Mixture of mercies

Good luck with the ipod Lesley. I never quite get round to listening to audio books, probably because I don't have a car and don't do much ironing. It's being forced to 'read' at the pace of the speaker that's frustrating. I'll sometimes listen to a story if it comes on Radio 4, but I think the answer is indeed to take up knitting, you have to have something else to do at the same time. Having said that, I've got a couple of long train journeys next week so I'll take along an Ian Rankin and my old chuggy Walkman (belatedly become a Rankin fan so lots of catching up to to) .

Been dipping into a complete mish-mash of reading lately. Working through Midnight's Children, and it's really an OK read but I've allowed myself to think of it as worthy and dense which gives me false justification for conntinually putting it down to read something light. Dipped into a bit of Latin American stuff for our next meeting. Read Nigel Slater's new one Eating for England which is a collection of snippets - some which really hit home - about the British way with food. Like the bit about the ghastly person who always insists on totting up exactly what they've eaten rather than just splitting the bill on a group meal. His memoir Toast is far better though: all based round food, a bittersweet - or sometimes just plain bitter - look at family life. What else - oh yes, more nostalgia new to the library - a book of classic British camper vans which is gloriously anoraky and copiously illustrated. Another one is Britain's Lost Cities, a book of photos illustrating how we carried on ruining our cities where Hitler left off. There's a picture of an astonishing ornate arch which used to grace Dundee harbour till it was gratuitously demolished. It was actually hideous, but having said that it was the prettiest thing in Dundee. Interesting book but would be better if it had 'after' photos to compare with the 'before'. Also dipping into a new illustrated Kama Sutra, just need to check it's suitably tasteful before loosing it on the public. (It's printed by Dorling Kindersley, no less, with the excellent full-colour illustrations one comes to expect from them...).