Hello, I’m Dan, Candy’s husband and I am going to be doing occasional guest posts on here to give you a slightly different insight into some of the stuff we get up to. For my first post I am going to talk about reading.



I really love reading, and I used to read quite a lot. However, as a working adult it is pretty hard to find time to do all of the things you want to do and reading was one of the first ones of these that fell away, quickly condemned to the “not enough time” pile. Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Both Candy and I were sad that we couldn’t seem to find the time to read until we came upon a great solution. In our respective childhoods we used to read a lot in bed, before going to sleep. This stopped for both of us initially due to working late during university and subsequently because browsing the web on our smartphones in bed was just so easy. We made a couple of resolutions to have a little reading slot before bed, but the instant gratification from browsing the internet usually ruined these resolutions pretty quickly. Finally however we came upon a great solution, we could read out loud to each other. This solved the problem of distractions as well being a really fun “couple activity”.



Initially we tried alternating who read each night but it felt a bit disjointed so now we alternate by book, the person whose turn it is to read gets to choose the book. Currently Candy is reading one of her favourite books to me, Wise Children by Angela Carter. I’ve been really enjoying it, Angela Carter’s descriptive flair is mesmerising and her characters feel so alive, helped, of course by Candy’s narration. Once we’ve finished that one, I’m going to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides out loud to her, which neither of us have read but it looks really good.

This is Dan’s first guest post on my blog, so please show him a bit of love in the comments. Not too much love though - I’ll be watching you.