I can't believe it has been a whole, flushbunkingly gloryumptious year since we ran off to England and France for a month. This time last year we spent Roald Dahl Day in Great Missenden, Roald's town, and you can read all about the amazing good fun we had with our friends visiting Gipsy House, eating snozzcumber sandwiches, seeing the BFG, and holding an owl here.

Today you must read Boy or Going Solo, but better still you should get the old audio version read by Manuel from Fawlty Towers to listen to while you make some Dahl inspired food like Bruce Bogtrotter's Cake from Matilda.

(I guess there is a new Boy book out, but I don't think we can get it in the US yet.)We got this at the Roald Dahl store and it has stories read by people like Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry!

I think I'll listen to some of the stories on CD while I work later, but right now I'm in the middle of The Cabinet of Wonders by Maria Rutkoski and can't put it down. It is a wonderful main GIRL character full of sass and smarts. The setting is gorgeous, the dialogue is true, the side characters are fascinating, and it is getting better with each page. I think Dahl would have liked it. The only thing to improve on would be to have chapter illustrations. The cover is lovely, but belies the book's darker nature--I think this sort of a cover would be truer to the book's sometimes gruesome (but delicious) bits.