2016 Accountability Post

So, another year come and gone. In wider world news, not a particularly good year considering. Close to home in my own little world bubble, things look much better. But, the new year is a good time for reflection, and I did have some goals for last year, so let’s see how I got on with those.

Reading

Reading Resolution #1 – Read a book a week, or rather 52 in a year. How far did I get? 11/52.

Reading Resolution #2 – A 12 item reading challenge. Of the 11 books I did read, I hit four of the challenges I would say. After deciding that one book can only count for one challenge. (If you’re interested, the four I managed were: A book published this year; A book I can finish in a day; A book chosen by my BFF; and A book I’ve read once before)

Yeah, I realise that it’s not many considering what I set out to do. Honestly, it sort of all came to a stop pretty early on in the year. I set out to do the Reading Ahead Challenge (rainbow style), but only got about halfway through the green book before things petered out and I never finished that book, let alone the challenges I had set myself.

Why? Busy year. I’ve got a job, a masters, a social/gaming life, but most of all, I think I didn’t read so much because I was concentrating on writing. Quite a lot actually. Which leads on to the other resolution/challenge I was trying to accomplish in 2016.

Writing

I joined a 365K club, which meant writing 1,000 words every day, or rather 365,000 in the year. How did I end up doing on that? 356,000 words.

Yeah, I know. Considering how little away from the goal I was, and the fact that I didn’t actually do much writing over the Christmas break, it is a tiny bit disappointing. Entirely my own fault, but, actually, I did learn a lot from doing it.

I managed to write every day from January 1st to June 4th. June 5th was the first day I didn’t write a word, and that’s pretty good going. But as you can see from the summary, I was a bit up and down after April (and April was largely boosted by taking part in the A to Z challenge). NaNoWriMo in November also helped, but about halfway through the year I sort of lost the steam a little bit.

Half of the point of the challenge is to write every day, and I’ve sort of learnt, that although I write a lot more now than I did at the start of the year, it’s not always writing itself that I do. I mean, of course that’s the aim, but I often do a lot of re-reading, thinking up new plots, re-imagining chapters and sections, and of course editing. All of which I think are part of the writing process, but don’t exactly lend themselves to a word count. (For instance, right now I’m trying to work out whether an alternate idea I had for Archmage is better than the one I’ve got currently. Major edits are so much fun to play around with, this one could change the entire third part/book.)

I’m also bad at habit forming. I wrote every day for 5 months, yet come the end of the year, I certainly think about my writing everyday. Opening up the document and putting the words down? Not so much. Especially when most of my free time is being devoted to the master’s degree, and that’s a heck of a lot of work.

But, focusing on writing so much was fun. And I certainly have a lot more words now that I did at the start of the year. It was good, even if it was challenging. But I have learnt a bit more about myself, and how I write, and that’s very useful information I can use going forward.

2017

So, what challenges am I doing this year? None. I’m not promising to read a certain amount of books, or write a certain amount each day. I am officially divesting myself of any and all obligations/challenges.

Why? The masters degree. This year I have to do a dissertation. We’ve already started thinking about it (and the initial proposal is due in the next couple of weeks) so there’s already a fair amount of internal screaming going on. That is only going to get more stressful, and since I want to do well in the degree, I’m prioritising that over everything else this year.

I would like to read more than I did last year, and I certainly plan to keep on writing, if not daily then certainly multiple times a week. What I’m not doing is setting any goals to do with those hobbies, because then I won’t feel obligated to spend time on them when I should be doing my masters work (if I end up doing them instead of the masters work then that’s procrastination and is an entirely different problem).

Hopefully by cooling off everything else, all the stress that comes from the masters will be somewhat balanced out, and I can look forward to a really free end of the year, since I hand in my dissertation in September, get the results back in October, just in time for NaNoWriMo in November! I’ll probably have calmed down by then. Maybe.

So that’s my 2017 – the year of the degree. I hope that whatever you are planning for the next year is off to a good start. Mine could be better, I managed to leave the book I need to read round a friend’s house!

 

Book Wyrms

The next kickstarter arrived! As followers of this blog will know, I am a big fan of an artist by the name of Jessica Feinburg, and the beautiful book collections she runs through kickstarter. And Book Wyrms has arrived!

As you might be able to tell, I was really excited about this particular project, because I like writing and books and all those surrounding topics and now I have dragons to do with books!

It’s quite a bumper collection, I did splash out a little. The book and cards are there, bookmarks, and prints, but I also got badges and stickers and a ketchain to put on my bag and a larger print of this gorgeous woodland library.

