Welcome back. Had the place painted. What do you think? The new colours took a while to grow on me, and clashed awfully with the photo to your right. So I’ve gone for a black and white one instead. But is it too stern, too middle aged? I’ve got an RSS feed, too. Bookmark it and you’ll be able to tell whenever I do a new post (this year, I intend to write a lot more frequently than once a month, circumstances allowing). Thanks for the book recommendations below. Keep them coming. A free CD to the first three posters, all of whose suggestions I’ll get round to. Last night I finished my interim read (mostly a reread), Graham Greene’s Collected Stories. The less said…

The marathon sleeve notes to my best of year CD are below. As an experiment, to welcome in the new year, I’m enabling comments on the site in 2008. With that in mind, here’s an interactive start to the year. I need a new novel to read next. I’m currently reading some early Steve Ditko comics, a short book about the Pink Floyd’s first album, a draft of a book about Young Adult Fiction and rereading Philip Roth’s ‘The Ghost Writer’ but I’ll have finished that tonight and need to start something new by the weekend. My christmas pile includes Graham Greene’s collected letters, the Sid Griffin book about Dylan’s basement tapes and Philip Davis’s biography of Bernard Malamud. At the moment I’m tempted most…

Following my CD of the year marathon, and complaints about the terrible sound on the new Bruce Springsteen album, here’s an article that explains what’s going on with the bad sound on a lot of new recordings. Thanks to Mike for the link.

For the second time this year, a four hour plus journey to a gig with my brother, Paul (for Prince, the delay was motorway traffic, this time it was overcrowded, delayed Friday evening trains), but with a much happier result at the end. My pal Henry and his son George had saved us good seats in the small Greenfield Station folk club (a big room upstairs in the pub) for Bridget St John’s first tour in more than thirty years. I helped out at Bridget’s penultimate UK gig in 1976, when I was an 18 year old in his first month at university. Bridget played a benefit for Liquorice Magazine at Nottingham’s Victoria Centre, where she was second on the bill, followed by Kevin Coyne…

I was meant to be on gardening duty until the Liverpool game this Sunday afternoon but foul weather has intervened, which means I’m about to curl up with the second half of John Lucas’s 92 Acharnon St, a beautifully written, hugely entertaining account of the author’s love affair with Greece. From finding that his new flat is on a street full of brothels, to ludicrous encounters with bureaucracy (especially in Greek universities) and numerous encounters with Greek poets, this is a terrific, often very funny read. I’ve been rationing myself, so haven’t got to the sections about the island of Aegina, where we’ve been lucky enough to stay a couple of times. But soon. While I hope that Liverpool give a good account of themselves…