Cragside

Have you remembered it’s Mary Stewart Reading Week this week? I hope to have a review of Stormy Petrel for you later in the week, but today I wanted to share some pictures I took on Saturday.

We drove up to Cragside near Rothbury in Northumberland as they were offering free admission as part of this year’s Heritage Open Days. We had been before but not for a long time and as there’s so much to see there we thought it would be worth going again. Cragside was built in 1863 and was the home of the Victorian engineer Lord William George Armstrong. It was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity, generated by water from the lakes on the estate.

This is the view of the house from the Iron Bridge at the bottom of the rock garden:

Cragside 1

Another view of the house surrounded by trees:

Cragside 2

A carving inspired by the mythical Green Man:

Cragside 3

The kitchen:

Cragside kitchen

Lord Armstrong’s Billiard Room:

Cragside billiard room

The study (the globe on the left is an art installation forming part of an exhibition):

Cragside 5

Sorry about the quality of the interior pictures; the rooms aren’t very brightly lit and I haven’t mastered the settings on my new camera yet.

Did you do anything interesting at the weekend?

An update…

Sorry for the unannounced disappearance last week! I’ve been to Venice for a few days and was meaning to post about it before I went but never got round to it.

I’m starting to catch up now with all your blog posts I’ve missed while I’ve been away, as well as writing about all the books I’ve been reading recently. But for now, I’ll leave you with some pictures from my trip to Venice. It’s the first time I’ve been and it’s as beautiful and unique as everybody says it is.

The Bridge of Sighs

Bridge of Sighs

One of Venice’s many canals

Canal

Gondolas

Gondola

Gondolas 1

The Grand Canal

Grand Canal

View across the lagoon to San Giorgio Maggiore

Lagoon

The waterfront near San Zaccaria

San Zaccaria

St Mark’s Basilica

St Marks Basilica

And two pictures taken on the island of Murano

Murano 1

Murano 2

Temporary absence…

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be away for a few days. I’m going to Dublin tomorrow (the first time I’ll have been to Ireland) and will be back on Friday.

I won’t be able to respond to comments or emails, but I’m scheduling one or two posts for while I’m away. See you at the weekend!

Happy 101 Award/Honest Scrap Award

I’ve received two awards recently and I’m ready to pass them on. The first is the Happy 101 Award from Helen’s Book Blog – thanks! Here are the rules:

List 10 things that make you happy and then give this award to 10 book blogs that brighten your day.

1. Reading
2. Blogging
3. My family
4. Summer
5. Music
6. Animals
7. Traveling
8. Chocolate
9. Weekends
10. Writing

I’m giving this award to:

1. English Major’s Junk Food
2. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
3. The Ladybug Reads
4. Jenny Loves To Read
5. Diary of an Eccentric
6. The Book Resort
7. The True Book Addict
8. Alaine – Queen of Happy Endings
9. Mindful Musings
10. The Bibliophilic Book Blog

The Honest Scrap Award was received from Ash at English Major’s Junk Food and also from Ann at All Write With Coffee… Thanks, Ash and Ann! The rules for this award are:

1. The Honest Scrap Blogger Award must be shared.
2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows.
3. The recipient has to pass on the award to 7 more bloggers.
4. Those 7 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.

Here are my 10 things…not very interesting, but I’ve tried to make most of them book-related.

1. When I was younger I was a big fan of Enid Blyton. She wrote over 600 books for children and I think I must have read most of them! I loved her Malory Towers and St Clare’s school books, as well as The Famous Five series and The Five Find-Outers series, but my all-time favourite was The Valley of Adventure.
2. Although I love discovering new books, I also love re-reads. I like the feeling of revisiting old friends and familiar places, and even though I know what’s going to happen, I still laugh and cry in all the right places!
3. One of my first jobs was a Christmas job in a book shop – I was happy there but left before Christmas when I was offered a permanent job somewhere else.
4. A few years ago I took a proofreading course but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought to actually get to proofread any books – it did help me to get a job though (not my current job, but a previous one).
5. When I was a teenager I had a huge collection of Sweet Valley High and Babysitter’s Club books, but I sold most of them on eBay. Sometimes I regret it, but I just didn’t have room for them all.
6. I have a lot of very nice bookmarks that I’ve never used but I always find myself using the same ancient ones that I’ve been using for years.
7. Despite my love of books, I didn’t really enjoy English at school and I didn’t like most of the books we were made to read. My favourite school subject was History.
8. I’ve only been to the library once in the past year. I used to go almost every week – sometimes more than once a week – but recently I’ve been buying books instead of borrowing them. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to use the library more often this year.
9. On the subject of libraries, I used to volunteer in our school library, helping to shelve and catalogue books.
10. Although I only started this blog in October, I used to keep a record of all the books I read in a notebook. It’s interesting to look at and remind myself of some of the books I read before I began blogging.

I’m passing this award on to:

1. Brianne’s Book Blog
2. [Insert suitably snappy title here…]
3. What Book Is That?
4. Helen’s Book Blog
5. Debbie’s World of Books
6. Laura’s Reviews
7. A Book Blog of One’s Own

If any of you have already received these awards, I’m sorry! I tried to give them to people who haven’t had them before.

Forgotten English: 2010 Calendar

I received this 2010 calendar for Christmas and thought I’d mention it here as I think it might appeal to other book lovers too (although it’s not exactly book-related).


The calendar has a tear-off page for every day of the year and each page features a different word that has now disappeared from the modern English language, along with an item of folklore relevant to that particular date.

You can order the calendar through Jeffrey Kacirk’s website (link below) and it’s also available from Amazon.
http://www.forgottenenglish.com/Calendar.htm