finishing off
Now completed Astonishing Splashes of Colour - very powerful and interesting book. Also read Alan Garner's Thursbitch - Guardian Review, I felt it was a bit similar to Red Shift, using many of the same devices. But it is very powerful and having lived at the wilder end of Bollington and walked over the Salterford area many times when growing up it seeemed rather immediate.
Also completed Robert Morgan's Twentieth Century Music - acquired in Knutsford's Oxfam shop - written 1990 and weak from the 1980's on but a useful survey with good reference material though I tend to agree with this posting deploring the quality of the printing of the music examples.