Latest reading and cultural activities

Sorry, it’s been a while. Been busy, innit, redesigning my other website and things like that. Lots of interesting reading material of late, mind.

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Finished Ian McEwen’s post-9/11 novel Saturday. Outstanding. I don’t think I’ve ever broken out into a sweat reading a novel before. Heart-pumping stuff.

Suicide Bridge by Iain Sinclair – wow, yes, this is the stuff. Inspirational.

Ditto, Roy Fisher’s Birmingham River, which I’ve wanted to read for a while. Now I’ve gotta get my hands on his City (available, I think, only in a Collected Poems. I hate Collected Poems).

Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns. I did read this at university, but had forgotten just how good it is. Check this.

Simon Barraclough’s Los Alamos Mon Amour (Salt). Fabulous debut collection. Really, really enjoyable reading. I guess I’ll try and review it properly at some point.

The Riddle and the Knight by Giles Milton. Odd travelogue-cum-historical novel following the (presumed) journey of medieval explorer Sir John Mandeville. Lightish. Enjoyable.

Just getting my teeth into DS Marriot’s Incognegro (Salt) and Emanuel Litvinoff’s Journey Through A Small Planet (thanks, Hannah).

The Newgate Calendar (Folio Society edition picked up in a second-hand bookshop in Castleton, Derbyshire) awaits… as does Barlam & Iosaphat (Early English Text Society edition).

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I also bought something old, valuable and dusty… about which more later.