August 2017.

The National's album is out soon and they've added another song to their website http://americanmary.com I'm a big fan and it's all sounding good. They've rebranded themselves and look like a firm of contemporary architects. If Nile Rogers, Jungle or daft Punk are your thing then you'll almost certainly enjoy Parcels http://www.parcelsmusic.com/ Do you ever get the feeling that all of the good band names might have been used up?

I've become an Audible addict. I just finished Jon Ronson's Butterfly Effect. It's great -of course- though possibly not as great as some of the other great stuff he's done. His journey into the psyche of the American Alt Right -The Elephant in the Room-  is excellent and apposite too. Danny Wallace's I Can't Believe You Said That is great, too; it's a sometimes profound, sometimes hilarious and sometimes sad meditation on rudeness. 

Solar Bones my Mike McCormack is a really fine novel. I think it's been shortlisted for the Booker; it certainly deserves it (in my humble and fairly valueless opinion). It's part prosaic, part profound and once you're a few pages in you'll struggle to put it down; it's an unusual book because everything and nothing happens at the same time https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/04/solar-bones-by-mike-mccormack-review

Have you heard of Gudak? It's an App that mimics a disposable camera, not only in the qualities of the photos but in the fact that there is no review function and you have to then wait for three days to see your photos once you have finished a roll of 24. It's only 99p!