as pages of links to resources. And I didn't know quite what to do with the specific subject pages, which would need considerable expansion to be included in a book.

Eventually I decided that the focus would be an introduction to home education for people starting out: the kind of book I would like to have read when we were unsure, worried about how it could work, and trying to look at all the options.  I edited it down from over 100,000 words to slightly over 50,000.

It's taken me years to get this far, but when I realised the site's 20th anniversary was coming up, I decided that this would be a suitable occasion to produce the book. Richard has published quite a number of books on Amazon's CreateSpace system, both his own and other people's, and said he was happy to create a cover and do the layout. CreateSpace has moved to Amazon's own 'KDP' site, which previously only published Kindle books, so there was something of a learning curve.

But we finalised it a few days ago, and uploaded it for approval, both in paperback and Kindle form. And today, on the 20th anniversary of the home-ed.info website, my book is available. It won't be of any interest to seasoned or long-term home educators, or to those who are strongly committed to just one style of home learning. But to anyone who is interested in learning about the subject, or how it can work, then this book aims to answer some pertinent questions. 

Fourth set of twenty books read in 2017

Another brief digression from writing about life in Cyprus. With the slight connection that these books are all ones that I have in our collection (well over 3000 in all) and any local Cyprus friends are welcome to come and borrow books from me.

According to GoodReads and LibraryThing (where I upload ratings and brief reviews of everything I read) I have completed another twenty books. So that's eighty this year, so far, and I am on track - just about - to finish a hundred before the end of the year.

Once again, I'll divide the books into categories and begin with the Christian non-fiction. My aim is to read at least two of this category every month; this time I only managed three in all (I finished the fourth this morning, making my 81st book of the year).

Christian books

I began this period with a 1980s classic, 'Freed to Serve' by Michael Green. The author was quite a forward thinker, assessing what he saw as the way forward, if the church was to survive into the 21st century. Although it's not a long book, I found it quite heavy-going and only read a few pages each day. Quite thought-provoking, however.

Next I chose 'Soul Keeping' by John Ortberg. The writing is clear, and well-presented, with interesting, often self-deprecating anecdotes. I don’t know that I found any great new insights, but I found it encouraging and helpful in beginning to get a glimpse of what our souls are. Definitely recommended if you’re interested in this topic.

Then I read 'Above All' by Brennan Manning. The focus of the book is the well-known song of the same title. This was written as a devotional study of the words, and the theology behind them. Inspiring and encouraging, with a few personal anecdotes and much to ponder. A beautifully made book which would make a lovely gift, but very short. Highly recommended.

Novels

I usually aim to read about four novels per month, although it doesn't always work out that way. In addition to the eight listed here from the last couple of months, or so, I also read the teenage fiction listed in a separate section below, interspersed between them.

The first one in this period was 'When I Was Invisible' by Dorothy Koomson. About two girls with similar names, who have been friends since they were eight. A little confusing at first, but the tension builds up as things become clearer. Shocking in places, yet with an underlying theme about the importance of truth and loyalty. Highly recommended.

After such an emotive book, I wanted something light to follow. It was not difficult to choose an Adrian Plass from my books-to-reread-soon shelf, and I thoroughly enjoyed re-acquainting myself with 'The Theatrical Tapes of Leonard Thynn'. This book is third in the series that begins with ‘The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, age 37 ¾’. Despite having read it at least twice before, I found myself smiling several times, even chuckling aloud. Very highly recommended.

I next chose 'Laurie and Claire' by Kathleen Rowntree. Unsurprisingly, this is about two close friends of those names, who grow up together. It was sixteen years since I had last read this, and I remembered it as a very enjoyable read. I found it slightly sordid in places this time, and wasn't too keen on Claire. But it was very well-written.

For another light-hearted read, I opted next for 'Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit' by PG Wodehouse. I love Wodehouse's gentle satire. Literary references abound, and Bertie’s general ignorance would be irritating if it weren’t for his generosity and kindness. Very enjoyable.

Next I picked up 'Starting Over' by Robin Pilcher. An unusual setting: a farmer called Liz is trying to decide whether to allow an American firm to take over her land, and turn it into a golf course. The early chapters are a tad confusing with a lot of different characters, and there was maybe too much description in places. But all in all, I liked this very much. I had read it fifteen years ago, but had entirely forgotten what happened.

