Reading novels

I have neglected this blog lately. Although I have been busy with other things, I have been reading quite a few library books. This is part of my plan to find entertainments that cost zero money. I have been making my weekly trip to the library for several months now. I have not been reading serious literature. Rather, I have opted for fairly light page-turners. Here is what I have read over the past four weeks:

• Freeman Wills Crofts: The affair at Little Wokenham
  Iris Murdoch: The nice and the good
  Reginald Hill: Arms and the women
  Iris Murdoch: The green knight
  John Sergeant: Give me ten seconds
  Fryman Wills Crofts: Mystery in the channel
  Anita Brookner: Brief lives
  Ian Rankin: Knots & crosses.

As you can see, that works out at about two books per week and I have been enjoying this. I much prefer reading to watching TV. Apart from that, I have continued to play around five one hour music shows per week in Second Life on the internet. That means I am at home playing music for about five evenings in the week. Once again, they are five evenings that cost me no money for my entertainment. All these things are pertinent to the challenge of managing on my pension and I am pleased to say that I do break even.

On my website in the poetry section I have published my Sonnet of Sonnets, entitled ‘Autobiographical shards’. I am currently exploring the possibility of using each one of the 14 sonnets as the basis for a prose chapter in what could become my autobiography. I have written a draft of the first chapter. I feel fairly ambivalent about the project but I don’t have to make my mind up until I have a first draft of the full manuscript. At present my inclination is to include two or three illustrations per chapter and these I plan to sketch or draw digitally (rather in the style of my bandcamp.com song illustrations). If I do complete this book, I will probably publish it with blurb.com. My friend Tom has made a photo book that way and was extremely pleased with the result. Of course, if I start to work seriously on the manuscript for the autobiography, then that might take writing time away from this blog. I shall have to monitor the situation. Still, good to talk to you once more, my dear blogophiles.