A Lot of New Books for 2017

Hello dear friends.  I hope your week is going well.  It's really the first full week after the holidays.  I know many of you are having inclement weather.  We are receiving some much needed rain and I love it!

Do you love books?  I do and my family gave me some wonderful new books for Christmas.  I thought I would share them with you so here goes. . .

First up is a Soviet era cookbook.  The  title CCCP stands for Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик in Russian or USSR in English.  It is not only a cookbook but true stories of the Soviet cuisine.  It was written by  Olga and Pavel Syutkin who are historians and culinary experts.  (Do you see my new tea kettle in the picture?  I received that for Christmas, too!)

I just had to share one of the photos from the book.  Doesn't this creation look amazing?  It is meat aspic.  I don't think I'll ever make it as it looks like something from a 100 years ago. This is a cookbook that you can "read" and also cook from!

Island Dairy of a Year on Easdale is about a couple who meet in their late 50's and move to Easdale Island in Scotland in the mid 1970's. Easdale was a stone quarry and the Waites buy an old cottage and live island life.  Vicky Waite was a serious painter and Garth Waite was a talented writer.  This book reminds me of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden. I googled this couple and from what I found, Garth Waite passed away in 2006 at age 89. The book not only has a wonderful story about their day to day life, but the illustrations are so lovely.

  

Here's another book that I received as I thought it was so interesting in regard to my art work.  It is Highland Journey written by Mairi Hedderwick.  Ms. Hedderwick recreates a sketching touring of Scotland made by an artist in the late 1800's.  I haven't had a chance to read this yet but I'm so looking forward to it.

Oh my!  Another book for my artwork.  These are coloring books but they are excellent reference books for my sketching.  I've already used both of these books for my watercolor cards. 

Last, is one of my favorites; Downton Abbey.  It's the perfect book to remember this wonderful series that is no more.  I look forward to sitting down with a nice hot cup of tea and remembering all the special scenes from this wonderful show.

I should tell you that I discovered the books Highland Journey and Island Dairy of a Year on Easdale on a wonderful website that I enjoy reading; Reading Scotland.  I bought these two books from an online bookseller for a very reasonable price.  The weeks leading up to Christmas, I had packages arriving from the UK, Switzerland, Slovakia and of course Amazon!

If you have time, I'd love to hear about what you are reading.  I really need to hide my knitting needles and sit down with a good book and do some serious reading.  I wish you all the best my dear friends.

With my Best Wishes,

Pat