May 2020 Wrap Up

Hello my fellow Book Dragons

I hope everyone has had a good May and have a fantastic reading plan for June.

So this is what my May looked like in books, as usual please click the picture of the book to go to my review.

Books I read in May

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

352 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

The Fall of Icarus by Ovid

56 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

The Complete Poems by Catullus

224 Pages

Format read: Paperback

3/5 Dragons

Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen by Alison Weir

624 pages

Format read: Paperback

4/5 Dragons

The Dolphins, the Whales and Gudgeon by Aesop

58 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

Total pages read in May: 1314

So not as many pages or as many books as April but still a good month for reading. Please drop me a link with your monthly wrap up or any thoughts on the books I have read this month.

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon by Aesop (Review)

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon by Aesop

About the author

Aesop (c. 620-564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables.

Blurb

Aesop’s animal fables are some of the earliest stories ever told, thought to have been composed by a slave in Greek antiquity and giving glimpses of a world that is harsh, pitiless and yet also eerily familiar.

Review

Having never read Aesop’s Fables I thought reading this little book of just some of them would be a good introduction to them and now I will be honest I desperately want to read the complete book.

I started reading this little book thinking that I would dip in and out of it but I could not put it down. I just loved every fable and could not believe how relatable they still are for the modern day. These fables will never age in my opinion.

Aesop was clearly a man who had met a lot of people and seen a lot of life to have come up with so many of these very true fables. I really loved how most of the fables used animals instead of people and these animals did not follow the traditional stereotypes of animals so in The Ageing Lion and the Fox the lion is sly and cunning and the fox is the clever one who works out what the lion is doing. Where usually we think of a lion as a brave and noble creature, Aesop is telling us not to judge a book by its cover.

I loved this little book and it took me a tea break to read it. The book made me laugh, it made me smile and it made me think. I give this book 5 out of 5 Dragons and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Purchase Links

Amazon • Kindle • Waterstones

Friday Poetry: Emily Dickinson

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone has some good books planned for the weekend. I have spent a bit of time in the garden today and it was wonderful to see the bees in the flowers which led to me choosing this poem. Sadly our pond has no frogs though.

Bee! I’m Expecting You!

Bee! I’m expecting you!

Was saying Yesterday

To somebody you know

That you were due –

The Frogs got Home last Week –

Are settled, and at work –

Birds, mostly back –

The Clover warm and thick –

You’ll get my Letter by

The seventeenth; Reply

Or better, be with me –

Yours, Fly.

Emily Dickinson

Have a good weekend!

This and That Thursday

Good evening everyone.

So this is what I have been up to over the past week…

TV and Movies

13010E88-6BB1-44B1-BF73-FC7B6AC5AA99_4_5005_c

I’m still watching Criminal Minds and I am now watching all of the episodes of Absolutely Fabulous. We are also choosing films to watch in an evening which is nice because we are catching up on the films that we missed in the cinema.

Music

This week I have been busy playing lots of music which has been lovely. I’m slowly doing more teaching online and it is so nice to see my students again. I’m still practising hard for grade one Ukulele but not sure when I will take the exam.

Walking and Exercising

We are still going on regular walks which is lovely in this glorious weather but sadly there is no sheep in the fields to say hello to. The exercise continues, some days are better than others.

Cooking

We made a musical pie, and some mini quiches. Trying new recipes continues and I have another cake planned now my wonderful sister has managed to get me some flour.

That is about it for this week. I hope everyone else has had a good week.

Mid Week Quote: Paul Dirac

Hello!

I almost forgot my mid week quote today, thankfully I remembered just in time!

My chosen quote today is attributed to Paul Dirac (1902-1984) who was an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Dirac is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century.

“God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.”

Paul Dirac (1982, attributed)

Happy reading.

WWW Wednesday 27/05/2020

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?

Hello!

I can’t believe we are in the final days of May, it seems to have rushed by. So here is my WWW Wednesday…

What I am currently reading

I love this book so far! I simply cannot put it down, and it is making me want to dig out my Hunger Games books and read them again.

What I recently finished reading

I really enjoyed reading this and I am very excited to read the next one in the series. To read my review click the picture.

What I will read next

As usual I cannot be exactly sure what I will read next but I’m pretty confident it will be Anne Boleyn A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir because I enjoyed Katherine of Aragon The True Queen so much.

So that is my WWW Wednesday, please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday and of course any thoughts of the books I have listed.

Thanks for stopping by.

2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge

Hello everyone, and an especially big Hello to all my new followers! Welcome and thank you for joining me.

So it is usually around this time of year that I review how my reading challenge is going and to be honest it is usually going better than this. My aim this year was to read 70 books and usually this would be quite easy for me but it would appear not so this year as I am now 8 books behind! I only usually do the Goodreads yearly challenge as I don’t usually do very well with other challenges. I tried a summer one last year and failed massively so I just avoid other challenges even if I do love the idea of them.

Now just after Christmas I had a reading slump which obviously did not set me up well for the year and ever since I have been playing catch up and to be honest falling behind. Studying has also impacted as I have been doing lots of reading but not of entire books and I have also been reading a lot of journals and articles.

So what shall I do?

Firstly, I could read lots of small books and make up the total quite quickly, being as I have quite a few of the Penguin Little Black Books series left to read then this is a tempting proposition.

Secondly, I could admit defeat and lower my target, but I hate admitting defeat! This is also a downfall with me because I will read a book I’m not enjoying to the end because I won’t be beaten, but invariably I regret this at the end of the book and realise that the book has actually beaten me.

So which shall I choose?

Well at the moment I’m going to stick to my target and try to read some smaller books as I have been reading quite a few massive books recently. I will review my target again in September as I really hope to get more reading done over the summer.

Fingers crossed I get there.

Please drop me a comment with any advice you may have to hit my reading goal! How are you doing with your reading goals and challenges?

Happy Reading!

lady book dragon signature 250w