Have you seen the rather lovely Library Thing website?

For book lovers it provides a great way of finding information about books, about what other people like, and what you might like. It also lets you host a list of your books, letting you see and search amongst them, even showing their covers in its ‘bookshelf’ view. Here’s our library. (It also has some widgets for bloggers, and that’s how you can see a few books in the right hand column of this one.)

It also has discussion forums around particular books, authors and the like. On it some people have committed to reading and reviewing 50 books this year. Martha’s taken up the challenge, and has started here. Why don’t you put some of your books up? We’d love to be able to discuss books or authors we have in common?

Interesting views from Tony Turnbull in the Times Magazine (25 Feb 08) on our coffee habits:

Don’t you think it’s one of the great myths of our time that we British bave become a nation of coffee aficionados? Yes our high streets may be blanketed by a competing froth of Starbucks and Costas and Caffe Neros, but can we really claim to be true lovers of the brew itself?
…

Why else would the decaf whipped caramel latte exist? Why would you flood a single shot of espresso with half a pint of milk and laughably call it a latte? These aren’t coffees, they’re milkshakes. We haven’t come on that far from the milkbars of the fifties.

Makes me wonder about my coffee preferences. I still have regular coffee most of the time, with 10% or so added milk, but given my favourite is a glass of mocha, I appear to have picked up the taste for hot milkshakes like the rest of us …

We do enjoy playing Scrabble, and normally take a travel set away with us. But the games are long, and we weren’t sure whether we’d have the concentration for it. So I was thinking of alternatives, and remembered playing Racing Demons with Rachel and Phil, and having a lot of fun. I dug out some rules, bought a pair of packs with different coloured backs (most important) and we gave it a go. It took a few minutes to get the rules, as there are 4 different groups of cards in play which you can do different things with. But halfway through the first game it felt easy. We played 20 hands or so, and Martha roundly beat me. Despite that, it was still fun. Probably more so - and certainly would be more frenetic - with 3 or 4 players. And a large enough table to play it on!

It’s also called Pounce and Nerts, by the way. Another recommendation

We saw The Golden Compass at the cinema yesterday. The book does give much more depth to the interplay of the characters’ daemons and the growing and changing relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. But still, I enjoyed the spectacle, particularly the airship design, and the altering shapes of the childrens’ daemons.

It’s reminded me that I need to read the last book in the trilogy: The Amber Spyglass. That can be my Christmas light reading. The first film is supposed to have toned down the book’s anti-church sentiment, but it was still there at times. The last book is supposed to have much more of it …

On Friday night we went to see Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra at the Centaur venue at the Racecourse.
Jools and the gang were on pretty good form, though they looked more comfortable and relaxed than really trying hard. Maybe that was due to the relatively cosy nature of the venue, with everyone pretty close to the action.
Vocally, the normal Ruby Turner appearance was OK, though this time he added Louise Marshall who had a very good voice, and Lulu appeared to add some sparkle.
Unfortunately, we were level with the stage at one side, and the sound reproduction was really not very good, rendering most of the singing, and the band when all playing together, very muddy. Still, a good time, and Martha and Fionna enjoyed boogie-ing.