Tuesday, 12 January 2021
My year in books 2020
Just as I did last year, I thought it would be fun to share a few insights and statistics from the Goodreads Year In Books feature that is available for Goodreads members. During 2020 I pledged to read 25 books but, due to all the sheltering in place we had to do, I ended up reading 40 books. I will not make this post longer than necessary so I am not going to list all the books that I read here. Instead you can find them in the individual posts that I wrote approximately every 3 months and which you can find here, here, here and here. Now let's move on to to the fun stuff.
My year in books 2020
- Number of books read: 40
- Total number of pages read: 13 977
- Average book length: 349 pages
- Shortest book: Night by Elie Wiesel at 115 pages
- Longest book: Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory at 560 pages
- Most popular (i.e. most read): The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (which was shelved an incredible 5 367 820 times)
- Least popular: A Brief History of British King and Queens by Mike Ashley (shelved 915 times)
- Highest rated by Goodreads readers: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah with a 4.40 star average
- My average rating for 2020: 3.7 stars (this is just a little higher from last year's 3.5 stars - I suppose I'm still difficult to please when compared to some other readers)
- The book that has been published longest: Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy in 1891
- The most recently published book: Eli's Promise by Ronald Balson in September 2020
- My 5 star reads: The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris, All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Night by Elie Wiesel
- My favourite book: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. You may read my review here.
- The book I liked least: The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay
- Most disappointing book: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (this book had such rave reviews and such a high rating on Goodreads that I expected it to be so much better than it was. It's a fast paced book and the plot is intriguing enough but some glaring errors and inconsistencies really marred my enjoyment of it).
- Best suited for a book club: History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. There are so many layers to this strange book and so many themes for discussion that I think it's perfect for a book club.
- Number of non-fiction books: 10 (which is equivalent to 25% of the books I read. That's not bad, especially since it takes me much longer to finish a non-fiction book.)
- Month in which I read most: May (6 books)
- Month in which I read least: October (1 book)
Monday, 4 January 2021
2020: the year that never was
Here we are in the first week of January. The memories of another Christmas have been packed away and the dust has settled on another year. And what a year it's been! It has changed us, challenged us, frustrated us and really made us question the status quo. In some ways, it has forced us to seek new friendships, find different ways of doing things and connect with our inner selves.
In my first post of the year I would usually share the highlights of the previous year with you but there's nothing worth mentioning about 2020. It was a year of cancelled trips, thwarted plans, isolation and introspection. But it was not all bad. So many people had it so much worse. We kept our jobs and our sanity, our son was able to follow lessons from school and the quiet time meant that I was able to break my personal reading record.
2020: the positives
- we went from working from the office to working from home literally overnight
- our employers realised that work still got done even if we were not physically present in the office
- using MS Teams became a daily occurrence and we were able to see some our overseas colleagues 'face to face' for the first time
- a large number of local business finally bit the bullet and went online
- we focussed on the things that mattered
- with nowhere to go, I spent most of my vacation days at the beach and managed to get a nice tan for the first time in years
- I kept the promise I made to myself at the start of the year to decrease my time on Facebook. It was hard, at first, as I was quite addicted to it, but, by March I decreased the time I spent on it to 5 minutes twice daily. I am glad to say that I have stuck to that regimen.
My most read blogposts of 2020
Goals for 2021
- Improve my photography: after years of talking about it and trying to understand the intricacies of modern digital cameras by myself, my husband has enrolled me in in an online course taught by professional travel and street photographer Mark Hemmings. The course is called Digital Camera Mastery and it's perfect for beginners like me. Thankfully, you learn at your own pace so I won't have to face deadlines I can't keep.
- Get out of my comfort zone and do something new on the blog: now that I have upgraded my blog and am excited about blogging again, I would like to bring my readers something new and was thinking of occasionally interviewing fellow bloggers or interesting people I know in 'real life'. Watch this space.
- Continue making baby steps towards greener living: this is something very close to my heart and, although I made a few switches last year to reduce the amount of plastic that we use in our home, there is still a lot more that I can do.
