Fit for purposelessness

** UPDATE 7/1 - you can help try to save the Bush Theatre by signing their on-line petition at www.bushtheatre.co.uk before January 15. Worth a visit even if you're not sure **

Welcome back. Hope you all had restful holidays and rituals. I spent parts of my December in Tallinn, Estonia and in County Wicklow, south of Dublin, variations of white and green. Not the sort of places I wanted to blog in, I have to say. Too postcard beautiful.

On the subject of blogging, I'll admit to something since the rise of facebook (on the computer at home anyway) - I'm less and less sure of this blog's audience and no longer sure what to focus upon. Before the social network sites, blogging was a great way for me to keep in touch with people albeit one that occasionally drew in many more. This isn't a complaint, only an admission that this blog's purpose has gone a little fuzzy and I'm still trying to work out how to refocus.

Anyway. Some things I've been reading that I'd like to point to are Steve Bloomfield's coverage of the current civil strife in Kenya; there's also Michael Billington's interview with Edward Bond and the idiotic news that the Arts Council England thinks that the Bush Theatre doesn't give enough value. To whom? By what standard? If I read another news story with the phrase "fit for purpose" quoted, I might implode.

Among the books I've been entranced by, Chimanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun stands out along with the humourously self-centred Memoirs of Goldoni: Written By Himself (John Black's 1814 translation of Carlo Goldoni's memoirs) that I've been chugging through via google books for the princely sum of electricity and broadband. I've got a great big pile of unread tomes, including a couple of my own plays that I'm gearing up to rewrite.

Tell me, what's on your reading list? Why? And what would you like to see more of on this blog over the next year?