What I've been reading

Orlando
by Virginia Woolf

narrated by Clare Corbett

"As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed."

I didn't immediately make the connection between this book and the one I read recently about the man who aged fifteen times more slowly than normal (How to Stop Time). The other carries a more human emotional story, and this one has more magical realism (and includes a sex change) but neither makes the most of the opportunity. I enjoyed the comparison between the experience of the male and female Orlando, but Virginia Woolf writes in too literary a style and I didn't get caught up in the story at all.

London Fields
by Martin Amis

"The murderee is Nicola Six, a 'black hole' of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch?"

I didn't like Martin Amis after the last book I read of his, and this has just confirmed that opinion, even though he used quite an interesting concept to frame the story, whereby the author of the book comments on and interacts with his fictional characters. I really don't need to read any more of his writing, though. The characters are uniformly horrible and the plot, such as it was, didn't make up for that deficit. Unpleasant.

Foreign Affairs
by Alison Lurie

narrated by Jennifer Van Dyke

"Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. She is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist."

Considering that this book is a Pulitzer Prize winner it was a huge disappointment - maybe there weren't many contenders that year. It wasn't bad, just nothing special, and it certainly wasn't the author's fault that the narrator doesn't know how to pronounce Glyndebourne and puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable of Camden Town.

Humankind: A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregman

"Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good."

More than one person has recommended this book, especially when they've found out why I'm avoiding the news. It contains stories we know about - the Milgram shock experiment, the New York murder in full view of the residents of the block, the (fictional) Lord of the Flies - which all tend to suggest that humans are cruel by nature. The author's assertion is that deeper research into these reports, and other contradictory examples, uncover research or reporting flaws great enough to change the conclusion. By coincidence, the assertion that civilian morale is lessened by bombing (which I first discovered on my recent trip to the International Bomber Command Centre) is another example he gives of false reporting. And with other, clear-cut cases of human cruelty (the Holocaust, war in general) the fault lies with society and conditions rather than the nature of humanity. So, if he is to be believed, things are not as bleak as they seem. The trouble is that society and conditions continue to do their work, and ongoing and perhaps increasing bleakness can be expected. so I am not convinced by the book's argument.

The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot that could have dire international consequences."

This was in my free podcast feed, so why not listen again? It's shorter than I remember it, and so evocative of the attitudes and mores of the time. But there's a definite need for suspension of disbelief - a mining engineer happens to be shut in a room with a load of dynamite? A coastguard happens to know all the places along the coast that might have steps down to the water? Never mind, it's worth a read.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari

"As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive."

This was an interesting and thought-provoking summary of what is going on in the world, and what it might mean for humanity. It's probably as close to philosophy as I comfortably get. He is most famous for his first book, Sapiens, but, as good as this book was, I'm not sure I need any more.

Success

Bookshop banister, Hay-on-Wye, September 2025

Time has been zipping along faster than something that is quite quick. Here I am already in the middle of next week.

First, a celebration. I started my weight loss plan in earnest at the beginning of July, and this week I achieved my target weight after a loss of 4.7 kg. The full extent of my weight loss is greater than this, because by the beginning of July I'd already lost a bit. However, my celebration is fairly subdued because I've lost weight before, and the part that I've never managed to achieve is maintenance. 

I still have a National Diabetes Prevention Programme coach - what happened on our latest call is she suggests that I do something, then I ask why she thinks I need to do that thing and she tells me all the benefits to my blood sugar or my weight, so I tell her the very good reason why that thing is not appropriate for me, and then tell her again and assert that she is not listening to me when she continues to advocate it. I have formed the strong opinion that her advice will not be useful to me, but her monthly call will at least make me accountable for keeping on track with my weight and eating habits. I have no idea whether it will work.

More success to celebrate - a year with Muscles the Personal Trainer and I am now achieving results that I could never have imagined when I started. For example, I'm pretty sure that we started with me lifting a weight of 2 kg, and this week I lifted 30 kg. Muscles says that with most people he tries to get them to aim for lifting their own weight, so there's still room for progress.

