By popular request, here is a book club post, for you to tell us about what you’ve been reading, and which boxes it ticks. I don’t think I have anything to report, not having read very much in the last week, and certainly not having opened anything new.
Here’s The List.
Which items are you most looking forward to ticking off?
I have started reading a book which may be unique in its not ticking a single item on the list: an anthology of poetry called 101 Portraits in Verse by my favourite poet, Hugo Williams. However I’ve left this at home and travelled up north with my kindle, so I’m also reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. This is apparently one of a series of three, and therefore if I do manage to read the other two, will tick 31 (a trilogy), probably written originally in Italian (8), set in Naples (12), and recommended by Lisa (16).
When I picked up my kindle it opened in the middle of A Tale of Two Cities, which would have been 49, if I’d bothered.
I am currently reading:
The Norm Chronicles (13 – non-fiction), but struggling to find time for it.
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows (1 – more than 500 pages; 3 – became a movie; 7 – non-human characters e.g. Hagrid is half-giant; 38 – magic; but not, imo, 50 – a children’s book). You can’t begin to imagine how happy I am to be on the final one.
and
Guilt-Free Bottle Feeding (again 13 – non-fiction). I am reviewing this for NCT. It is not a fun read.
What are you between the pages of this week?
Having already listed the books for the first two weeks of January here, the remains of January slowed down a bit. There’ve also been a couple of books that didn’t fit in with any extant categories, in which case they’re listed, but no categories.
And there we go, that’s it for now.
Help me match these books to categories!
I’m reading Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson, which ticks:
15. A book from an author you love, that you haven’t read yet. (I read my first KA when I was in Budapest, and have read most of her work).
16. A book a friend recommended. (It seems very likely that Lisa would have mentioned this one).
19. A book from the bottom of your to-read list/pile. (That’s my to-read pile, above).
But I think that is all.
Cat videos! On the internet! It’s my brand new idea and I think it’s going to become a thing.
As I’ve mentioned before, if I were asked to declare a particular field of photography to be my favourite, I’d probably say “insects”, or to be more precise “arthropods”, or to be less precise “things that you wouldn’t want in your nostril” like snails and dragonflies and slugs and spiders and oh did I mention snails.
I’ve always felt it a bit of a shame that my “good” camera is actually fairly weak in this respect, and I’ve always been able to get much better results out of my point-and-shoots. It’s not the camera’s fault, of course – it’s because I’m still using the 18-55mm kit lens that came with it.
I’ve done a little bit of research into buying a new lens – these two lenses are both currently looking like candidates. They’re worlds apart, but the former would also make for a good long lens, and the latter would satisfy my other desire for a decent prime.
Tamron AF 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 Nikon+Motor
Nikon AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G Lens
I went into a camera shop yesterday and got the assistant to put the latter on a body so I could have a play around with it. As far as tests go, I’m not sure how much I learned. There wasn’t much light, I had to use a lens cap as a surrogate insect, and the camera was on a security wire so I had limited movement. Would have been a better test if I’d actually had my own camera on me, of course.
I’m the sort of guy who likes to do a bit of research before he spends a bit of money, and so far I’m unable to drum up enough confidence to put down the money. I’ve considered renting lenses as well, to give them a try. One thing that does turn me off is all this talk about tripods – I’m the kind of chap who likes to shoot dragonflies from the hip. There’s no point in me spending money if it can’t outperform my point-and-shoot.
Fortunately, I happen to know that the Uborka readership contains a disproportionately high percentage of photographers, so I’m firing up the Ubork-symbol (it’s a big cucumber projected onto the base of the clouds), making sure it’s in focus (naturally) and saying “here’s the comments box, let’s talk about macro.”