vivdunstan

Just finished another book of the last batch, so now have my fixed next main chunk of reading for the rest of June 2022.

I’ve now got two novels on the go, both rereads. Terry Pratchett’s Maskerade and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Both read on my Kindle, though I have a paperback copy of the former and a facsimile hardback reprint of the first edition of the latter.

I am still reading and enjoying Andrew Cotter’s first book about life with his labrador dogs Olive and Mabel.

Having just finished my latest Japanese manga book my next graphic novel read will be the first volume of Heartstopper. Which looks like it will be a quick and breezy read. It also looks to have fun with the graphic novel format.

The Last Bookseller is a somewhat exaggeratedly titled but interesting so far memoir of rare bookselling in 1980s and 1990s America.

And I am still happily enjoying Loren Wiseman’s Grognard book of Traveller RPG newsletter columns.

One really lovely thing about my accordion practice this afternoon is my right hand - and specifically my fingers - was cooperating really well. This is the hand that plays the melody on the piano keyboard side of my accordion. When I had a huge cerebral vasculitis relapse in 2004 (effectively a stroke) I was suddenly a lot weaker down my right side, and falling over a lot to that side. I regained a lot of hand/finger control by teaching myself an enormously difficult piano tune over the next 12 months. But many years on I'm still weaker down that side than I'd like. And especially during disease flares/relapses. A year or so ago I was very sad about it, fearing I was losing the ability to play completely. Well things are looking a bit better at the moment! I still have other neurological things to contend with accordion wise, like light headedness, falling asleep mid play (!) and losing my usually automatic bellows control. But honestly it's so much better than it might have been. So I expect I should be able to enjoy playing my accordions for some years to come. Which is just lovely.