Laura Bates Girl Up Win year of no clutterI am so sorry that it took me so long to sort out my competitions to win a copy of Girl Up and Year of No Clutter, after being all excited about setting them up. I get frustrated if I go in for something and then never hear, and I’m sure those who put in for the competitions have done too – so, sorry.

Life got in the way, basically, as it tends to do – I haven’t been well and although that’s now pretty much resolved, energy had to be reserved for working, walking, recovering and a bit of blogging the millions of books that I’ve been reading!

Anyway, the winners (chosen using a random number generator online) are …

Girl Up – Cathy Turner

Year of No Clutter – Rebecca / Bookish Beck

I have dropped both of them an email for their address and will get the books in the post as soon as I’m able.

All that reading has made a huge dent in my TBR and Book Pile, so when a friend and I were swapping birthday presents (we got all out of sync so no wishing me a happy birthday as it was a little while ago), I managed to do a good bit of second-hand and special-offer ordering (plus a sneaky click on a Kindle book) to pick up some stuff I’ve heard about recently and things on my Wish List and have on the way …

Ruby Wax – “A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled” – I need to find a way to keep myself calm and sane apart from running and yoga, as when I can’t do those, for whatever reason, things can feel overwhelming quickly. I trust Ruby Wax to not be too “woo” and to give a sideways glance at stuff, and I know she’s been doing a lot of mental health awareness raising and advocacy, so this seems like a good bet.

Carole Matthews – “Paper Hearts and Summer Kisses” – because she writes very nicely done, light novels and because she’s superb on Facebook.

Angie Thomas – “The Hate U Give” – I keep seeing reviews and mentions of this, touted as the novel to read about BlackLivesMatter. I don’t know as much as I should about black lives in the US and I hope this lauded YA novel will teach me more.

Ben Fogle – “Offshore: An Island of my Own” – because I like islands and this has been on my wish list for ev er.

Amy Levy – The Romance of a Shop” (ebook) – out of copyright so a cheap e-edition, I can’t remember why this was on my wish list but she’s also a Persephone author.

Neil Taylor – “Document and Eyewitness: An Intimate History of Rough Trade” – because I do like a music book, especially one about indie music, and this has been on my wish list for aaaages, too.

I’ve also managed to acquire Bill Drummond’s “45” – he was one of the band, The KLF and my friend Sian got 60 pages in before giving up … a challenge!

Another electronic arrival is “Popular” by Mitch Prinstein – this is a non-fiction book about popularity and likeability in the status-obsessed world of social media, and was provided as some kind of pre-approved pre-link on NetGalley by the publisher! Whoo!

Some of these no doubt will appear on my 20 Books of Summer 2017 list – the only challenge I’m doing this year, because it’s just such fun taking part. A teaser post on 746Books’ blog can be found here.

Have you read any of these? Any recommendations or warnings? Are you doing any challenges this year and how are they going?