Sam Sunday #16 / Library Haul #4

This weekly update is bought to you by my adorable nephew, who is now six and a half months old.  He's recently started trying food that isn't milk and he's become utterly obsessed with the act of eating - last night he was watching me eat a curry for almost twenty minutes looking like he would like nothing more than to try some for himself!  In the last few months, his curiosity about the world has dramatically increased, as he's learned to sit up and use his hands to grab things.  As all the other women in the family have short, dark hair, he loves my longer, lighter hair and misses no opportunity to grab it and give it a good hard yank!

This weekend marks the start of the half term break here in the UK, which means a week off of work (school).  Although I still have things I need to do, I can at least do them from the comfort of my own home. The most recent half-term was exhausting (inspections and exams), so the opportunity to recharge my batteries has come just at the right time.

I'm also hoping to get a lot of decorating done.  We've booked a plasterer to completely re-do the main bedroom, but he isn't available for a month, so we're going to start by redecorating the living room, which already has a nice laminate floor and smooth, even walls.  It's the only room in the house that doesn't require plastering on the walls, although the artex on the ceiling will need plaster-boarding when we have enough money.  Tomorrow, we plan on painting the walls camomile, a nice buttery pale yellow shade and then painting the woodwork and window frames white, to brighten it up.  It's a quick fix and it'll be lovely to have one room done to our taste.

Reading wise, I've been in a bit of a slump ever since the end of the Bout of Books readathon.  I've picked up and put down lots of books, including Kim by Rudyard Kipling, which I know I would have loved if I had been in a normal frame of mind.  In the end I decided to revisit an old favourite, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and that seems to be doing the trick.  I also visited the library and tried to pick out books different from those I would normally read:

  

1. Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire - Although I didn't love Wicked, I do enjoy fairy-tale retellings so this retelling of Snow White seemed worth a read.

2. Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin - Historical fiction is usually my go-to genre during a reading slump, but I haven't felt like reading it much lately.  Lavinia comes well recommended by lots of bloggers I trust, and will be my first Ursula Le Guin novel.

3. Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie - This might seem like a strange choice, as I really couldn't get into Midnight's Children.  But this one was written for his children and promises to be a magical fantasy quest, which I could totally get on board for at the moment!

Any tips for getting out of a reading slump?