Welcome to I'm Blathering Now!
I'm Sioux and I've been blogging on I'm Blathering Now since
2015. After 18 years working from the same office, it was closed and everyone made redundant. With no great "thank you" issued from those on high, I felt that I needed a year out
from the rat race. I needed to reconnect with the creative, exhuberant, person I once was, so I
took a leap of faith and drove 200 miles to meet up with a group of ladies I’d
only “met” on social media a few times.
We were all fans of an actor and he inspired the title of the original blog “I’m Blathering Now…Tea, Tom and Time to Find a Job!”
In those early days the blog was a bit of this and a bit of
that. My travels, my various adventures with my newfound friends, my love of
tea, my love of books, TV, film, theatre…I can write about anything and
everything. As time has gone on, work and various commitments have taken me away
from sharing my stories with my readers.
My passion for literature and theatre still shone from those
heady days of university where I gained a combined hons degree in Journalism, English
Literature, Visual Studies and Japanese. I still enjoy encouraging people to read
books and to watch plays they might not have heard of, or that ordinarily they consider
are outside of their comfort zone. I therefore decided it was time to give my blog a revamp.
So welcome to my theatre and book review blog!
The first thing you may notice is that my reviews don't carry star ratings. Why? Because it's so easy to be critical and tear someone’s best endeavours to shreds. (Just look at X - formerly Twitter!) I don't like doing that. I will say if I enjoy something or I don’t, but liking things are a personal taste – not a right or wrong choice. I have watched 5* plays and read 5* books and been sorely disappointed. I've also viewed lower rated productions which I have loved. For me the "star" rating is not what I go on when I choose a book or watch a play. If something within the critique piques my interest, that is what counts.
Reading preferences:
I love crime, ghost stories and Japanese books (usually featuring cats,) but
that doesn’t mean I will cast other genres aside. I enjoy reading the classics
and what could become the new classics. Some of my favourite authors include Haruki
Murakami, Alexandre Dumas, Jake Arnott, Kate Summerscale, Kazuo Ishiguro, Rosamund
Lupton and Susan Hill amongst many others.
I am affiliated to Bookshop.org which is an online book marketplace launched in January 2020. Its stated mission is "to financially support local, independent bookshops."
Independent bookshops can give unique advice to readers, and whilst there is a place for Amazon Ltd, it uses algorithmns, it doesn't curate individual reading lists created by humans. so you might miss out on books you've never heard of (old or new.)
Bookshop.org allows our indie bookshops to thrive and survive, new writers to keep in touch with readers, and readers to find and enjoy books they've never heard of (old and new.)
If you enjoy reading my articles, you may want to pop a donation my way via: https://ko-fi.com/imblatheringnow (This will help contribute towards the costs of books and theatre tickets.)
Thank you in for any donations you may wish to make, or for spreading positivity about my blog on your social platforms. Hopefully I've inspired you to take the plunge to watch or read something you might not have considered in the past!
