A Messines Christmas and an Armacao de Pera New Year

I'm linking up with The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Reviewer. Pre-scheduling hiccups over Christmas week means this won't actually be published until Monday though. Oops!
And my Month In Books for December will appear tomorrow.

We are now back at Camping Canelas, Armacao de Pera for three nights over New Year before we move on somewhere different on Wednesday. We spent Christmas out in the tranquil rural bliss of Camperstop Messines and the pictures are from the Christmas Day brunch which was a fun get-together for everybody on the campsite. We all brought a plate of food to share and sat around in the sunshine chatting. Dave and I got to try Dutch and Belgian foods including an interesting White Cabbage With Raisins salad which sounded odd to me, but the sweet fruit worked well with the sharpness of lightly pickled cabbage! I contributed two dozen Oatcakes piled with Chilli Lentil Spread - didn't look too exciting, but they all vanished! The other Brits there really went to town and made delicious Banoffee Pie.

We didn't really get organised for Christmas this year so our only hanging 'decorations' on Christmas Eve were actually drying laundry and we hardly had anything in the way of edible treats either! We're making up for that for New Year though. I made another batch of Slow Cooker Chocolate Fudge this afternoon. I suddenly realised a couple of days ago that I'll need vegan fudge (if there's any left) on New Year's Day though because, well, Veganuary! Fortunately when we first arrived in Portugal I spotted Condensed Coconut Milk in a supermarket alongside regular dairy Condensed Milk. I didn't previously know that Condensed Coconut Milk was a Thing. Unfortunately I didn't buy a tin at the time and haven't seen it again since. Grrr! But I wondered if it might be easy to make myself and googled it. Turns out it's so easy that I don't think the method even qualifies for the word recipe!! Guess what I'm experimenting with today?

In bookish news, I am currently reading a review copy of Nigerian novel The Bead Collector by Sefi Atta which is published by fab international publishers Interlink. This is the same company that publishes one of my favourite authors, Mhani Alaoui. They're currently looking for more bloggers to work with so if you're interested, let me know and I'll pass your name across!

Giveaways closing soon
31st Dec: Literary Flits Spotlight Post (for authors who want free book promo)
3rd Jan: My Dream Woman by C H Clepitt ebook
6th Jan: Derrick by Russell ebooks
(All current giveaways here)

On my blogs this week were:

Stephanie Jane
My Top Ten New-to-me Authors of 2018 #Top10of2018
Cover Love: My Favourite 2018 Book Covers #Top10of2018
State Of The ARC - December 2018
Best of the Best: My Favourite Books of the Year #Top10of2018

Literary Flits
Betwixt by Evie Gaughan review + Free Book
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens review
Headstrong by Patrick Link audiobook review
The Broke Vegan Bible by Lauren McCuen review
Secrets Of Islay by Robert Kroeger review
The Book Of Fathers by Miklos Vamos review
The Waves by Virginia Woolf audiobook review

Airing Out
No new campsites this week

¡Happy New Year!

Best of the Best: My Favourite Books of the Year #Top10of2018

I saw the prompt for this post in the Top 10s of 2018 meme which is being hosted at Kimberly Faye Reads. I have chosen to take part in three of the prompted posts and have loved looking back over my reading year to make my selections.

I know that this is meant to be a Top 10 post, but you'll probably swiftly spot that there are actually 12 contenders for my Book of the Year. Each of these won my Book of the Month accolade so I thought it only fair that they all feature in this post.

But which was my absolute favourite?


This one!

State Of The ARC - December 2018

I saw this State of the ARC meme over at Avalinah's Books blog in January 2018 and thought it would be fun to join in.

The idea is to keep track of all the ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) books I've got awaiting reading and reviewing, and to make headway through the overdue pile. For my State of the ARC, I am including all books sent to me for review whether they are pre-publication copies (as ARCs should be) or simply review copies of books already available publicly. I don't include books that I have purchased myself, book exchange swaps, or free downloads.

After twelve months of taking part in State of the ARC I am pleased to be able to say that I now have no more overdue ARCs and am (fairly!) confident that I can keep pace with the ones I have awaiting reading. This meme has helped a lot with my ARC planning and organisation so a huge thanks on that score to Avalinah! Applause for her please!

In December I blogged my reviews of these ARCs:
(Click the cover images to visit their reviews)

Here's my State of the ARC numbers as of today:

	Awaiting Reading	Read / Reviewed / Blogged	Overdue
NetGalley	15	1 R	0
From Authors	0	0	0
Blog Tours	2	0	0
From Publishers	2	0	0

RRB (Read, Reviewed and Blogged) essentially means those book reviews are completed and I'm just waiting for their scheduled blog post date.


No State Of The ARC would be complete without checking out the additions to my ARC stash. I finally managed to stick to One Out = One In!

Here are December's new arrivals

If you want to join this State of the ARC meme check out This Page at Avalinah's Books.

Cover Love: My Favourite 2018 Book Covers #Top10of2018

I saw the prompt for this post in the Top 10s of 2018 meme which is being hosted at Kimberly Faye Reads. I have chosen to take part in three of the prompted posts and have loved looking back over my reading year to make my selections.

For this Cover Love prompt I restricted myself to choosing my favourite book covers from books I actually read this year because otherwise the sheer number of books to consider was overwhelming!

Click on each cover image to visit my review of that book on Literary Flits

My Top Ten New-to-me Authors of 2018 #Top10of2018

I saw the prompt for this post in the Top 10s of 2018 meme which is being hosted at Kimberly Faye Reads. I have chosen to take part in three of the prompted posts and have loved looking back over my reading year to make my selections.

This first of my three planned posts features my Top Ten New-to-me Authors this year. These are all by authors I had never read before and whose other books I would now grab without hesitation! They're not all new books though - one is over 100 years old! Click the cover images to visit my reviews of each book.