Reading Retreat at Home

I saw a blogger going on a reading retreat. It seemed like such a great idea and I looked into it. While everything was great, as in the venues that organize this and the whole concept, it wasn’t suitable for us. I don’t like the idea of leaving Festus somewhere for a couple of nights and, at his age, it seems also selfish to do so. On top of that, it is a bit pricey, with prices starting from £500 per person for three nights. So, instead, I’ve suggested to my husband to have a Reading Retreat at Home, and this is what we did last weekend.

First of all we’ve decided on the rules we are going to have. No laptops, unless is something book related. My husband used his more, but he was reading about coding, so it was natural. But there was a no-emails policy. I used my laptop around 30 minutes all weekend, mainly to make some notes from the books I was reading and to approve comments on my blogs.

We didn’t watch any movies. The only thing we’ve watched were the highlights of the F1 race. Starting with an hour on Saturday for the qualifying and two hours on Sunday evening, for the race. We walked the dog, had a walk in the park, chatted about the books we were reading, and, of course, we read a lot.

I stocked up with snacks and I made some biscuits, besides the cake I baked on Thursday for the Bake Off Bake Along. Snacks included fruits, obviously. As for food, after my husband and I had a chat, we’ve decided to make something simple at home and not get ready meals per se. We’ve made gnocchi with a cheese and sausage sauce, we’ve had pizza twice (one vegan, one not), houmous and baked beans. Do I need to say more about how amazing a reading retreat at home is? Pizza for breakfast and lots of books, what can be better than that?! Of course, we’ve had tea and coffee and wine.

After that, all that remained was to pick the books we wanted to read. It will not come as a surprise that most of my books were non-fiction history books. I took this picture in the morning, so these were the books I’ve read or read from:
Fires of faith by Eamon Duffy – finished it, I was half way through the book;
Edward VI by Jennifer Loach – read it;
Tudor England and its Neighbours by Glenn Richardson, Susan Doran – read it;
The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins – read half of it;
Elizabeth I and Her Circle by Susan Doran – just started it. I read about 20 pages from it.

My husband picked A little history of science, an YA non-fiction book, similar to my choice of The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins. Besides he had a couple more books in his eReader, thus I took a picture of the eReader.