Monday Blogcrawl

Being a non-driver, I find I spend an inordinately large period of my life on the ever-unreliable Sydney trains. Alas, this does not mean that I get a lot of reading down. I find loud conversations distracting, and in retaliation I aggressively plonk in my earphones and listen to my iPod. Or I get absorbed in a magazine, and spend the entire trip reading nonsense. Or, dear readers, I doze off after a page or two. Sad but true. Here are some things that kept me awake this week:

• Lucindaville has been reading the Cecil Beaton Diaries, something I've been longing to do. I love diaries.
• V. S. Naipaul's new book The Masque of Africa sounds fascinating
• I've always envied Catholics their wonderful rosary
• As a boy I was a stamp-collecting dork, so I was fascinated by these Buddhist FDCs
• I've just bought the Simon Callow autobiography AND the Stephen Fry autobiography - and here are the two men combined