I just came back from a long-overdue holiday in Portugal. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve been on a proper holiday, and I’ve already started planning the next (I really missed travelling, but didn’t realise how much I missed it until I started again…).

Rather than give you a wonderful run-down, here are some snapshots:

The hotel had loads of little phrases written on the windows, like ‘a perfect day’ or – as above – ‘this is not a postcard’.

(Yes, that last one is Slide and Splash – I am just a big kid!)

I got through 3 books over the holiday, all of which I’d seriously recommend. I had a bit of trouble finding new reads lately, largely because my go-to recommendation sites seem to just give me the same options time and time again, and I’ve read them all.

Care of Wooden Floors, by Will Wiles made me cringe in places and laugh out loud in others. I ended up forcing the book onto my boyfriend to try to get him to forgive me a little more for the amount of wine I spill in the flat.

Timbuktu by Paul Auster is lovely, but definitely not a holiday read (unless, of course, your idea of fun is trying not to cry on a sunlounger. Personally, it’s not really my thing). It’s incredibly unusual, even for Auster, and truly touching. I’ve never actually read an adult book where a dog was the main character, but there should definitely be more of them.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami really is true to form. It’s a good book, but I think maybe I’ve just read too much of him now, since I see the same themes and phrases repeating. I think that I may need to go on a self-imposed Murakami break for a while, just to ensure that I actually enjoy the books rather than sitting there and saying ‘oh, lesbianism with a younger woman – that’s like Norwegian Wood’, rather than simply enjoying the narrative.

So I’m back to my little pile of books to find something new – I’m about halfway through Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter. It’s interesting, but I can’t read more than 2-3 chapters at once without wanting to rant at someone or just getting angry. While the book does make some interesting points (for example, I didn’t realise that sexual assaults increase in an area where a strip club has recently opened), I can’t say I agree with the overwhelming anti-prostitution, anti-modelling, and anti-stripping stance that the book takes. I haven’t really made my mind up about the book as a whole, but I’m always cautious about any point of view that takes an entire industry and labels it as bad, or one that treats women as though they can’t make their own minds up about their bodies.

In other news, I’ve been working on Bi-pole-ar and have most of the structure laid out now. I may also try my hand at BDSM writing. Lovebites did have an element of it, and I’ve been meaning to write a book about D/s (Dom/sub) culture for a while… it seems like a good time to do it!