Happy books and bitchy songs

All the doom and gloom I've been reading lately has recently become a bit too much for me, so if anyone knows any happy books out there they can recommend, please do let me know. The only rule is that it can't be your own, for obvious reasons. Many thanks to those who've offered suggestions so far - I'm really grateful.

Speaking hopefully of happy things, Lord H is loving his new iPad, even though it can't quite pick up the GPS signal to make the SatNav work. The good thing though is that the SatNav works on his iphone, even though it's not the quickest of connections, and the blessed Mary (the SatNav voice) sometimes gives you directions that she's already given you or that you've already done. So I think it works only as long as you do actually know your way anyway. Or simply take a map. The choice is yours.

I'm also pleased to see a good couple of episodes being broadcast in the latest Dr Who series - a brilliant two-parter, though I deeply mourn (SPOILER ALERT) the loss of Rory just as he was shaping up nicely, dammit. And I have to say I don't like the pesky Amy - Spoilt Brat Alert springs to mind ... Still, laughing at Eurovision and Graham Norton's wonderfully snide commentary cheered me up big-time. How wonderful to be so gloriously last! And another middling career for a young hopeful UK singer gone for ever (say she, bitchily) ... You think they'd have more sense than to enter, really. It only ends in tears. Theirs.

In writing news, I've uploaded the last part of chapter twelve to The Prayer Seeker's Journal and in my offline writing of it I've reached the big milestone of 30,000 words, hurrah. Yes, I appreciate hardly anyone is reading it (thank you to the happy few, the very few who do) and so that experiment has been something of a glorious failure, but it's still a big thing for me and I shall therefore continue until it's done. Plus, as it's a novella and I don't expect will go beyond 50,000 words, tops, that cheers me greatly in terms of reaching my goal. Still, the mysteries of how exactly blogged fiction gets an audience remains as ever beyond me.

Meanwhile, at Untreed Reads, there's a discount in operation over this bank holiday weekend, so if you put MEMDAYSALE in at the checkout stage for any of their offerings, you'll make a nice lot of savings. Including on some of my books, so that's double nice.

In terms of reviews, The Delaneys and Me gained a 4.5 star review at Rainbow Reviews and is also now available for purchase at Amazon Kindle.

Today's meditation poems are:

Meditation 362
Victory balanced
by sorrow,

success matched
with loss

proving beyond
all reasonable doubt

that the worst gift
is to get what you want.


Meditation 363
When love is more overpowering
than the man
who contains it

then he will be happy
only if all else should die
and the lover live.


Meditation 364
It all comes down
to this:

after the war
the politics

and nothing
really changes.


And the Sunday haiku is:

Cool air bites my skin
and though morning comes too soon
the birds are silent.


Anne Brooke
The Prayer Seeker's Journal