Thinking, shredding and gardening

An odd mix of books on my desk for review right now including: The Haynes Fender Stratocaster Manual by Paul Palmer and A Year in the Garden by “Mr Digwell”.

Haynes are well known for their practice car maintenance manuals and their motor history museum, but in recent years they have extended the brand to other iconic technologies from bicycles to the space shuttle. This year, it’s the turn of perhaps one of the most famous of guitars, the Fender “Strat”, favoured by everyone from Hank Marvin, to Eric Clapton to Mark Knopfler and a million others in between and after. Balmer offers expert advice on choosing and buying a Strat, whether that’s brand new or a vintage model, on setting it up for your particular style of playing and on keeping your six-string electric in prime working order for those jazz licks, rock riffs and high-speed shreds.

Mr Digwell is a cartoon gardener in British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mirror. This manual, authored by Paul Peacock, takes you through the four seasons from sowing seeds, cultivating crops to harvesting and over wintering and all the dibbling and raking in between.

Of course, it could be argued that gardening and guitar maintenance are sciences in themselves, but I make no excuse for including books on my hobbies on my site! The origin of creativity has also been puzzling me increasingly this week as I awake early with new ideas for my own book – Deceived Wisdom, Elliott and Thompson, out November.