Finished reading: Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose 📚 This was quite a fun, Regency-set romp.
Finished reading: Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose 📚 This was quite a fun, Regency-set romp.
Finished reading: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear 📚
New post: TOTEM keyboard number two or three
They breed like rabbits!
Nice colour sky this evening.
If it is winter where you are, can I recommend spending just over 12 minutes in Panama, looking at the Cornell Lab Bird Cam compilation from their feeder in Panama? So many beautiful bird species!
New post: Review of Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
My review of Katherine Rundell’s wonderful biography of the Elizabethan poet.
Finished reading: The Book of Why by Judea Pearl 📚
Finished reading: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers 📚Absolutely loved the first of this new series of optimistic sci-fi by Becky Chambers. I’m invested in the characters and can’t wait to read more.
Wow. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction outside of work, and even less biography, but this book was an amazing ride. I plan to write about it in more depth, but I need to let it settle in for a while.
Finished reading: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚A gentle and humane time-travelling yarn.
Fingerless mitten knitting progress: not too shabby, though I have anxiety about tackling the thumb when I get to that point. The ribbed bits sweep across the hand and form the thumb gusset and thumb, while the hand will be formed from the plain stockinette section.
New post: Reading with Kobo
In which I rave about my new Kobo e-reader, and the joys of Libby.
Currently reading: The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey 📚 A Medieval detective story of sorts, this is rich in convincing period detail. I loved this and felt for the impossible position of the protagonist, the village priest.
Finished reading: The This by Adam Roberts. I found the start of this book intensely irritating (I think it is supposed to be), and nearly abandoned it. Glad I persisted though. It gets compelling and even rather moving by the end. 📚
Well. I have just finished amalgamating my many book wishlists into the app Book Track, and it seems I have a total of 78 books on my wish list 😨 Better get reading…
Finished reading: Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes 📚 Fresh view from the perspective of the mythical ‘monsters’, with some great touches of humour, but also great empathy and pathos.
New post: Friendly streets
In which I think about what makes for a friendly and liveable street.
Hearing “In the Meantime” by Spacehog in the soundtrack of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 reminded me (again) what a perfect song “Telephone and Rubber Band” by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra is. The Spacehog track has a sample of the PCO track, but the original is so much better in its quiet simplicity.
Finished reading: The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton 📚I loved spending time in Nella’s world of 18th Century Amsterdam again.
Finished reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 📚
Finished reading: The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk 📚Loved this - fantastically rich and believable characters, with touches of humour.
I’ve got a new spindle! It’s a Turkish spindle and it spins for days! I’m finally able to spin fluidly rather than using the ‘park and draft’ method. This is Blue-faced Leicester wool and it’s really soft with a long staple length.
Ozzy the mechanical bull at New Street Station, Birmingham. He’s a lot bigger than I imagined!
Finished reading: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. I admired this book more than I liked it, if that makes sense. Great writing, but I didn’t feel that the different stories made a satisfying whole. 📚
I forgot to add a photo to that post. The skein on the left is the first one that I spun (knobbly like a nest of Twiglets) and the one on the right is the second (much more yarn-like).