I read quite a lot, particularly when you take into account the audio books I have playing when my hands are busy quilting.  I have three on the go at the moment, all with a strong foundation of history.

        Tonight I might finish this fascinating book, ‘Conquistador’ by Buddy Levy, telling of the Spaniard Hernan Cortes’ setting out from Cuba to conquer the Aztecs of Mexico and other groups of people in the region at the time in the quest for new dominions and treasure for Spain. Fascinating and quite bloody,  but I am really enjoying it.   I shied away from history at school because of the incredibly boring teaching style of our history teacher.  Years later, long after I graduated from university without modern history under my belt, I discovered how interesting it really is  – the power of a teacher, good or bad, to influence life choices!

I’ve been reading but was interrupted and haven’t gone back yet, to Richard Flanagan’s ‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North’,   about an Australian doctor who went to war and ended up as POW of the Japanese, working on the Burmese railway to India. It was last year’s Man Booker Prize winner; and such a powerful, wonderful read that I need to put down every now and then to think about what I have just read.  I guess it was at one such point a week or so ago that I realised that as Conquistador is one of the new books in the book club I belong to, it must be returned this wednesday and so I’m focusing on finishing it by tomorrow evening to avoid the late fine 😉

    Last but not least, I am listening to John Maulden and Jonathan Tepper’s  ‘Code Red, How to Protect Your Savings from the Coming Crisis’  Definitely don’t put retirement savings in the banks I’ve learned, and taken in a bit about why – so we’re on track there.  A fascinating snippet from this afternoon’s listening  is that the population of Japan is so heavily weighted with seniors and retirees at the top of the demographic table that the population is shrinking or will soon do so, and that in Japan in 2012 sales of adult diapers/napkins outperformed sales of infants diapers/napkins for the first time  !!