Sunday 30 June 2013

Artful Readers Club May in June!

We've had a manic couple of months so despite reading both my May and June books for the Artful Readers Club in May, I didn't manage to get the art done.  I'm slowly catching up.....

May's book was 'I left My Tent In San Francisco' by Emma Kennedy.
 
I read Emma's first travel book, 'The Tent, The Bucket and Me' a while ago. That book follows Emma's family and their disastrous attempts at camping when she was a child.  It was a book that I really enjoyed and had me laughing out loud all the way through.  When I realised that there was a follow up book, I hoped for more of the same and was not disappointed.
 
In 'I Left My Tent In San Francisco', we follow Emma and her friend Dee as they leave University and spend the summer in the USA working and then travelling.  Despite being assured at a 'Work America' meeting that there would be plenty of work, when they get to the USA, this proves not to be the case. These girls are left to rely on very little money and the kindness of strangers in order to survive their time away and to get home. Just as in the previous book, bad luck and hilarious incidents seem to be the norm.  Again, I was laughing all the way through.  Actually at one point, I was bent over double and nearly dropped the book! There were also times reading this book when I was cringing and thinking 'WHY'?!!
 
While Emma is in the USA, her parents are also travelling around Europe so we also get snippets of their continued hilarious travel adventures which also adds a lot of humour to the tale.  At times it can all seem a bit exaggerated but I don't really think that matters because it's such a laugh, and sometimes people really can have that much bad luck.
 
The book is a quick, light and very funny read and I would definitely recommend it to anyone needing a bit of light relief. It was highly entertaining :)

Here's the artwork I ended up with after a couple of false starts....

 
Hopefully I will catch up and have June's book review and art done in the next few days!



Wednesday 5 June 2013

Yarn Along


What am I knitting and reading at the moment? Well I am still crocheting in pink.  I gave up on the zigzags due to my inability to follow a pattern at the moment so it's back to granny squares.  I can pick them up and down whilst seeing to the children in the evenings without having to think!
 
As for reading, I am listening to 'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K.Rowling.  I put this off for a while as I was worried I may be disappointed after loving Harry Potter so much.  This was stupid! It's an excellent book and I'm really enjoying it.  The characters are great and I'm really interested to see where it goes plot-wise.  It's the second book I've listened to as a result of reading other reviews from the Artful Readers Club.  I listened to 'Around The World In 80 Days' last month. 
 Hopefully, I will have my May book review for the ARC posted up by the end of the week after a total art fail at the weekend.