Entertainment

The next burning question is what kind of reading and listening do I want to take. There is music. There are podcasts. There are books.

 First the music. On aeroplanes I need calming music, preferably Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending. Mendelssohn's Songs without Words for solo piano are essential. Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa. Haydn's piano sonatas. Bach's Cello Suites. Maybe Brahms' German Requiem, or maybe Rachmaninoff's Night Vigil. Maybe a couple of John Field's piano concertos. Maybe all of those.  

 For podcasts I am loading up plenty of Radio National favourites. Bodysphere, By Design, First Bite, the Health Report, the Science show. Recommended by Julie are Planet Money, and This American Life. Always good is Melvyn Bragg's (Lord Bragg, to you) In Our Time. That should keep me going. Any other recommendations, anyone?

 Finally, the reading. I will finish Brenda Niall's True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack. On my Kindle waiting for me is a book club reading - Robert Hughes' Fatal Shore. I am going to Dublin so Joyce has to be there - I have both Dubliners and Ulysses (despite Michael's recommendation not to bother.) There are the selected letters of Willa Cather. A book someone recommended to me - My Crowded Solitude by Jack McLaren. If that wasn't enough I could finish Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries. It being my Kindle and should I run short of reading, I have Silas Marner which I haven't read yet. There are the complete Sherlock Holmes, and the complete works of Charles Dickens. Will that be enough? Maybe I'll pick up some magazines, or some trashy airport reading.

 I wish I hadn't already read Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes - although I could happily read it again. That was such a great book I bought a copy for my brother and my daughter and recommend it to anyone interested in the history of science.