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Today’s walk: Sovereign Park, Princes Park and the prom
We fancied a walk somewhere different today, and ideally somewhere not muddy, so after consulting some of my usual inspiration sites I came upon this route.
I’ve never been to this bit of Eastbourne before, so it was well worth an explore. Fortunately, we didn’t head out until the early afternoon. It looked like the Eastbourne Half Marathon had made use of the area earlier in the day, so we timed it just right to miss the crowds.
The landscape at Sovereign Park felt familiar. The shingle plants there reminded me so much of the ones growing in the new vegetated shingle area near Black Rock in Brighton. It gave me a lovely glimpse of what the Brighton site might look like once it’s fully established.
I also loved seeing the trees with their little care labels. I scanned a couple of the QR codes and found out a little about the Russian Olive and the Four-stamen tamarisk.
We finished off with a drink at the cafe. Overall, it was a fun walk linking two parks together. It completely hit the “mud-free” brief, even if it’s more of a pleasant local stroll than a major destination walk.
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eReaderIQ and my digital tsundoku
I’ve started using a site called eReaderIQ as part of my book selection process. It actually reminds me a bit of how LoveFilm (and later Cinema Paradiso) used to fit into my movie watching.
Here is how it usually works:
I come across a book somehow, maybe through a friend’s recommendation, a newsletter, or a podcast.
First, I look it up on Goodreads. If it scores more than 4, or if I really trust the person who mentioned it, I send a sample to my Kindle. Every now and again, usually when I’m on holiday or have some downtime, I read through those samples to decide if I actually want to read the full book. If the answer is yes, I head over to eReaderIQ. I find the book on there and set up tracking for it at a level of £1. That way, if it ever drops to a 99p offer, I get a notification.
Then, every so often, an email pops up to tell me an alert has been triggered. I just buy the book automatically. There is no further thought required because “past me” already decided this was a book worth tracking. All “current me” has to do is press buy and commit to spending 99p.
The result is that I now have a tsundoku on my Kindle to match the one on my physical shelf.
I quite like this balance. The physical books on my shelf are mainly non-fiction or episodic. These are my “read to learn” choices. The books on my Kindle are mainly novels or memoirs, which are my day to day reads.
It means I have more choice available to me immediately. I’m relying less on the Amazon Prime lending library or tailoring what I read around what happens to be available for free. For the moment, this is working nicely.
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Textile designer William Morris
When I saw this in The Knowledge, my first reaction was about the reductionist labelling. I suppose they couldn’t have a string of labels longer than the quote itself, but it didn’t quite sit right with me.
I know of William Morris as a textile designer, obviously, but also for so many other crafts and design principles. That is even before we get to the social reform element of his work. Maybe the label felt small because I am so used to seeing women reduced in this way. It was almost a change to see it happen to a man.
I do like this quote, though. I have it on a tote bag somewhere (talk about reductionist!).
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