Madame Defarge strikes again

Last week I was at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.  I've been going there since I was a baby and during my teens (at the height of my embroidery obsession) I used to take my latest project with me and sit in the pavilion during the competitions and stitch.  We always sit in the same block and over the years have got to know the others that also sit in the area and a lovely man from Windsor, who we'd see there with his wife every year, started to call me Madame Defarge, from A Tale of Two Cities, because I'd stitch while the competitors danced/sang - a bit like the character knitting while the poor victims of la guillotine faced their terrible fate.

So, Madame Defarge was back again at Llangollen last week, stitching away as the choristers and dancers fought it out for first prize!  And I made some progress on my sampler (which will be the sister sampler to the one in 'They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace') at last.  I still have a way to go, but considering I'd only managed a couple of letters of the alphabet border and the bulk of the name before last week, I'm quite pleased with my progress.

“A man is known by the books he reads” - Ralph Waldo Emerson*

I know that this is meant to be a craft blog, and that I got distracted by the roses in the garden the other week.  Well, it has happened again, but this time it isn't the garden that has distracted me (well, how could it with this weather?!), but books.

I've been looking at all sorts of lovely blogs and pinterest boards recently, and quite a lot of them also mention books they've read/are reading/enjoy.  So, I've decided to do the same - we'll see how well I keep it up in the months to come!

So, since the beginning of June I've read ...
Julie & Julia - Julie Powell (the book of the film about French cookery that stars Meryl Streep)
Das Caffeehaus - Roman Rausch (a German novel about a ... you guessed it ... a coffee house, set in Würzburg, where I lived for a year)
Code to Zero - Ken Follett (I'd already read this, but hadn't listed it so thought I'd missed it!)
White Out - Ken Follett
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Auf der anderen Seite ist das Gras viel grüner - Kerstin Gier (another German novel - chick lit this time)

I'm rather proud that I've managed to read two novels in German in as many months.  It has been ages since I've read in German for pleasure and high time too.  Whenever I go there, I buy myself some books in the hope that I'll read them and improve my German, but they seem to end up collecting dust on the bookshelves.  I bought the first over the Jubilee weekend when I was in Würzburg and the author is from the town, so it is lovely to read about familiar places/streets.  The second was bought on my birthday trip to Berlin in the autumn and had been waiting patiently for me to finish a fascinating (but heavy) diary of a women in that city at the end of WWII (need I mention, that I still haven't finished it?)

We have a library at the office where people donate books and you can borrow them for as long as you want (v, v handy!).  That is where I got the two Ken Follett books.  I've read quite a few of his books and tend to buy them in charity shops or jumble sales, but the office library is another great place for them.  As I mention above, I keep a list of books I've read dating back to just after my graduation when I felt I could finally read whatever I wanted, rather than what was on a reading list!  Somehow or other, though, I noticed recently that quite a few of my favourite authors' books hadn't been listed - hence how I thought I hadn't read Code to Zero.

*When I was looking for a quote as the title of this post, I was tempted by Maud Casey's "I was born with a reading list I will never finish" - like so many lists in my life!