currently reading

Observant readers may have noted that I've been playing with my blogroll over on the right, importing the new blogger system which lists blogs according to how recently they've been updated. I think it's probably a more useful system, although you'll note that I've not (yet) deleted my Essential Blogs list, which is still visible further down the page. Any thoughts about the new system? Hopefully it'll get used by other people, rather than just me.

Anyway, one side product of populating the new system is that I've had the chance to seek out and add some new things to read, as well as pruning a few blogs which have fallen out of use. So here a few things on the web I recommend for this week:

- Over on the Breakfast In Bed blog - which has plenty of great stuff on music, books, socialising and travel - Rowan has recently been serving up a mouthwatering set of posts on food; she's writing about food every single day for a month, in fact, and lording it over those of us scraping by on leftovers and cheap takeaways. Definitely worth dipping into a daily basis, although in recent days I've learned only to do so after lunch, when my appetite is sated.

- Over at his Inside A Skinny Mind blog, Jimmy has written a bunch of great posts recently, like this write up of a bit of religious curiosity and these thoughts about the miracle effects of technology on long term relationships. My favourite was his description of one of the most bizarre job interviews I've ever heard about, which is here. Extract below.

"The Newlook people opened up the doors and led us all downstairs to the accessories department, and there must have been at least fifty retail aspirants there. The store manager came out and started explaining what was going to happen. Basically we were going to be divided into groups of six, each member of the group got a celebrity profile and you had three minutes to run to the rails behind the escalator to find the perfect outfit for your celebrity. The nightmare only started there"

- I keep finding blogs that are prettier than mine - cue much gnashing of teeth and cursing. A few have caught my attention, recently. Kept In A Jar is lovely, and I'm so jealous of Debbie's Glastonbury weekend, which looks even better than the real one, and of her journal, which is plainly beautiful.

- Old, Old Fashioned is lovely, too - full of nice clothes, nice design and pretty photographs. It sounds like Rosie, the author, is preparing to move to Oslo, so in her instance I'm not just jealous of the cool looking blog but of her entire lifestyle, bah.

- And in mentioning these lovely blogs, I must also send you to Make Do and Mend, which I've read for a while now and never mentioned, which is shameful not only because it's good but because it's written by my lovely friend Laura. It concentrates on good design, beautiful illustrations, and Laura's own craft-related adventures. Go see.

- Here's a blog I've just discovered; MFM is a brighton based music blog, and well worth a look, with recent reviews of Dizzee Rascal, Late of the Pier and Beck.

- Finally, another hearty recommendation for another friend's blog - Amy's excellent One Million Kisses For One Million Girls is super; documenting her ideas, great taste in music and work on Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams, a fanzine that I'll blog about soon, and which you should buy.

There are doubtless other things I've missed. I'll try to do blog round-ups more regularly.