World book day!!

I hadn’t realised this until after I had decided to blip books today, pure coincidence.
 
Whilst I was attending my book group in Essex, I always blipped the books that I had read before taking them to the next meeting, purely as a record of what was being returned. Now that we have moved my consumption of books has diminished and I only ever read in bed before going to sleep or on long journeys.
 
These are the books that I’ve read since we moved into this house last August. There are two more, not in the blip, that have been passed on to friends. They are Lady in a Van and The Miniaturist.
 
The last book read was Margaret Forster’s My Life in Houses, a fascinating read and quite relevant to our recent house move. I bought the book in a local bookshop a couple of days after reading her obituary. Margaret was born in Carlisle in the late 1930’s and wrote several novels about the city, the people and Carr’s the biscuit makers. I was also born in Carlisle many years later and went to the same school, Carlisle and County High School for Girls, starting after she had left to go to university.
 
My Life in Houses talked about her Carlisle years and I was able follow her footsteps round the city. I couldn’t do it now as so much has changed. I visited once about 10 years ago and found that the site of my primary school is now a car park and the theatre next door demolished. Our old high school was in the process of being rebuilt having been damaged in earlier floods.
   
The book made me reflect on my “house” moves over the years. Four “houses” before I was 18yrs old and left home to start work. Then 12 room moves in 4 different nurse’s homes during the next 8 years before I got married. Things have settled down and I’ve only lived in 6 houses since then.