City limits

I took a long walk in London... passing through Primrose Hill, Regent's Park and Green Park as well as through districts of housing and shops in a rather high price bracket. Of course, I only took pictures in the parks!

I liked the wooden sculptures - chainsaw art, I guess. A good use of trees that had fallen or were felled for safety reasons. Though they seemed keen to keep trees, sick ashes, standing, and instead of felling them did some heavy surgery to remove limbs that might fall.

As I walked, I was listening to Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan. First up, let me commend the narrator, Michael Abubakar: he was brilliant. Caledonian Road (this is another review!) is very much, as the review I linked to explains, a "London" novel, focusing on the corruption of the capital's super-rich, which was pleasing as I walked past some vast houses and Crown properties. I hugely enjoyed it, though I can't say I liked any of the characters especially. Milo Manghasha is the agent of disruption who brings down many of the worst villains, along with a journalist Tara Hastings. While I might share many of their views, not all, there is something slightly unsympathetic about both of them. Even the good guys, Moira, Elizabeth and Kenzie, notably, all women, have a strange coldness at their heart. I didn't care about any of them. Yet the book itself was gripping, and disturbing, and rousing.

I don't think non-humans get a mention. Astonishing. Apart from occasional birdsong. Anyway, I am rather sad to have finished listening.

As for reading fiction.... I recently finished The Unseen by Ray Jacobsen, which was good, but not among my favourites, and now am on Greek Lessons by Han Kang, which is interesting.

Non fiction, and, as well as reading Bitch, I am listening to Anna Tsing's The Mushroom at the End of the World. This is starting to get interesting now she's talking about the not human. I learnt a new word: sympoiesis, which I like.