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"A New Stoicism" by Lawrence Becker was recommended in the final chapter of "Stoicism: A Very Short Introduction". It resulted from a thought experiment by the philosopher to rethink Stoicism to make it more beneficial to a modern audience. Much of classical Stoicism, cosmology, rhetorical logic, and theology have been stripped away since the Renaissance, so it will be interesting to read Becker's conclusions.

Terry Pratchett described "The Evolution Man" by Roy Lewis as one of the funniest books of the last 500,000 years, Brian Aldiss chose it as one of the first novels to start the Penguin SF list, and Jacques Monod, the French biochemist, claims it made him laugh so much he fell off a camel. It sounds worth reading.

I've just received a lovely little Pimoroni PicoSystem, a tiny handheld gaming system programmable in MicroPython. It's years since I've written any commercial Python 3, so I dug out this book to read after ramping up with a few Pluralsight courses.

"The Shadow in the North" is the second Sally Lockhart novel by Philip Pullman. I'm listening to an older Audible version narrated by Anton Lesser in a more understated style than the newer version. At 25 minutes in, the plot is just beginning to be revealed after a certain amount of scene-setting. The mystery sounds intriguing, though reminiscent of the first book.

This is a great translation of Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations", even better than the Martin Hammond version (Penguin Classics) I read last year. The introduction is an excellent introduction to Marcus Aurelius himself, his philosophical influences, what the "Meditations" are, and what they are not.

@marcus I remember greatly enjoying "The Cuckoo's Egg" when it came out. I've just dug out my copy and flicking through left me awash with nostalgia for 1,200 baud modems, horrendous X.25 bills, and VMS.

I "read" the Audible version of "The Ruby in the Smoke" narrated by Adjoa Andoh. While I enjoyed the story, I found some of the acting quite painful. Other reviewers appear equally split between those who thought the performance excellent and those who found it grating. Given the wide range of male and female characters with varying social backgrounds and nationalities, voicing them was no doubt challenging, and Andoh didn't quite pull it off. Some male characters were hard to differentiate, and one or two, like Rosa's rather harsh voice, could have fitted the personality better.

I recently completed the mandatory anti-discrimination course at work, expecting it to be to the usual dreadful standard. I was surprised to find it a fascinating documentary about how unconscious bias can impact what we think are rational decisions.

Recent reading on the interplay between the sub-conscious and our consciousness play into this too, so this book sounds like an interesting take on our decision-making mechanisms.

After being a New Scientist reader for over four decades, a recent article on how web3 would save social media finally convinced me to cancel my subscription. Deep down, I'd known for a long time that their editorial standards had steadily eroded, and the feature on blockchain and the semantic web being, in some unexplained way, the solution for social media lock-in was the last straw.

But I needed another way to keep all three of my science neurons firing, so I switched back to Scientific American, a publication I'd last read in the 1990s. In addition to the magazine, I dug out this book I've meant to read for a couple of years. It is a collection of relatively recent articles from the magazine about the hard problem of consciousness.

It's good to be returning to the Chalk. I was looking forward to getting to the Tiffany books. The Nac Mac Feegles are always great fun, and the image of a sheep proceeding rapidly across a field, backwards, and without moving its legs is one of those Discworld scenes that become burned into your memory.