 

Need to find a space on my wall for it, but I love it quite a lot. She’s got another kickstarter live at the moment for another colouring book which I have of course backed. Colouring in is great, especially dragons. That, and her bext project is going to be birthstone dragons, so I’ll have to see what I pick up when that one goes live.

The collection of dragons grows ever larger!

Almost Dragons

For this week’s dragon post, I thought that although finding some nice pictures of dragons would be excellent, I wanted to write something about dragons, since I haven’t done that properly since my ‘Dragons of the World’ series at the end of last year. So I rummaged around a little bit and came up with today’s topic – almost dragons.

What do I mean by that? It struck me that in a fair few novels, stories and other media that are around, you can have dragons, but you also have creatures, often small ones, that are related to dragons, but not dragons.

Examples: In the Dragonriders of Pern has fire-lizards, arm length miniature dragons (which the dragons are rumoured to be bred from), Natural History of Dragon series by Marie Brennan has sparklings, again, tiny creatures that resemble dragons but often highly debated as being related to them. The Penneykettle dragons from The Last Dragon Chronicles by Chris d’Lacey are different from the dragons of the old tales.

Of course, these are different from pygmy, tiny, nano, or just generally small or juvenile dragons. Dragons come in a large variety of shapes and sizes. For instance, in How To Train Your Dragon book you have nanodragons, which are almost too small to be seen with the naked eye, and in the TV show you have Fireworms, Smothering Smokebreaths, and Terrible Terrors, but despite being small, all of them are regarded as dragons.

So what’s the point of them? I always viewed almost dragons as some sort of bridge, whether narrative, or biologically, or socially. A narrative bridge would be that you meet the almost dragon, and successful interaction with it can lead you to the larger dragons, or there’s some plot device that the almost dragon fulfils that the dragons don’t. I’ve got, well, a couple of ideas for dragons novels in my head, and they do use almost dragons. The ones in my current idea are almost exactly like dragons, except tiny and they don’t have the elemental breath. I’m also hesitant to write a dragon novel, because I love dragons so much and when I do write the novel I want it to be something I’m really proud of. So, that’s mostly in the background right now.

Biologically, there’s a few stories where dragons evolved from almost dragons, or almost dragons have some sort of genetic link to dragons. Dragonriders of Pern is a good example of this without going into too much detail. Social links sort of cross over with the narrative stuff I mentioned above, dragons are usually intelligent, and almost dragons are often less so, but good interactions with them lay ground work for future interactions with both types.

Actually, having said about novel ideas, I do have an idea where there are almost dragons, and the dragons (or dragon, singular, as is actually the case) can change their size, from the almost dragons, up to the size of mountains, so they can blend in with the almost dragons when they need to. Size changing seems like a cool mechanic to explore as well, and allows for greater plot movement, because if you were the size of a mountain, then there’d only be certain times where that’s useful.

Before I ramble on too much, I’ll finish there. But can you think of any other book or shows or movie that employ almost dragons in them? I’m sure I’ve missed some, and I love getting new books recommendations.

Reading Ahead – March Update

So, at the beginning of last month I talked about the Reading Ahead Challenge, and how I was planning to read six books in a relaxed time frame of a month.

How’s that going? Poorly.

I mentioned about halfway through the month that February was proving tough for reading and I had only read the red book. Two weeks on from that, and I’ve only read the orange book in addition. True, the yellow book is sitting in my bag, but sitting in my bag is not reading it. So, in the month of Feb, which admittedly is the short month, although not this year because leap year, I have read two books.

Needless to say, this is mildly disappointing to me.

Of course, it’s not because I haven’t been doing things. In fact, I think it is the things that are possibly preventing me from reading. Writing every day, enough to average out at 1,000 words, actually takes up a lot of my time. Then there’s my master’s coursework, which takes a number of hours out of evenings here and there, and most of my Thursdays. I of course, work most days and I can’t read whilst on the job (Sadly the job of the librarian is not sitting around all day reading books, otherwise this challenge would be really easy) and in the evenings I often have a tabletop game, social events, or something. This week my dad also happens to be in town, so I’m going out for dinner and catching up with him a couple of times.

My point is, that finding the time to read is really hard. When I actually sit down to read, it never takes me long to finish a book. I had to take a two hour train over the weekend, and it was glorious, because I could sit down, with my book, and I got 2/3rds of the way through by the end of the train journey. So my reading speed is still as fast as it ever was.

