Stuck in a Book’s Weekend Miscellany

I hope you have good weekend plans – I’m seeing various friends, including a picnic, so fingers crossed for nice weather. I’ll also be making a baked cheesecake, so it’s ALL GO chez Simon. Anyway, whatever you have planed, here’s a book, a blog post, and a link to take you into it.

1.) The book – you KNOW I’m always happy to read books about reading, and Tim Parks’ Pen in Hand is right up my street. In fact, I’ve already read a few of the essays, and they’re really interesting – a little more academic than other titles in this sphere, but certainly not in a way to alienate the ‘common reader’, to sue Johnson’s/Woolf’s phrase.

2.) The link – I often enjoy the Guardian‘s ‘Experience’ column, and this one about managing the world’s last Blockbuster store is good fun.

3.) The blog post – is more of an entire blog, I think: ‘Reading Africa‘ is a project where Muthoni is trying to read at least one book from every country in Africa. There are loads of great suggestions in there, and it’s a very interesting challenge.