After that I chose 'Scandalous Risks' by Susan Howatch. I last read this in 2001, and it was probably my least favourite of the excellent Starbridge series about ministers in the Church of England in the 20th century. It's very well written, gripping and believable, but rather sordid and depressing in places, too.

I don't have many unread books on my shelves at present, but there are still a few. One of them was 'Clouds among the Stars' by Victoria Clayton. A brilliant opening sentence followed by some rather depressing and unpleasant chapters, covering issues not usually included in light fiction. It follows the lives of a big and bohemian family, narrated by the 22-year-old middle daughter. However, the writing is good, and it picks up after the first third; so much so that I could barely put it down by the end. I didn't think it was as good as others by this author, but still worth reading.

I followed that with another new book: 'The Secrets of Happiness' by Lucy Diamond. It's about two very different step-sisters who have never been close. But they're thrown together by a dramatic incident in the first chapter. Rather informal writing, with some excellent characterisation, even if some of the minor characters are a tad caricatured. My main grip is the excessive amount of bad language, which I found quite disturbing. Other than that, though, I thought it an excellent read.

Teenage fiction

Interspersed with novels intended for adults, I like to re-visit some of my childhood and teenage favourite. They are ideal for reading over just two or three evenings, when I want something well-written but very light. Along with re-reading my favourite novels, I'm re-reading my collections by favourite children's authors too.

An easy choice was 'Jane and the Chalet School' by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. This series is some of my most important comfort reading, and this one is the 51st in the original Chalet School series. By the time I reach the end of the series, I will probably be ready to start from the beginning again. Most of this book is standard Chalet School fare with moments of high drama. But it didn't feel 'samey'. I liked it very much, and thought it covered some new ground. Only of interest to fans of mid-20th century schoolgirl fiction, however.

A couple of weeks ago I finished re-reading (for probably the sixth or seven time)'Good Wives' by Louisa May Alcott. It's a wonderful book, written as the direct sequel to 'Little Women'. It begins three years later as Meg March embarks on married life. Some humour, and a very sad, though inevitable chapter towards the end. Some moralising author intrusion, typical for the period, but even that is written a little tongue-in-cheek. Highly recommended for anyone who has read 'Little Women'.

More recently I re-read 'When the Siren Wailed' by Noel Streatfeild. This is an excellent story about some London children who were evacuated just before World War II. Realistic, showing the deprivation and fears of families in the war, and very well written. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this topic, adults or older children.

Younger children's fiction

Once again, I'm including 'chapter' books I read aloud for the first time to my three-year-old grandson, who was here with his family until almost the end of August.

I was a bit surprised when this book arrived in my lap with a request to read it, but my grandson was very taken with Dick King-Smith's 'Mr Ape'. I read it at least three times to him, and others in the family read it aloud as well. It's the story of an elderly man who lives on his own, and gradually starts to keep more and more animals in his large stately home. Good writing, with an enjoyable pace and quite an exciting climax.

We then moved on to 'The Hiccups at No 13' by Gyles Brandreth. I must have picked this up at a charity shop somewhere, and had not previously read it. It's the story of 9-year-old Hamlet Brown, whose family are all actors. And Hamlet gets a bad attack of hiccups... It's quite amusing, and I think I enjoyed it as much as my grandson did, at least the first time I read it aloud.

I then decided we would embark on 'Sophie's Adventures' by Dick King-Smith, the collection containing the first three books in the series: 'Sophie's Snail', 'Sophie's Tom' and 'Sophie Hits Six'. They're about a small but determined girl who wants to be a lady farmer when she grows up. I have read these aloud to other children, though they are usually rather older than three, and I enjoy them every time. Great characterisation and plenty of humour. There's even some low-key educational information about farms. Very highly recommended.

Then I was persuaded to read 'Esio Trot' by Roald Dahl. I had enjoyed the Dahl books I read aloud in the previous period, and this is also intended for younger children. It's the story of an elderly man who lives in a flat and falls in love with the lady on the floor below him. However her passion is tortoises... the plot is ridiculous, in typical Dahl style. There are delightful line drawings by Quentin Blake every few pages, but the story involves deception and the mis-treatment of tortoises. Perhaps I’m over-thinking it, but I really didn’t like this story much, and wouldn’t recommend it.