But actually finding that hour or two to sit down and read? That’s hard. But I do want to make myself. I know a lot of people make fifteen minutes at the end of the day, which probably won’t work for me because my partner tends to already be in the bed by the time I amble along, and I prefer to sit down in large chunks rather than ten minutes here or there. For reading anyway, everything else follows the other way around.

So, still going with the rainbow. I’ve got a lunch hour with not much else going on that’s earmarked for starting the yellow book today. And I’ve got the rest of the year to play catch up since I’m a bit behind on my 52 books in the year as well. Well on track with my writing so, which is very pleasing (64K on day 61).

How are the rest of you doing? What’s 2016 shaping up like for you?

Reading Ahead Challenge

I keep forgetting that this comes early in the year. Reading Ahead (formally known at the six book challenge) is all about getting those people who don’t normally read to get into reading. Being in a library, and a college where we have student of all sorts of reading levels, we get rather involved in this.

I talked about it last year, and this year is much the same, between now and June read six things. Newspapers, magazines, books, poem collections, short stories, most things count as long as it gets you reading.

Of course I still have the problem that I did last year, that I am an avid reader and this challenge is not really aimed at me. However, as a librarian, we like to get involved with these things, and it’s good to get my numbers up for the 52 challenge (one book a week, and I’m kind of behind), so I am once again joining in.

Last year I tried to do it in a week, and managed six books in eight days. This year I have a lot more on my plate, and I’m trying not to stress, so I think a month is a pretty good time frame. I’m halfway through a book right now, so if I finish that up by the end of the month, then I can spend February doing this.

What I have set myself, as a sort of little extra on top, is a rainbow reading challenge. Six books, one of each of the prominent colours of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple (Because splitting purple into indigo and violet is a chore for this sort of thing).

So I’m going to read these six, in the order of the rainbow, top to bottom. There are two library books, and the other four are ones that have all been on my shelves for a little while. I’m going to try and read through all those books that I bought but never read last year, and try to not buy so many new books until I do that. Keyword: try.

I’ll be back with an update on how this has gone at the end of February. Hope your 2016 is going well! Any of my lovely readers reading anything good at the moment?

Reading Transition

So, that’s 2015 over with, and 2016 is well underway!

At the start of 2015, I made a few reading resolutions, because I felt like I wasn’t reading enough and I should be doing more. I’m both and a writer and a librarian, so books are kind of a really big thing in my life, and I need to enjoy them as well!

Resolution #1: Read a book every week, or 52 in the year. Predictably, this was more 52 books in the year than one a week, but I am pleased to say, I managed it! If you want to see which books I ended up reading, visit my Goodreads 2015 Challenge page.

Resolution #2: Read a mixture of Fiction and Non-Fiction. Out of the 52 books I read, 7 of those were non-fiction. So I don’t think that’s too bad a number. I’m actually reading two non-fiction books at the moment, but I’m only a couple of chapters in on each, hence they do not count towards the 2015 challenge.

Resolution #3: Read outside of my genre, including romance, mystery, science fiction, literary, comedy and biography. This is probably the one I did worst with. Romance, check (Water for Elephants, also a historic novel, but also romance). Mystery, eh, no (The Night Circus has some elements, but is definitely fantasy). Science Fiction, ah ha! Yes! (The Humans and Robot in the Garden. I also have on one my to read pile). Literary, no. Not unless books about literature count, and they don’t. Comedy, I don’t think so. Again, some books did make me laugh, but nothing counts as comedy. Biography, check (A Street Cat Named Bob, and I’ve found out he has follow up books!). So I hit half of those, which was quite good. I also managed to read some poetry, and some books which I probably wouldn’t have picked up on my own, both through a reading scheme and by listening to friend recommendations, so I didn’t do all too badly on this.

All in all, a pretty good year for reading.

But, as soon as the clocks turned midnight, it was a new year, and lots more potential for reading! So, once again, using the very handy challenge tracker that Goodreads provides, I have signed up to read 52 books in 2016! Check out my progress here, although, you know, as of now, January 4th, there really isn’t any progress.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie, I have several books I am currently reading, and more on the to read pile. Two non-fiction books (Badgerlands and From Here to Eternity), a fantasy (Dreamwalker), a science fiction (Seven Eves) and something that I think is alternate history (Conversion).

So reading resolution #1 for 2016 is to once again get to 52 books by the end of the year.

Reading resolution #2 comes from a friend who discovered this and passed it along to me.

