On re-reading books

As I mentioned the other day, I very much enjoy sitting on trains with my head stuck in a book.  Anywhere will do, but trains are pretty good.

On Tuesday the book in question was Mockingjay (the third Hunger Games book), which I finished during the journey, and so I immediately began looking through my Kindle for something else to read.  I have another couple of books waiting to be read, but neither appealed.  I shut the thing off and stared out the window for a few minutes before I realised I really did want to read something else.  I turned it back on and looked through the list of books which I keep in a collection named "previously read".  Yep, my filing is that precise.

I thought about re-reading the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings, but my eyes alighted on Les Misérables and before I knew it I was ploughing through one of the literary world's answers to a mandelbrot set.

What is it about re-reading books that gives such satisfaction?

Everyone has their own autism

As some of you may have gathered by now, there's a bit of a foodie theme going on here.  No, not gourmet foodie, just wholesome, home-cooked, comfort foodie foodness.  Making pancakes from scratch on a Sunday morning.  Macaroni and cheese without a box in sight.  Bacon.  And so on.

Making yummy, un-fancy food is fun and satisfying, and it can become an obsession.

Now, I can't take credit for what follows, but it did kind of start way back in the days when I used to come into professional contact with Child Support Agency cases, and I became aware of the enormously detailed financial disclosures their clients have to complete.  One day I looked at one of those forms and thought it would make the solid basis for a family budget.  The budget we work from today had its origins there.