- Worry less and live in the moment more: if 2020 has taught me one thing it's that life is unpredictable, that we cannot take what we have for granted and that we can usually get by with a little help from our family and friends. I'll try to keep that in mind in the coming months.
Tuesday, 29 December 2020
Books I read in 2020: Part 4 (October - December)
Today I will be taking a look at the books that I read during the last 3 months of 2020. Between October and December I managed to read 9 books in total, finishing off my final read for the year this afternoon. Just as I had done in 2019, in January I will review My Year In Books by publishing some fun statistics from the Goodreads website that I find really useful for book recommendations. Following bookworms on Instagram (generally referred to as #bookstagrammers) has also got me interested in genres that I would not normally read. For Christmas I was gifted 16 books which, in addition to another 2 books that I got from the Little Free Library at Find The Door, means that I will have plenty of titles to choose from once January rolls in. But enough of my chatter. Let's take a look at the books I read these past 3 months.
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah 3/5 stars
- Three Sisters, Three Queens by Philippa Gregory 3/5 stars
- Innocence: Tales of Youth and Guile by Roald Dahl 4/5 stars
- Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian 4/5 stars
- Eli's Promise by Ronald H. Balson 3/5 stars
- A Brief History of British Kings and Queens by Mike Ashley 4/5 stars
- The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elizabeth Gifford 3/5 stars
- The French Girl by Lexie Elliott 4/5 stars
- Cornflakes With John Lennon: And Other Tales From a Rock 'n Roll Life by Rob Hilburn 4/5 stars
Innocence: Tales of Youth and Guile by Roald Dahl
Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
The French Girl by Lexie Elliott
Tuesday, 22 December 2020
Glimpses of a Maltese Christmas
I was on the point of writing about a traditional Maltese Christmas but, just as I started thinking about what a traditional Maltese Christmas is all about, it dawned on me that the traditional Christmases that I remember from my childhood are now a thing of the past and they only linger in the memories of those that lived them. In reality, what most of us now think of as 'traditional' has been imported into Malta in the last 30 years. This includes Christmas markets (strictly forbidden this year), mulled wine and panettone. These foreign traditions have now become our traditions too, making our Christmases richer and more varied - more European, perhaps.
So if you're curious to see what Malta looks like during this time, lets take a virtual tour around a few places.
Glimpses of a Maltese Christmas: Out & About
Valletta
The light display in St George's Square
A life-size nativity scene in Jean de Vallette Square
The Office of the Prime Minister in Castille Square
A display of bunting in Santa Lucia Street
Rabat
In St Paul's Street
In the quieter residential area of Republic Street
The church of St Mark (more commonly referred to as St Augustine's)
Glimpses of a Maltese Christmas: a peak inside
Tuesday, 15 December 2020
Sincerely, Loree is getting a makeover!
Dear friends, I am very excited to announce that, with the help of the very helpful and patient Berenica of Simply The Studio, Sincerely Loree is getting a long-overdue makeover. I have been mulling over this for at least a year now and have always been hesitant to take the final step because I was afraid I would make a mess of it. But, with Berenica's help, I think that you will soon see a more polished and modern-looking blog.
I cannot recommend Simply The Studio highly enough. For a very affordable fee I will have a new template and Berenica has answered all my questions and will be helping me with the final installation. This may take some time. So please bear with me if links don't work or things don't show up in their proper place for now. I am really hoping that this new template will challenge me to improve my writing and photography so that you will all have more enjoyable experience when visiting the blog.
I will try to be back with one last post before Christmas if everything is up and running as it should be. I am really very busy right now preparing for the most wonderful time of the year and tying up loose ends at work. But I will prevail and am sure that, by 2021, an updated version of Sincerely Loree will be live. Fingers crossed ...
Tuesday, 1 December 2020
Gifts with heart
So, here we are. At the beginning of the last month of 2020 and Christmas is just a few short weeks away. If there ever was a year when Christmas should be about what's in our heart rather than what's under the tree, it's this one and my aim is not to put together an extravagant gift guide from major stores or retailers. Instead, I just want to share some small stores, mainly locally-owned by artists or artisans, because some of these people have had a hard time surviving this year so I thought it would be nice to share a few of ma favourites.
Jewellery
JAD Jewellery