It’s a fairly short list, only 12 items, but it’s designed to be very doable, and it means that those who might read less have access to it as well, and you can tick it off an item per month. I of course plan to read more than that, but I will try to incorporate these challenges into what I choose to read this year as well. Just to inject a bit of variety, and I do like a challenge.

Only two resolutions this year, as I do want to keep to them, and it feels good to achieve rather than overshoot and fail. I learnt this year that I have to prioritise activities or run the risk of taking on too much and not being able to do any of it.

Anyone else made reading resolutions for this year? Or any other resolutions for that matter. My New Year resolution for 2016 is to spend more time with friends, trying to see the people I might not see all that often, because I have awesome friends.

Author Event – Cressida Cowell

I was expecting something similar to the last author event I went to, the Garth Nix one, where we were sitting in the Waterstones cafe and having this intimate Q&A session.

What I had completely forgotten, was that Cressida Cowell and the How to Train Your Dragon series, are aimed at children. Not matter how fantastic the books are, and can be appreciated by adults, they do, in fact, live in the children’s section.

Which meant that I was sitting in Waterstones cafe, with five minutes to go, wondering where everyone else was, when the helpful cafe man tells me the event is in the large building round the corner, not the cafe. Thankfully, I made it on time, got my poster and my book, and since I was on my own, squeeze into a seat rather near the front.

Oh, and as a bonus? There were some of the GoGoDragons there, including my personal favourite, Webby! The schools that were attending the event (yes, some schools are awesome enough to bring their students to events like this) brought their GoGoSchoolDragons with them as well, so there were five big ones and five little ones. It was a lovely setting.

And then Cressida herself came out, and she was simply fantastic. Just, awesome. When she spoke, it was clear to see the enthusiasm and love for what she does, and she really does love having all the kids around. She talked a lot about her own childhood, showing us pictures from when she would stay on this uninhabited island (because her dad wanted to bird watch) with her starting to write, aged approximately nine, and then giving the audience, largely made up of approximately nine year olds, advice on how to write stories, and be creative. And it wasn’t bad advice for us older ones either.

So, she showed us some childhood memories, she did some reading of the books, including the dragonese parts of the book where the adults had to cover their ears because it is not appropriate language for us to hear! She talked about vikings, she showed us some stories and map that kids had sent into her (apparently she gets a ton of letters and pictures like this and loves it).

She talked a lot about inspiration, and where she gets her ideas from. I had no idea that she was illustrator as well as writer, and frankly it just make me respect her all that much more, but she talked about how she uses real life to inspire her. For instance, quite a few dragons that she’s come up with are blends or two or more creatures. The monstrous strangulator is made up of a fish that look like a grumpy man, and another fish that has a see-through head because it dwells on the ocean floor and needs to see the prey above it. The Giant Bee eater is a cross between a basking shark and a manta ray. As she kept saying, reality is often strange than fiction, and nature is more powerful than we are!

She even, during her long talk, answered some of the questions that I had. For instance, in the films, Toothless is definately not as he is in the books. And that’s because in the books, Vikings have hunting dragons and riding dragons, but the riding dragon doesn’t turn up until book six or so. The film-makers were doing the film in 3D, and had this large expanse of sea and sky to play with, so they decided to combine Hiccup’s two dragon from the books (Toothless and Windwalker) into one dragon in the films that could fly from the start. And yes, she had always intended to have the slow reveal of the early adventure meaning more than you think they do, and everything ties together in circles and cycles.

Of course there were questions asked by the audience. All kids, because lets face it, when kids are actually excited and involved in something, you let them run with it. And from this we learnt that this is the last book in this series, but Cressida loves the world she’s created so much, that maybe, just maybe, other books set in this world will happen. As long as there are dragons, I will love them.

Oh, one more little fact. David Tenant is the voice for all the audio books. And the trailer for the last book that they showed us at the end. David. Freaking. Tenant. I don’t normally go for audio books, but I might just have to now!

After the long talk, during which I was hugging my Toothless cuddly toy, there was a signing. I managed to end up being last in the queue, but there were two girls ahead of me, around my age, and we chatted and found a fair bunch in common. One of them nearly stole my cuddly toy as well. I just think it’s awesome when people can share a love of the same thing.

So it took a while, but I did get to meet her! And I got to tell her how much I enjoyed the books, especially the joy I had of realising that there was a huge plot at work here, and it had been going on since book one. She replied that that was one of the reasons she loved writing books, to hear the reaction of her readers. I got the new book and my original, old copy of HTTYD signed. Then they stamped them with the slavemark, and I got a badge as well!

