Listening to: Synchronised Sinking – The Lucksmiths

Can you freeze raw apple? By which I mean, what would one be able to do with it once thawed, do you think? I have a lot of apples (the only reliably interesting thing at our farmers’ market – I don’t seem to eat a lot of them, though) but not a lot of interest in stewing apples. Hints? Tips?

You can’t really tell from the photo, but I’m knitting a sparkly jumper:

I am also (finally, finally) reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It scared me at first because I remember it staying on my dad’s bedside table for more than a year, but I think this just reveals him to be an incredibly slow reader – it’s actually a really fun, easy read (it’s the first Japanese book I’ve read since Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen! How can this be?). I picked it up because we’re discussing his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running at my bookclub next month (oh, dear reader! I assume you know me personally. I have bookclubs now), which didn’t really do anything for me literarily. So I wanted to figure out what the fuss was about and I get it now! The voice is the same but context and character are making all the difference. I will report back properly once I’ve finished it.

I’m a school librarian now and, sadly, there are no Mills & Boons to be seen. I have, however, been cataloguing a whole heap of surprisingly racy Christian romance paperbacks (they’re all about out-of-control young men living lives of insane [and badly-written] debauchery before being saved by the Lord and the love of a good woman) – the titles are boring but the content is outstanding. Expect excerpts.