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Personally, I always used to carry a paperback with me and would read in the odd moments that this writer seems to recall as being so dull and soul destroying. I still do carry e-books on my phone of course and use them in exactly the same way - but also with the option of doomscrolling, of course.

As for TV, I was never one for TV - or radio - as background noise. With fiends, I had a bit of reputation of going round and turning such things off when I entered the room, so that we could talk without distraction. I would ask them first, of course.

I didn't get a lot further than the garden this weekend but, having moved to a rural spot (East Anglia, UK) only a couple of months back, we are still finding new things in and around the garden.

One of the most notable is that a Kestrel has recently fledged in the woodland at the end of the garden - so it and parent are quite prominent and vocal on the several suitable perches around and about. We have set up the bins on a tripod in the front window and are getting some great views.

We also have a red kite passing overhead quite frequently.

Otherwise, brown hare loping through the garden, plenty of grey squirrel and occasional muntjac, green and occasional great spotted woodpeckers. Most smaller birds are steering clear at the moment due to the predators though. Then a southern hawker made a few passes on Sunday, and a several meadow browns and a red admiral were flitting about. We have burdock growing along the edges in a few places and just noticed a cluster of lords and ladies at the bottom.

We also noticed a branch had fallen from one of the adjoining ash trees and was hung up on the power line. A call to UKPN brought them out to deal with it surprisingly quickly. Looking at the canopy, I fear that it is succumbing to ash dieback. I expect that we will have more falling branches and that it will need to be felled this winter or next.

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks has a reputation as being an homage to LotR, and they are quite enjoyable.

Waaay back, this was what I turned to after reading LotR. He had only published the first then and it was what made me understand the difference between good writing and bad. It gave me nothing else other than that lesson and certainly didn't scratch the itch that I had for something like LotR. In fact nothing did and I found it best to look for something completely different that was good in it's own right rather than poor imitations.

Some that I have enjoyed:

• A Spy Among Friends
• Slow Horses
• The Ipcress File (both the recent TV show and the 1965 film are great)
• Traitors (2019)
• The Night Manager
• London Spy
• The Game (2014)
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (both the TV show from 1979 and the 2011 film are great)
• Smiley's People

My 'big read' this year is Finnegans Wake - which I am (or have been) reading week by week along with the TrueLit sub on reddit. It would be a profoundly different experience to read it without the analysis and discussion going on there, so that is something...

Otherwise, I am reading The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, which is engaging and entertaining, as was her The Hollow Places which I read immediately before. I am also dipping into a collection of the Para Handy tales by Neil Munro, which are a cosy - if stereotypical and patronising - glimpse into another time and pace of life.

I have just returned from a couple of weeks away during which I finished an anthology of Clarke Ashton Smith short fantasy tales (all about the atmosphere: story and worldbuilding are very much secondary and character scarcely features); Haldor Laxness's The Atom Station (a sparse look at the clash of modern - written in 1948 - and traditional Icelandic values); and Blackwood's The Willows (an extrapolation of the original idea of "panic" - as several of this other tales are).