What I'm Doing 40:

What I'm Kindle-Reading
I am having a bit of a short story feste at the moment.  First I read a selection of short stories from Seren, my publisher: Seren Shorts edited by Penny Thomas.  This is free on Kindle at the moment and I highly recommend it.

I already had a couple of the single author anthologies sampled, so when I came to those it was like coming across old friends, but I also discovered several other  writers, a couple of which I liked so much that I bought their collections on Kindle too: viz Emyr Humphrey's Woman at the Window

and Graham Mort's Touch.

Before I plunge into those though, I am going to finish Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision.   I think the Kindle is particularly well-suited to short stories - more so than it is for novels, perhaps.

What I'm Listening to

Having just finished the Women's Prize for fiction winner May We Be Forgiven by AM. Homes,

I have started on another which is quite different  The Rosie Project by Graham Simsion.

It is set in Australia and centres on an academic who has severe relationship problems.  In fact, he seems to be suffering form Asperger's  - which gives the author a chance to write about the weird behaviour of humans from the point of view of an outsider lurking within.  It's very funny.

What I'm Reading (in fiction)
Two, I'm afraid: Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle

and Everyone Lies by A. D. Garrett.  (Only 99p in Kindle at the moment!)

Both crime novels, and although entirely different from each other, equally gripping (and therefore a very bad move to find myself reading both of them at once...as well as everything else.  I really need to get a grip).

What I'm Reading (in non-fiction).
Having worked my way through a series of Genetics books, it is time for a test.  The test being 'Silkworms transformed with chimeric silkworm/spider silk genes spin composite silk fibers with improved mechanical properties' by Florence Teule et al.  in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Transposons!  Piggybac vectors! Transgenes!  All I'm saying is I now understand a lot more than I did (but also realise how little I really do know too), and what I've learnt is exciting and wonderful - part of the extraordinary world going on inside each one of us.

And What I've been Watching:
David Starkey's Music and Monarchy TV and DVD.  A series of four programmes about how English music was influenced by the monarchy - beautiful music and an excellent commentary.  I learnt a lot.