Friday Favourites, Finds and Fill-Ins

Excitement through the mail. Two new books from The Book Bag to review in the next fortnight.


Breaking Up Blues
Denise Cullington

Breaking Up Blues is much an indispensable, practical self-help book for those going through break-up and divorce.

Leaver or left, breaking up is much more painful that you'd ever expect. There are so many pitfalls that can leave you stuck in bitterness and rage, emotional emptiness, or in endless depression. Time on its own does not neccessarily heal all.

Written by a psychoanalyst, who has her own experience of break up, Denise Cullington is sympathetic but challenging. She takes you gently but firmly through the areas we would rather not think about - feelings of failure and of guilt; of hatred and envy; of sadness and loss ...

And I'm stopping that right now. Sounds like a real upper, eh? ;-)

Well, at least the second book, a children's book, will make up for it:


Will Jellyfish Rule the World?
Leo Hickman

What do a glacier and a canary have in common?

Why does it rain so much in Britain?

If you've ever wondered what's really happening to our climate, the Guardian's green expert Leo Hickman is here to answer all your questions. And to discuss issues like:

Hurricanes named Henri.
Frog Fungus.
Lizards sunbathing in Antarctica.
Driving a car on chip fat.

PLUS how you can help save the planet by thinking with your stomach.

So beware! The jellyfish haven't taken over the world ... Yet.

I can't wait to read these two. What a perfect contrast. The horrors and realities of dealing with relationships as an adult (FYI, I'm still with the boyfriend - no break-ups in the last two years for me), and the naivety and strength of youth learning about the world and trying to change it. As a 10-year-old our class learned all about the rainforest in school. We spent the rest of the year raising money for the WWF and that charity has been number one with me ever since :-) . Jellyfish looks like the kind of book I would have loved back then.

Moving on ...

As it's Friday, here's a round of my favourites of the week:

Website: Blogger (I've been spending a lot of time on here this week.)

Blog: A Striped Armchair for being all-out awesome. Melody's Reading Corner for having the most creative blog design.

Film: Star Trek. I saw it last week but I still can't get my head around how much I loved it.

Book: I haven't finished any this week but Necroscope has become a real page turner. I'm loving it! (In a non-Mickey D's way).

Song: The Shoot Out from the Thirteen soundtrack. Anyone who's seen the film will know how awesome that moment is - close ups of each of the girl's funky teenage style!

Food: Discovering Oat Milk is nicer than Soy Milk has been the highlight of my week :-D


And moving on to other people's Friday Memes:

What great books did you hear about / discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

1) I had the good fortune of discovering a series of YA books in Borders by the authors, P.C. and Kristin Cast. It's a series called House of Night and looks uber interesting about a bunch of supernatural teenagers. Not too teeny-boppy too. I never usually read YA fiction but for these I might make an exception.

2) I've been reading up on the Bronte sisters a lot this week. (Yesterday was the anniversary of Anne's death - 160 years). I've only read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but after seeing a great review for Villette on 5-squared, my interest has peaked. I'm going to make it one of my challenges for the year to read at least one book written by each sister that I haven't read (obviously I'll just re-read Wuthering Heights for Emily but I'm definitely going to try and branch out and read the lesser-known ones).


Finally, my Friday Fill-In:









1) It's cold and wet elsewhere in the world. We have a lot of sun :-)

2) I really love ketchup but I hate tomatoes.

3) My favourite health and beauty product is currently my Nivea lip balm. Despite the warm weather I'm always prone to chapped lips and this is the only lip balm that helps.

4) I'm hoping that by the time next summer comes around I'll have a bicycle. It's days like today that make me want to go for a nice long ride.

5) Well, first of all I'm going to go and make some food, when I've finished this.

6) Robert Pattinson and an old friend from school; those were the cast of characters in a recent dream and it was very erotic.

7) And as for my weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to catching up with The Tudors and finishing my book, tomorrow my plans include shopping for food and Sunday, I want to be able to go out in the sun again.