The Great British Bake Off Returns…

I am faffing today. I feel a little restless this week and today I can’t seem to quite focus on the possible posts that I wanted to pop up. I have almost finished something along the lines of ‘Am I Literary Enough?’ but it doesn’t quite sound right yet and then I was going to do a brief post on ‘What Makes A Classic?’ but am a few hundred words in now and have no signs of shutting up and know it will need a huge edit. So in the interim, and on a tangent, I thought I would mention The Great British Bake Off which returns to the BBC tonight, and a previous post showed just how much you all liked baking…

The Great British Bake Off, which I think I have mentioned to you all before, is a programme that sort of shouldn’t work and yet definitely does. Take a group of contestants who love to, and clearly can, bake and make them compete over differing recipes and bakery treats each week with the legendary Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (who makes everyone swoon, especially when he is angry, or is that just me?) judging, throw in the comedy of the marvellous presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc and it is just perfect. As you can see from the clip below from last year.

A rather fortuitous parcel arrived in the post the other day too from the lovely people at Bloomsbury, I can now (should I wish to) whip up some baked goods with alongside Paul Hollywood, well with him directing me through the medium of the pages, such as sourdough, brioche, croissants, you name it.

Not sure if I will have time before the show starts at 8pm tonight but we will see… I am wondering if I could get him on The Readers for a Cookbook special, we will see. I am still wondering how I could start a ‘Great British Book Off’, suggestions welcomed.

Books on the Bedside & the Great British Book Off…

This morning I woke up, stretched, wiped the sleep out of my eyes and as I looked to my left was greeted by a bedside table covered with books. It suddenly gave me some inspiration for a new random feature for the blog, but as (if you are like me) you are a fan of a bit of book porn I took a picture of the mass of fictional worlds I am in or have ahead of me, apologies it’s a little grainy it was early…

I was looking at them and realised in a weird way this almost like a snapshot of the inner workings of my bookish mind. You have three books I am reading (yes I have taken up multi reading, more on this unusual turn of events soon) currently; ‘Bereft’ by Chris Womersley, ‘You’ll Be Sorry When I Am Dead’ by Marieke Hardy and ‘The Beautiful Indifference’ by Sarah Hall – these naturally need to be close to hand as I am a dreadful sleeper at the mo and so they are the perfect company in the middle of the night.

The rest of the books are those on my periphery reading vision. I won’t explain all the reasons for all iof them now in fear of boring you (the Agatha Christie, Truman Capote and Dan Rhodes have all just been pulled out mount BR as I have been graving some friendly fiction faces, Elizabeth Jolley as an Australian Literature Month possible read) but I will give you a slight over view to explain what I mean. Sophie Hannah’s ‘Kind of Cruel’ proof has just arrived so it’s time to finally read ‘Lasting Damage’ as I like to read in order.  The same with the proof of Matt Haig’s new YA novel ‘To Be A Cat’ which one of the events guys at Waterstones sent me after I discussed YA the other day, so I pulled out ‘The Radleys’ –which I wish I had the hardcover of, so much darker. ‘Disputed Land’ by Tim Pears was on hand for a mention on this weeks recording of the Readers which has been postponed and Elizabeth Haynes and ‘Into The Darkest Corner’ has been lingering since the last recording of the Readers when we discussed the TV Book Club vs. Richard and Judy.

This might not interest you at all but I thought I would test the waters because it could become a future feature instead of my incoming book posts which I have decided to dump. I thought it might give people a small book porn fix whilst also showing you all the books new, old and in-between on my reading horizon, a bit like being even more in my reading head. What do you think?

Also I want to do something with the title ‘The Great British Book Off’ before someone else pinches it (this could already have happened 0f course) as this also popped into my head this morning, but I am stuck on what it could be. Might need more mulling though, what do you say?