Betty's blog

I've come to the conclusion that, as The Lady in the Tower: the Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir has been sitting half read on my bookshelf for months, I am probably never going to finish it! It's a very dense, well researched book, focussing on a very short time period, and unless I read it in a fairly short space if time (a week, say) I'd never be able to keep a track of who all of the people discussed in it are. Also, The Three Edwards by Michael Prestwich has been hanging about for a while- not as long as Anne Boleyn, but long enough! These books were relevant/interesting/useful to me at one point, but now there are other things that I would rather be reading, so it's rehoming time for them...

  This is a book that I will be keeping, as I am sure that I have not absorbed all of the information in one reading! As this is my home town, I found that I often stopped reading to look on a map to find the places which the book was referring to. I'm not sure that this book would be highly interesting to anyone with no connection to Bury; and I did notice that the author was amusingly defensive of the town (which was described as 'dull' in the nineteenth century) and also mildly disapproving of some modern development. The writing style was fairly engaging- although I might not be the best person to judge this, as my idea of 'readable' has probably been heavily skewed by some incredibly unreadable books during my history degree! One of my favourite books so far, as I will be able to wander around Bury feeling much more well informed about its history, and perhaps actually understand the origins of some of the place and road names.

After all of the Christmas feasting (the fridge is still full of cheese, and sprouts that didn't get cooked), and despite the first cold of the winter, I am feeling the urge to get cracking with some projects, and finish up all of those little lingering jobs that I've been putting off. One of those is to work out what I am aiming to achieve this year...and this is what I have come up with: - complete first module of C&G knitting course and start second. Save enough money to pay the course fees for the whole course. - donate 2% (minimum) of earnings to charity. I am planning to donate at the end of each month, and to donate to a variety of causes, local, international, animals, people, conservation- hopefully a wide variety. - read down the house- I'd like to read 12 books this year, which would leave quite a few books unread. But it'd be nice to establish the habit of reading again. - reduce stash of knitting yarn from just under 40,000 metres to under 30,000 m...