I was just so happy to have gone to this event. I love hearing authors talk about their work, especially when they love it, and I love it. And also dragons.

Brave New Reads

This year, I’ve been making occasional posts about my reading. After all, what is a writer without a little reading? Or, in most cases, a lot of reading. I had a few goals for reading this year. Number one, to read a book a week (or 52 in the year). Number two and three were to do with expanding my reading out from my usual fantasy genre into other genres and non fiction as well.

To help with this, and because one of my librarian colleagues and friends pointed me at it, I joined up to be one of the readers circle for the Brave New Reads of 2016.

Brave New Reads is where readers choose six books from a long list to recommend to other readers, book clubs and literary events that go on in and around Norfolk. The Reader’s Circle is the process by which we choose these books.

So I signed up, gave they my preferences (which they seem to have ignored, and I consider this a good thing for expanding my horizons) and recommendation for books came in from all around, with the only criteria being that a book had to be published less than two years ago and an enjoyable read!

We have a long list of 109 books at the moment. Yeah, I know, it’s huge. The fact that each group was only supposed to get 6 titles to review from the long list tells you how many suggestions there were. Thankfully, we also have a huge group of volunteers from Norwich and the surrounding boroughs, as well as Cambridge and Suffolk I believe. I am in Norwich Group 6, with a few other people, and we have been given 13 books to review in stage one.

The titles I have been given are:

• A Robot in the Garden by Deborah Install (Fiction)
• Look Who’s Back by Timur Vermes (Fiction)
• Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrara (Translation)
• Threads by Julia Blackburn (Non-fiction)
• The Offering by Grace McCleen (Fiction)
• Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey (Fiction)
• Forget Me Not by Carol McKee Jones (Fiction)
• The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill (Fiction)
• Shingle Street by Blake Morrison (Poetry)
• Due North by Peter Riley (Poetry)
• Hereward: Wolves of New Rome by James Wilde (Fiction)
• The Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes (Fiction)
• Man V Nature by Diane Cook (Short Stories)

It’s an interesting mix. Especially the poetry books. I mean, I read poetry for my English classes back in secondary school, and I’ve read a couple of poems for pleasure (actually I found an epic poem that I’d love to get my hands on and read the other day, Evangeline by Henry Longfellow) but never a book of them. I’m probably most looking forward to the short stories Man V Nature collection and Robot in the Garden.

I have managed to read one so far, The Amber Fury. This s because it was online from the digital library since copies of all the books are available from the writers centre, but I have yet to go into town with free time to pick some up. I’ve done a review of it here on Goodreads if you particularly want to read it.

So I’ve got quite a bit ahead of me, since I’m meant to try and read this list before the end of October. I feel some weekends being set aside in the near future.

At the end of October, we narrow down the list to roughly 50-60 books. Then we get to read pretty much whatever we want from that list, and in December whittle it down to 25 books. Then, at the end of January, we make the final selections of 6 books which will then become the Brave New Reads of 2016.

This means that I am going to do a lot of reading, and a lot more reading of books that I would not normally encounter, and that is pretty much exactly what I wanted from this year or my reading. Of course, I still have a huge pile of books from the fantasy genre sitting on my desk is a messy ‘to read’ pile because I know what I like.

Also, this is going to be challenging, because I start my Master’s course at the end of the month, I fully intend to complete NaNoWriMo this year (attempting to choose my project at the moment) and I want to keep up with all my weekly commitments as well. But life’s not fun if you’re not busy, right?

Anyone else doing any marathon reading events at the moment? Or just reading in general? If you’ve got a book that you read recently that you would recommend, let’s hear about it 🙂

Four Books

So far, so good. I’ve posted every weekday, done a dragon post, and a theme post. Hopefully I’ll do another theme post later this week, and I’ll finish off this ten day challenge. So far, I’m liking what I’ve been doing over the past week and a bit.

I’ve got a section about reading over here, where there are certainly more than four books I like. And I have talked about some of the books that I’ve read as and when I’ve read them: Six Book Challenge, Reading Continues, 2015. Actually, I should remember that last one more. I’ve read romance and slice of life, and Stephen Fry’s biography has been sitting on my to read pile for a while, but there’s still other genres I want to hit up this year.

Right, because I already have a place for my favourite books, I’ll list four books I’ve read this year that I enjoyed.

