What is this book for you?

In a literal sense, I re-read several Discworld books as a kid that fell to bits (not sure why, but ‘Interesting Times’ in particular). As a teenager, this was ‘High Fidelity’, ‘The Prestige’ and Brett Easton Ellis books, none of which I’ve returned to since!

I don’t re-read much as an adult, except that I listen to the audiobook of ‘I, Partridge’ every few months and read ‘A Christmas Carol’ every December and revisit short stories by Kelly Link, George Saunders and Carmen Maria Machado quite often.

How about you?

Prints have arrived! You can get one here, if you want.

Making a print of the best gigs I’ve been to and thoroughly enjoying looking them up online to find out the dates etc. it’s crazy that I can see the set list from the first gig I went to 25 years ago!

Also a bit of a bummer looking at lineups from festivals and seeing the bands I missed because I hadn’t heard of them at the time..

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Feeling a bit exhausted by drawing this one, but it’s maybe 75% done now.

This will be a wraparound cover for the book journal I’m making, so most of the ones on the back will show the back of books

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Hello! I thought I’d make a pinned post of some of my favourite stuff I’ve made. You can click on the pics to go to the listings if you feel like doing so.

Tumblr users can visit my Etsy shop via this link to get 25% off at checkout (on everything except custom prints). I use Threadless for my T-Shirts and some other stuff like that lil’ magnet- I can’t do discount codes on there, but they seem to run store-wide sales all the time.

My Links (Etsy, Threadless and Instagram)

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Which is your favourite?

I’ve redrawn my stack of Austen books to get the image quality high enough to be a shirt/tote!

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I’ve had an idea to put together a bundle of stickers that people can use to make a DIY book journal- headers for sections like this one with parts you can write on, little stickers to use for star ratings, nice vinyl book stickers to go on the front etc.

If you use a book journal to record your reading, what sections do you have in yours?

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What I read in August!

Not very much really, I’ve been getting through Gormenghast since May, then 2 bedtime books I read to my daughter.

Gormenghast was brilliant, I owned it for about 10 years and never read it, then picked up a copy second hand recently and finally got into it. I love the total lack of ‘worldbuilding’ and how such an absorbing atmosphere is created despite that. How does this place function? Where and when is it? How many people live there? It doesn’t matter! I might take a break before buying the next one, but I did thoroughly enjoy it, there’s nothing else like it that I’ve read.

For 90% of The Last Battle I couldn’t stand it and occasionally asked my 5 year old if we could switch to something else, but the ending is pretty great to be fair- and she was delighted to encounter all the Pevensies and Mr Tumnus etc again. I think The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian really hold up as stories, but I won’t willingly return to the others in a hurry.

Beaver Towers was a book I vividly remember being read in school, so I sought it out to read to my daughter and it was great! A really fun, spooky but approachable and kid friendly fantasy book. Apparently there are more in the series, so I’ll keep my eye out.

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Reading The Hobbit to my daughter as she tries to get to sleep with a fever. She’s not yet 4 but insisted and is getting a lot out of it.

Her chipping in occasionally from the cosy tent that she sleeps in with ‘uh oh, Bilbo will not like the scratches on his green door!’ or ‘I would also like to ride a fat pony on a adventure’ or ‘I’m not scared of the goblins because I’m very brave, but let’s just not read that bit, ok?’

A thoroughly nice way to re-read this book.

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My favourite gigs, illustrated!

This was fun to think about, research and draw. (Reposting this because I somehow added a mature label the first time)

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