Reading, writing, scrapping, all the good things!

I have to admit that I have been laxing lately in all the things I should do. I have not committed enough time on the lessons that I am writing for the Green House, 100 words per day crashed the other day, so I have to start over again...and well, I have to say that I do not feel all that terrible about it.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have just been enjoying myself, and done avatars for the fun of it, discovered digital scrapbooking and found that it is damned addictive - and well, it feels good. I have learnt a lot of new things in Photoshop too, and that's always something that makes me feel good.

I have been pondering a lot, too. When it comes to Art Garden, it is hard to not always look forward, try to come up with new things to try out, to always stay ahead when it comes to developing the community. And well, that's what you have to do if you want your community to be successful - you have to give it an edge, develop that edge and continually try to think of new ways to stay ahead of other rivals, to offer your members something unique. And that, my friends, is not easy. It is never easy to start something new, and keep it going.

My latest read has been "Wicked!" by Jilly Cooper. I do have to say that I love Jilly Cooper as a writer - and Wicked! has been one in the line of her Rutshire Chronicles. These are a series of novels, with recurring characters that bind together the novels. Technically, they are standalone books - but as they reference back to previous books, you kinda have to read them in the order they were written. Wicked! is about...ah well. I'll give you the backside blurb!

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive - known locally, as 'Larks'. His reasons for doing so are purely financial, but he is encouraged by the opportunities the scheme gives him for frequent meetings with Janna Curtis, the dynamic new head of Larks, who has been drafted in to save, what is a fast-sinking school from closure. Janna is young, pretty, enthusiastic and vastly brave - and she will do anything to rescue her demoralized, run-down and cash-strapped school.

Neither parents nor staff of either school, are too keen on this radical move, although some can see the possible financial advantages. For the students, however, it offers great opportunities to get up to even more mayhem than usual.

There you go. I highly, highly recommend Jilly Cooper's novels - they are my favorite summer novels to read in the sun. The stories have adultery, infidelity, melodrama, money issues, murder - and they are set in glorious England (ok, maybe not so glorious) but with lots of glamour and wealth.

Riders
Rivals
Polo
The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous
Appassionata
Score!
Pandora
Wicked!

So yes. Read Jilly Cooper, you won't be disappointed.