The Hunger Games

I've heard a lot about the Hunger Games trilogy, and have always wanted to read these as kids at school (at least some of my more able ones) have started to kip into these. I really enjoyed the first book and finished it in under a day - whilst suffering from jet lag - so not bad!!! Its the story of Katniss who finds herself in a situation where she has to fight for her life in a big brother-esque game show. It certainly was a page turner, and I was surprised by the violence (I don't know why as I knew that it was a fight to death kind of story) especially given its younger target audience.  Maybe I'm just surprised that my 8-9 year olds are reading it... I would think it was more appropriate to 11+. I enjoyed this though and at some point will borrow the 2nd and 3rd one to read.

Quilt for little Sophia

 

So, another quilt is now complete. This one was a challenge - I've not worked with triangles before, but it was a pleasure to put together, and actually pretty easy to put together. I used a brilliant tutorial from Molly Flanders Makerie to help me with how to construct a pyramid quilt - see here for the tutorial.  This was a quilt that was for my niece (first one) so I was particularly excited to make this one.

 I found this really cute material that I used for the back. I decided to continue the triangle theme on the back of the quilt.

 I used some gorgeous plain orange fabric as the binding, and actually had to finish off the binding on the coach on the way to the airport to meet Sophia.

 This is the completed front of the quilt. The completed size is a crib size.

 

This is the back of the quilt where I continued the theme of the triangles, although used some different sizes to the front. And finally, one picture of the quilt in situ.

Nights at the Circus

A happy coincidence that the next book for my book club happened to also be a book from 1000 novels everyone should read - result! This was my second Angela Carter book and once again really enjoyed her use of language. The description really brought the book to life, and helped me to imagine this mystical, magical and fantastical world. The story follows Fevvers, an aerial artiste who works in a circus and an American reporter that falls under her spell. The story is told in three parts with different narrators for different pars of the book. The only part that I found a bit confusing was towards the end of the book when the narrator changed, sometimes mid page. All in all, I really enjoyed being transported to another world where you are not sure what is real and what is not.

The Cider House Rules

This is the third book for my book club - an another whopper in terms of page numbers. Next month's one will be shorter. Hurrah! I didn't manage to finish this one before the meet up, but have since managed to finish it. I really enjoyed this book, and if I hadn't been so busy at work I can imagine that I would have sat down and devoured this really quickly. It's my first John Irving book and no doubt won't be the last. The book follows the story of Homer, an orphan and the doctor that delivered him. There are many elements of the book that really surprised me and challenged some of my own ideas. I enjoyed following the stories of different characters, and enjoyed coming back to various stories throughout the book. The only thing that threw me slightly was a sudden jump of 15 years.