Third flying post in a row ? Gutted as I’m itching to tell you about all the gamebooks I’ve been playing recently! However, Gamebook Wednesday #2 will have to wait till next week. I’m still massively snowed under with work.
I can at least promise a Phone Box Thursday post tomorrow. I will need a quick break from my final push to get all my day job work done before Friday… however long it takes!
It’s the last event review from 2019. So from this point on I will only be a year behind with the reviews!
I booked to see this Marian Keyes talk at the Sage Gateshead as soon as I heard about it. I’ve always enjoyed Marian’s appearances on Strictly: It Takes Two, but I wasn’t familiar with her work. However, when I was newly sober at the start of 2019 and exploring a lot of quit lit (sobriety-related books), I kept coming across recommendations for her novels, and was interested to find out that Marian is many years sober herself. As such, I thought it would be good to go along to the Sage and hear her story!
Marian is a lively speaker and talked a lot about her early life, sobriety and how she started writing her books. This was obviously of interest to me as a sober writer, but Geth really enjoyed the talk too – it was warm and funny and very relatable.
I was surprised not to have heard about Words Weekend up until that point – despite being on Sage Gateshead’s mailing list since shortly after I moved to Newcastle in 2015! However, it turns out that it was a brand new festival, and one that moves around, as it was scheduled to take place in Salford in 2020. Hopefully they’ll be able to get going again once the pandemic is over.
Meanwhile, I’ve now got a few of Marian’s books on my to-read list. Rachel’s Holiday looks like a good place to start!
It’s been a great week and a half seeing family, and I’m thrilled with all the new shelves we now have in the house courtesy of my dad (more pictures to come tomorrow!) but it’s meant I’ve not had much time to catch up on all my usual things like reading and TV and music, so I’ve spent most of today doing that kind of thing, which has been nice.
Back to running tomorrow morning, some more house stuff, and a bit more catching up. It’s shaping up to be another productive week!