And just in case it seems odd to be reading books of this kind to a child of three, I should add that we also read him large quantities of pictures books intended for younger children, including most of the ones shown here, among others. Dr Seuss, Shirley Hughes, Beatrix Potter, Mick Inkpen... and many more. I love children's books!

Miscellaneous

I try to read one or two other non-fiction books each month. I didn't manage to complete any writing books in this period, but I did finish a couple of other books that don't fit in any of the above categories.

The first is 'A Slip of the Keyboard' by Terry Pratchett. This is a collection of his speeches, book introductions, and other short non-fiction pieces produced over many years. Inevitably there's a lot of repetition as he didn't say new things every time he gave a speech or wrote an article. It took me ages to get into the book, and I found the final section (after his diagnosis with Alzheimer's Disease) rather depressing. But all in all, I was glad I read it, to gain a few more insights into his life.

I think picked up 'Liberated Parents, Liberated Children', by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, a book I'd bought second-hand at some point. I've read and very much appreciated some of their other books about communicating, particularly with children. This one is written in semi-fictional form, describing family situations and their resolution (or not...) after using some of the techniques the authors espouse. My sons are now adults, but some of the suggestions are appropriate when dealing with any communication breakdown, or apparent deadlock in a disagreement. I finished it in just a few days, and would recommend it very highly.

Another twenty books completed

I wrote about my first twenty books of the year early in March. The next set of twenty books was completed late in May. It was at the end of May that my son and his family arrived to stay in our guest flat for three months. During that time, I got very behind on reviewing books. I mostly kept up - with only a few days' lag - until I went away for a couple of weeks in July.  After that, I kept note of when I had finished each one, but I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my grandchildren while they were here, and by the time I had an hours or two myself in the evening, I was too exhausted to do anything constructive.

Moreover, I didn't do much reading for myself, other than ten minutes or so before going to sleep each night. So I thought I was going to be lagging seriously on my 100-books-a-year challenge on Goodreads. Then I realised that I could review the longer books I was reading to David. I didn't want to review shorter picture books - some only take five minutes to read, even though many are delightful - but he likes shorter chapter books too, the kinds with line drawings every couple of pages, so I decided to count them as part of the challenge, if I read them aloud. Which means that my third set of twenty books is rather unbalanced, with an abundance of children's books...

As with the earlier posts, links to my full reviews of each book (on my book reviews blog) are given.

Christian books

I'm surprised and quite pleased to find that I did manage to complete four Christian books in this period, as I have done previously, even if it was over nearly three months rather than two, and one of them was very short....

The first was on my Kindle, 'The Beloved Disciple' by Beth Moore. It's a lengthy study of the Apostle John, written in devotional style to be read over a couple of months. I liked parts of it, but found it a bit too informal and culturally American for my tastes.

After that, I read 'The Divine Dance' by Richard Rohr, which I had been given for my birthday.  Very readable, interesting, and also reassuring. I had moments of wondering if the author was veering a bit too far into non-orthodox belief, but my gut feeling is that he stayed just inside the line. One I'd like to read again fairly soon.

To contrast with that new, somewhat mystical book I then opted for what is now almost a Christian classic: 'Out of the Saltshaker' by Rebecca Manley Pippert. Written at the end of the 1970s, the contrasting cover style is shown rather clearly in the photo above. The contents are very good, though inevitably somewhat dated.

The fourth Christian book I read over the past three months is a very short one: 'Waking Up' by Ted Dekker, which I read on my Kindle. It's a biographical account of the author's struggles with his faith, and how he moved on to a newer appreciation of life as a believer.

Novels

I read nine novels intended for adults in my first twenty books of the year, nine in my second twenty... and just six in this third batch. I always have a novel of some kind to read before going to sleep at night, but it evidently took me rather longer than usual to read most of these. In addition, they were interspersed with some teenage novels, listed below.  They're all fairly light-weight, as I wasn't awake enough for anything too deep.

