T2: the book #blog12daysxmas Day 5

T2 has been an amazing Melbourne success story for co-founder, Maryanne Shearer. Originally operating from a shop in Brunswick Street Fitzroy with no staff and the founders' mothers out the back packing tea, T2 is now multinational with 70+ shops in Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA, an online store and over 3000 wholesale customers.

T2 set out to create passionate tea-drinkers amongst a younger generation. Today their iconic orange tea boxes are to be found everywhere. But how did it start and what is their story? This book has the answers to those questions as well a lot of information about the history of tea, where it is grown, different processing methods and different traditions assocated with tea drinking. 

The attractively produced Lantern book (a Penguin imprint) is well worth a read if you are interested in the history of your T2.

The Mediterranean diet cookbook #blog12daysxmas Day 3

I wasn't quite sure what to think when I opened a Christmas present and saw this book offering to "prevent heart disease and diabetes, and promote sustainable weight loss". However, it soon transpired that I had been given it as a present because it was basically a Greek cookbook and my brother had bought it for me because it combined two loves of mine: Greece and cooking! I can't complain about that.

And indeed it does. Author Catherine Itsiopoulos does provide an introduction about the so-called Mediterannean diet including the dietary differences in Mediterranean countries. All of that provides an interesting context for the eighty recipes included. 

The recipes are called "Traditional Mediterranean" but as befits someone of the author's background they are mainly Greek with a few Italian interspersed. They are divided into seven chapters: Breakfast and Snacks, Dips and Mezedes, Legumes, Vegetables and Fasting Foods, Soups and Salads, Main Dishes, Fish and Seafood, Biscuits and Sweets. 

There are lots of old favourites here plus some with different twists such as deconstructed moussaka. I have been enjoying reading the book and will enjoy trying out some of her cooking ideas.

Miss Phryne Fisher #blog12daysxmas Day 2

I am a Phryne Fisher tragic and have read and reread Kerry Greenwood's great series of crime novels many times. I love the settings and costumes and had great fun earlier in the year at the costume exhibition at Ripponlea.

So how lucky was I to get as one of my Christmas presents from my niece a Miss Phryne Fisher teapot! I'll enjoy drinking tea made in it while I catch up with some crime fiction.

Christmas books! #blog12daysxmas Day 1

I have often blogged about my lifelong pleasure in receiving books as presents for Christmas. This year will be no exception as I was the fortunate recipient of four p-books as well as a bookmark!

The four books are: Deborah Levy: Things I don't want to know (Penguin), Breaking out: memories of Melbourne in the 1970s (Hale & Iremonger), Maryanne Shearer: T2 the book (Lantern), and Catherine Itsiopoulos: The Mediterranean diet cookbook (Pan Macmillan).

Stay tuned for more about these over coming days as I read them!

#blog12daysxmas Day 10 Nine coaches waiting

On the tenth day of Christmas I hunkered down at home in the second day of near 40 heat and read: my second title for 2015. Not surprisingly I continued on my binge and it was another Mary Stewart.

Reviews I read referred to this title, Nine Coaches Waiting, as a mix of Jane Eyre and Rebecca meets Georgette Heyer. How could that mixture lose? It certainly held me enthralled through a ghastly Melbourne summer's day.

Where will my binge lead me next?

#blog12daysxmas Day 9 Goodreads 2015

Serendipitously, not long today after I had posted yesterday's post in which I speculated about what reading targets I would set for 2015, almost on cue I got an email from Goodreads suggesting I might like to set a 2015 target!  So I jumped onto their site and now I am locked into 52 titles for 2015.

And this evening I completed my first title, Mary Stewart's Gabriel Hounds, which I started reading as part of my post Christmas Mary Stewart binge. It was certainly just the thing for hunkering down in our near 40c temperature today. It's still in the 30s and not getting down to the low, 28c, until the morning. So I can predict more Mary Stewart reading overnight.

Which will I choose?

#blog12daysxmas Day 8 Goodreads 2014

As it's New Year's Day, it is time to start tallying up how I went in the challenges I set myself in early 2014. For reading i.e. Goodreads I set myself the modest challenge of reading or re-reading 52 titles in 2014, as I have done since I first started using Goodreads. 

You can see from the screen dump that I easily met this challenge and my reading totalled 104 titles in 2014. That's quite an increase over the 76 I totalled in 2013. So I am pleased with that.

How did you go in your reading challenges? Were they too high or too low? Despite my regularly exceeding my target in recent years, I shall probably still keep it at 52 for 2015. I think a title a week is a fine target and reading needs to be a pleasure not a chore. 

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Mary Stewart

As I predicted earlier in the week I was certainly starting a Mary Stewart binge. That's what Christmas is really about: long, hot days indulging in reading. I moved on to her third Greek one, This rough magic set in Corfu. I enjoyed the suspense and the Greek flavour of it. I marvel at how she can keep the feeling of suspense up even though the reader knows that there will be a cosy ending. But she is a mistress of this. 

After finishing that I was at a loss but a look at a list of Stewart's books in chronological order sent me back to her first, Thunder on the right. If I had read it before, I had no memory of the plot or the book generally and probably won't be going back to it soon. A good first effort that shows promise? A young former colleague of mine was discouraged by being told something similar on NYE about her first attempt at a novel but maybe she should take heart about my comments here about Mary Stewart in the context of Stewart's long writing career. Every writer has to start somewhere.