Keeping busy

Current reading
The Missing - Sian Hughes
Only just started, but it's excellent.
The Cut Of The Light - Jeremy Hooker
I'm still dipping in and out of this, and enjoying it a lot. His re-creation of landscape relies on cumulative effect, rather than memorable individual poems.
Collected Poems - Michael Donaghy
I've not read a great deal of his work in the past, but thought it was about time I checked him out more thoroughly. And I'm still undecided - when I like his work, I really like it, but when I don't, I really don't, if that makes sense.

Current listening
The Wanting Comes In Waves - The Decemberists
My favourite track off the awesome The Hazards Of Love album. Utter genius.
Underdog - Kasabian
I know, I know, derivative lad-rock, but I like it. They might even give Showaddywaddy a run for their money as Leicester's greatest musical exports.
Born In 69 - Rocket From The Crypt
I've just rediscovered their 1995 album Scream Dracula, Scream. It's great, and any track on which the backing vocals consist of "whooo...yeah" can't be bad.

Paper round

Saturday's Guardian contained this review, by David Wheatley, of Michael Donaghy's Collected Poems, out now from Picador.

I enjoyed it a lot, although my knowledge of Donaghy is fairly restricted, to Shibboleth and then a handful of other poems in anthologies. It's a gap I really ought to fill, and there's no better way than with a Collected.

Elsewhere, Rob Mackenzie's The Opposite of Cabbage, which I've been enjoying immensely and which I'll review soon, was reviewed in The Times. Great to see a national paper picking up on a first collection like that, and I hope it gives Rob the sales boost he deserves.