welsh hills again

I came rather late to The Year in Books, hosted by Laura at Circle of Pines .  So my January book, "Miss Pettigrew lives for a Day", was reviewed in February.  This time I am running to catch up and hope to sneak my February book in just under the wire on the last day of the month. There are all sorts of contenders for the book of the month this time.  I have read Louise Doughty's "Apple Tree Yard" for my new book club choice and "The Language of Flowers"by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  I have also reread two books by Mary Stewart, "Airs above the Ground" and "This Rough Magic".  None of this is heavy stuff and I have enjoyed all of it, particularly coming back after many years to Mary Stewart's thrillers written in the 1950s and 60s and just bristling with intelligent, period charm.  Thanks so much to Chris of Home Thoughts Weekly for reminding me of these.  They are just exactly what you need for a burst of pacy, well written and i...

I am reading voraciously at the moment, diving into a book and barely coming up for air in the way I did as a child and a teenager.  I must need the comfort of other worlds.  I have always been a reader but how I read changes as my life does.  When my children were young I could hardly find the time to read novels and developed an addiction to magazines which continues to this day.  When I was working sixty and seventy hour weeks I had very little to spare for reading in a concentrated way and tended to lose myself in gardening books with the occasional foray into chick lit fiction when I was travelling and needed the quick hit of a book for the train or the plane.  I have gradually picked up fiction again since I left work but in the last few months I have become an addict again in the way I was in my teens, whizzing through two or three books a week, sometimes struggling to remember what it was I read last week in the torrent of other books that have followed,...