'The Christmas Promise' by Sue Moorcroft was the first one I completed in this period. It would have been ideal to read in the Christmas season, but I was given it for my birthday, and couldn't resist. Good characters, interesting plot.

'Belonging' by Alexandra Raife was next. Warm characters, a nice pace, and a hint of mystery that kept me turning the pages.

I then embarked on 'The Holiday' by Erica James. It was with some reluctance, as I hadn't much enjoyed it the first time I read it. But I'm slowly re-reading books by my favourite authors, and thought it only fair to give this another chance. I'm glad I did, as I liked it much more this time.

Wanting a change from contemporary women's fiction, I next read Agatha Christie's 'The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side', which I enjoyed very much. It features Miss Marple, and an intriguing plot set in a small village.

By the time I'd finished that, I was about to leave for my UK visit, so I picked something from my Kindle: 'The Incomplete Amorist' by E Nesbit. Set over 100 years ago, it was pleasant light reading although I didn't feel it was as good as the author's better-known children's books.

The final book I read that was intended for adults is 'Anna's Return' by Sally Quilford. A novella rather than a novel, it is set in the middle of the 20th century with references to the war, and I liked it very much.

Teenage Fiction
This category involves the books I read interspersed with the novels above, at bedtime; some are for older children (8+) rather than just teenagers, but I enjoyed them anyway.  I read three of this category in my first twenty books, three in my second twenty, four in this batch:

The first one I read in this period was 'Little Women' by Louisa M Alcott, a book I loved when I first read it, probably as a child, and which I've re-read many times over the years. Pure indulgence, and I enjoyed it very much.

I followed that, a week or two later, with 'Meet the Austins' by Madeleine L'Engle. I hadn't read this book before, as far as I recall. Not a whole lot of plot, but a pleasant light read with very well-drawn characters.

Chalet School books are one of my first choices of comfort read, so it's no surprise that I also read Elinor M Brent-Dyer's 'The Chalet School Reunion' during this busy period. Fiftieth in the original series, this is about families and friends connected with the school, rather than being a school story as such. Very enjoyable.

The fourth book in this category was on my Kindle while travelling: 'Of Wheels and Witches' by Stephen Hayes. A very interesting read, set in the apartheid years in South Africa, featuring some children having rather dangerous encounters and adventures.

Children's read-alouds

The first book in this section is one I read to some young friends, over several weeks, and finished just before my grandchildren arrived. 'The Exiles' by Hilary McCay features four girls sent to live with their grandmother for the summer, and I very much liked reading it aloud. My friends enjoyed it too, partly because three of the girls were the same ages as they were.

The first short chapter book I read to my grandson was 'Help!' by Margaret Gordon, a book, along with those below, which I found at the local thrift store. It's about two young pigs who live in a block of flats with their extended family, and who are determined to be helpful... unfortunately it doesn't always work that way. Amusing in places, each chapter complete in itself.

'TJ's Sunflower Race' by Rose Impey is a delightful story intended for early readers, but it works very well as a read-aloud. Lovely line drawings, and if the ending is predictable, it's very nicely done with a bit of humour here and there too. We read this one aloud several times...

'Lollipop Days' by Margaret Nash is about a friendship between a rather mischievous girl and a somewhat more ordinary boy who live near each other.  Not particularly exciting, but quite a nice set of stories, probably intended for about age 5-6 as later chapters involve school.

Roald Dahl's 'The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me', in a large format with colour drawings by Quentin Blake was a wonderful find. The story is (unsurprisingly) bizarre, but not unpleasant, and my grandson loved it. I don't know how many times one or other of us read this thing aloud in its entirety. There are no chapter breaks, so we just kept going...

And finally, at least for this batch of books, another by Roald Dahl. Not as enjoyable as the previous one, my grandson also very much liked 'George's Marvellous Medicine'. It involves a boy concocting a potion to replace his horrible grandmother's medicine, with unexpected results.

As for writing books and 'miscellaneous', I didn't complete any of those in this period. 3e

(I actually finished the last of this batch of books on August 8th and have read another seven books since then, including one of the ones which I mistakenly included in the photo for the final category - but I'll mention it, along with the others, when I've completed my next set of twenty books for this year. )