I got out into the garden before winter set in and mowed the grass and hacked down about three quarters of what needed hacking down. Other aspects of GRUHI are going very slowly but there is some small progress, and I met a very lovely decorator who will paint inside and outside but not until the spring. UJ's leaving date is a moveable feast but I think it will happen soon, and almost certainly before the end of November. I was going to write 'definitely' but you never know with UJ. We went out for dinner to celebrate our time together and it was very lovely.

There was quite a hectic visit to mum to celebrate her 93rd birthday during which Lola II cut my hair, Sister D joined us and we all went out for lunch, mum got her COVID vaccination, we visited an Eastern European/Asian supermarket, I got a parking ticket, we agreed the layout for dad's gravestone, I contacted the mason to find out what happens next, we agreed a date for the 'stone setting' (which will be attended by just the four of us), sang Happy Birthday accompanying an apple pastry that Lola II had made with a candle in it, and established that some emails mum had received were not malicious or spam but a new patient record platform that she had to sign up to in order to be notified of two appointments. Lola II took photos of the bubbling paintwork and blown tiles and forwarded pictures of the water meter taken by Sister D so that the plumber can assess whether he wants to visit or not. We got through quite a lot.

To finish - strong film recommendation. I Swear, which had me alternately laughing and sobbing and I forgot to take a hanky and had to go to the toilets afterwards to wash my face. Best film of the year.

Fungus, food, foray, films

Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, October 2025

Merlin Sheldrake is a mycologist who has written a brilliant book on fungus called Entangled Life. I read it when I picked it off the shelves at my last solitary retreat, and enjoyed the book so much that I bought a copy to give to someone. Then I discovered that he is on a speaking tour around the country, and as none of the tour dates and locations were convenient, I bought a ticket instead to an event that would be broadcast online. He wasn't quite as much of a showman as he needed to be to pull off a world-class event, but the time-lapse images of growing fungi were astonishingly beautiful.

My Buddhist group has celebrated the return of one of our members who has been accepted into the Triratna Buddhist Order. This is a big deal for us - this is the first person in this group (which has been running for more than 20 years) to be ordained. For the celebration I baked vegan walnut brownies using gluten free flour, then went and put oat milk in them so they weren't gluten free, and they ended up with no structural integrity which resulted in nothing but (delicious) brownie crumbs. So then I used the rest of the gluten free flour to make sultana cookies, and they were fine coming out of the oven but then set as hard as rock. Everyone brought all sorts of cakes and biscuits that were much better than mine.

I generally look after the tea box between our weekly meetings and I really don't need a whole box of sweet treats plus cookies and chocolate walnut brownie crumbs lying around the house, calling out my name as I walk past them. The cookies went in the bin, I gave the brownie crumbs to Muscles, and I've actually put the rest in the loft - an extreme step, but necessary. I can bring them down for the group next week.

I went for another day trip to Warwick to see the sights I couldn't fit in the last time, starting with St Mary's church. It was a grey rainy day so the tower was closed but there was quite a lot of other stuff to see, including a great deal about various Warwickshire regiments, one of which was commanded by Field Marshall Montgomery. The banner representing the honour of his Order of the Garter is hanging in the church. There's also a crypt that contains the business part of a ducking stool. And all the wooden pews in the choir have carvings of musicians and animals.

I went on to Hill Close Gardens but it was closed for a private event, so that means another trip to Warwick will be needed. Instead, I returned to the Lord Leycester Hospital to look at everything I missed on the last tour, and then back to the museum which was advertising an exhibit about British Blind Sport, which has its headquarters in Leamington and is celebrating its 50th year. It was a very small exhibit, and the most interesting part for me was a couple of short videos about Goalball (a bit like bowling but with goals and goalkeepers) and Showdown (a bit like air hockey and table tennis combined).

Apart from Buddhism and local tourism I've watched the usual collection of films, many of which have been above average. I would recommend Kitchen Brigade (French), Sing Sing (set in the New York prison), Signs of Life (a non-speaking woman goes on holiday), Better Man (avoid if you don't like Robbie Williams, but recommended if you do), and Better Days (another French one). The Royal Spa Centre continues to show films that I want to see.