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Read: Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki ★★★★ 📚

Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first step, and the easiest.

At the turn into the 20th century country boy Sanshirō goes to university in Tokyo. Mixes with crowd interested in the west, literature, art & science. Very much out of his depth as he drifts through lectures & relationships.

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REVEIL 2026. I’ve just set up my page for this year’s Reveil broadcast.

The Reveil broadcast will again make a full loop of the earth over the Dawn Chorus Day weekend in May 2026.
We welcome new and established streamers to join in assembling a sequence of live sounds starting near the 0 meridian at daybreak on Saturday and returning 24 hours later, with a 1 hour coda.

reveil

I’ll be trying to broadcast from Victoria Park from 4:45 on Sunday 3 May. Hopefully no helicopters this year.

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Read: Lean Stand Fall by Jon McGregor ★★★★★ 📚

‘ You want, Robert said, ‘you want, wok?’ He was leaning towards Wiktor and Rachel, his voice loud and clear. Wok, wok, you want to work again?” Wiktor and the dancers all looked at him and shrugged once more, and Robert shrugged in return. He looked very pleased with himself.

Peter straightened his tie, and started speaking.

‘Will you wade with me in the water now Wiktor, will you wade in to your waist and wait while the waves rise higher and all around and we will lift we will wash and water the water is all around and up upon your shoulders now?’

They shrugged, and they laughed, and they came to a standstill.

Starts with a gripping description of an Antarctic disaster. Ends with an equally gripping depiction of a series of sessions of aphasia self help group. Beautiful book. Communication, language & its loss, unexpected changes in life & relationships.

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Read: The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers ★★★★ 📚

The Battle was the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, at which Redbone was a more than willing partici-pant, and a subject that Calvert has frequently indulged his friend in over the intervening years but which he has little desire to hear repeated now, or indeed ever again, for the account is well worn and the telling of it is like retreading a desire path through the vegetation of Redbone’s semi-fictionalised personal history.
Calvert has long suspected that his friend somehow equates that June afternoon with some of the blood-and mud-flecked battles that he himself was a part of in South Georgia, when of course they are incomparable.

1989 over a summer 2 very different misfits spend 10 nights creating crop circles while lost in their own thoughts about society, the natural world, war & much more. A boys book perhaps, but an enjoyable one.