1. Tooth and Claw. I read this one very recently, only a couple of weeks ago, after a recommendation from a friend. She described it as “pride and prejudice with dragons”, and I have to say, that’s pretty accurate. The patriarch of a family of dragons dies right at the start of the book, some complications happen, and it’s all about the politics of trying to deal with that. I loved the world that the author had created, the social structures felt really immersive, and even the characters that you thought of as secondary or minor had their own stories and roles. I borrowed this one from the library, but I’m considering getting my own copy. Politics I though I might not like, combined with dragons which I love, made for a story I really enjoyed.
2. The Library Book. I mentioned this little book very briefly back when I had just read it. It’s a collection of short stories or tales from famous/recognised people about their experiences with libraries. Originally I borrowed this book to read from the library, but I was so impressed that I ordered my own copy, and the fact that it’s produced by the reading agency, so all profits go towards their charity was a bonus. There is something about being a librarian that makes me appreciate these types of stories, where people talk about their fond memories and how libraries and librarians helped them, that makes me feel good. Recently appointed Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell has this charming little book about his experiences of a library as well, give it a read.
3. Terry Prachett. Sadly, we lost this great author earlier this year. Since then, I have been buying his books in The Library Collector’s Edition, with fantastic covers, and re-reading the discworld series. There’s not much to say about it that hasn’t already been said, I talk about him in A – Authors, my A to Z first post this year. The next book on my list is Guards, Guards, so I get to visit the City Watch, Carrot and Vimes. It’ll be good. (And the special edition has an embossed dragon on the cover).
4. The Humans. Picked up this book from the library after I failed to get anything from the World Book Night to give out. This was actually a selection from 2014’s run, but I’d heard good things about it, it looked interesting, and when I went into the library it was on the display, so I picked it up and I read it. I liked it more than I thought I would, actually. The sense of alienation was very, very strong, and you could really empathise with the alien in human’s clothing who had come down to complete a mission and gets completely sidetracked by earth and all it’s strangeness. And from his viewpoint, we really are a strange bunch. The relationship with the dog is also a nice touch, I feel. World Book Night books are often a good starting point for me to find new books that I might not pick up on my own I find, they have some really good choices.

And there you have four books I have read this year. See, I really am trying to broaden my horizons! Next I think I have to get through my overly large (at least 25 books) to read pile, which includes stuff on librarianship, study skills, science, fantasy and dragons. Although, considering I would in a library, I’m probably going to pick up another book before I do. Let’s see, I still need a sci-fi, mystery, comedy and literary in my books this year. Time to get to the reading!

My local public library – Norwich & Norfolk Millennium Library

GoGo Warm Up

So, I promised you a dragon post, and a dragon post you shall have.

GoGoDragons is going to hit the streets of Norwich on 21st June, and that means that the city is starting to gear up for the plethora of dragons that are going to descend on it.

Even my work has been affected. I’ve already written two dragon related blog posts for the library blog, persuaded our finance guy to buy a couple of books (actually, it’s in the picture below), and the best thing? The college is storing all the mini dragon until they get put out on the streets!

Aren’t they gorgeous? A whole room, filled with at least 70 of these beauties. Paradise!

Just a small selection of the ones that caught my eye. I promise, when they hit the streets, there will be a lot more photos. Individual ones. I will overload you with photos.

And because of this, the bookstores have been having dragon displays. I showed you one in a recent post. I also found that Jarrolds, our local department store, has also had a big display of all sort of dragon books. So much so that I have another horde of books sitting on my pile.

So there’s three story books, a Dragonology book, and a lovely little thin book called Norwich City of Dragon, which has been published locally by Book Wyrm Books. It takes you around the city of Norwich with lots of dragons all over the city, in the spirit of the event. That’s the one I’ve hopefully persuaded the library to pick up a copy of.

The two pale blue books are going to be interesting to read. It takes place in Wales, which you know I am involved in (still learning Welsh!) and the author is coming to my local Waterstones book shop early July. A big dragon themed author event. I am totally going, and I am very much going to enjoy it.

I also popped some books back to the library, and in the small shop on the way out, I spotted the display they had in the tourist information shop. And I picked up these two lovelies.

I haven’t had a chance to play the board game yet (I feel sleep due to my cold when people came round my flat) but I love the dragon cuddly toy. It’s super soft, and great to cuddly on the sofa. But, it doesn’t have a name as of yet. Taking suggestions from you, my lovely readers. What do you think I should name my Norwich dragon?