Bountiful Business

I’m back! I was in London seeing Macbeth at The Globe, The Tower of London and unexpectedly the London roller derby team trying to go down Tower Bridge’s underpass stairs on roller skates. That made me realise there must be roller derby in the UK and what do you know there are three roller derby teams in Birmingham, with two just recruiting in Wolverhampton and Stratford. That means I’ll be able to see roller derby matches this year hopefully (must convince friends to go).

Sadly we did not see the elephant parade as planned, because it seems they’d moved the street herds to Chelsea hospital on 19th. We did walk a loooong way looking for them, only to check the website on my phone when we got back and find they had moved. Now admittedly maybe we should have paid more attention to the sidebar dates before we left for London, but I still don’t think their website is very easy to use, or especially clear. The main elephant website is much better. So no elephants for us, I’ll just have to wait until the miniature elephants that I ordered for friends birthdays turn up.

Just a few quick bits of news:

NerdsHeartYA’s first round is over. Make sure to read all the first round reviews and decisions.

The Terry Pratchett world cup is officially battier than the football (damn Portugal for losing to Spain, severely harming my chance of winning the quite substantial works sweep – come on Brazil). Who the hell has voted ‘Night Watch’ into the semis instead of ‘Reaper Man’?

Since I’ve read all but one of the novels that won the Locus awards and the novella I think I can officially start calling myself a sci-fi fan again, instead of just mumbling about books I read years ago. Yay!

This week is LGBT week until 4th July over at In The Forest. I’m reading ‘Down to the Bone’ by Mayra Lazara Dole for it, but have no idea if I’ll have time to review it before the week ends so just know I’m here reading it. It is alternately crazy good and uber-annoying, but I wonder if I would find the annoying bits bad if I were a lesbian teen, just about to come out? And that makes me marvel at the books that tread that hard line between educating young people on the culture they want to identify with, because that culture still isn’t represented enough in the main stream for teens to just know things, without making the teaching aspect so obvious that it disturbs a fantastic story. And it makes me feel pretty sympathetic towards books that don’t integrate the teaching aspect of their books as well as they could have, but at the same time it doesn’t make for such a pleasant reading experience.

If you want some recommendations for LGBT reading week here are a good strong five reads:

‘Regeneration’ – Pat Barker (adult - historical fiction)
‘Out of the Pocket’ – Bill Konigsberg (YA - sporting)
‘Empress of the World’ – Sara Ryan (YA - family drama and romance)
‘What They Always Tell Us’ – Martin Wilson (YA – family drama, sporting and romance)
‘Oranges are Not the Only Fruit’ – Jeanette Winterson (adult - family drama and romance)

Right reviews now and then off to an away day with work colleagues, haircut (needed so much), desperate last minute shopping for Latitude (wellies just in case, new flip flops...) and a night out. Is anyone else finding this summer especially busy?