The bad news I received last week was of the death of my grandmother on dad’s side of the family. She was old, but I didn’t at all expect it. Now grandfather is on his own and we’re all a bit worried about him, as his memory isn’t what it once was. He seems to be holding up fairly okay, but of course it’s hard on him.

I haven’t got much reading done at all of late, but I did finish a couple of books since my “In a slump”-post the other week. Today I played catch-up and wrote four reviews I’d neglected to do. As I always back-date my reviews to the day I finished the book in question, I thought I’d link you to the four of them to make them a bit easier to find—The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Dorothy L Sayers), Hey Nostradamus! (Douglas Coupland), Linas kvällsbok 2 (Emma Hamberg) and Making History (Stephen Fry).

Tomorrow I hope to post my March stats.

In other news, I went to Ikea with my family on Saturday and I came back with a couple of new bookshelves, and on Sunday my living room got the makeover I’ve been planning for a couple of months now.

Before:

After:

As you can see, I have four tall ones and one lower bookcase in the middle. I think it turned out really well. The huge framed photo over the lower bookcase is an enlarged print of a photo I took at the beach last fall. The framed pictures underneath are magazine clippings from the 1930s, all featuring Leslie Howard. It is a sad fact that one of my biggest actor crushes died more than forty years before I was even born. He was brilliant, though, and he’s the dead spit of the Lord Peter I see in my head whenever I read the Wimsey books.

And of course, now I have much more shelf space available for new book purchases!

I’ve put explanatory notes on the bookshelf photos on Flickr, so you can see how I have arranged my books (because I am a complete and utter bookgeek, and it’s sad, sad, sad). Just click on the photos to get there.