It’s been a busy week – yesterday was especially full-on – and today I just wanted to lounge around and do as little as possible. It didn’t quite work out that way, but I was at least able to draw breath.
Late morning R and I went into Stratford, listening to the new Mick Herron ‘Slough House’ book Clown Town on Audible as we drove. I haven’t heard enough yet to decide whether I’d recommend the book or not, but I would certainly recommend reading rather than listening to it: Seán Barrett has been the voice of these books from the beginning, and has done a wonderful job up till now, but this time round his reading detracts from the book rather than adding anything.
This evening we watched a couple of episodes of The Darkness on All 4, which is pretty good if you’re a fan of Icelandic noir, even though it was made by CBS and shot largely in English. I haven’t read the book on which it’s based, though I know that the series has raised controversy, but I have read the other well-known series by Ragnar Jónasson, ‘Dark Iceland’, and that’s certainly worth a look.
Finally for this (relatively) lazy Sunday, I’d like to recommend again that you subscribe to Lev Parikian’s weekly Six Things newsletter. This week’s was very good – I loved the Audubon photo prize winners, obviously, but I was especially fascinated by OneZoom, the interactive tree of life, and I wasted a happy few minutes on the I’m Not a Robot game. Six Things comes packaged with The Year of 100 Birds, which always makes me go “Yesss!” when it drops into my email inbox. How many mailing lists can you say that of, I wonder?
