Finished since the last reading post
The Instrumentalist, which I liked very much, although the protagonist kept annoying me at times by being so blinkered in her ambition.

Currently reading
Not much progress with The Alignment Problem. Reading Death of a Scholar by Susanna Gregory and have less than 50 pages to go, and I still have no idea how it's going to play out at the end.

Reading next
I have another library book lined up, beyond that I'm not sure

Finished since the last reading post
The Lost Abbot, with a suitably large and confusing number of deaths during Matthew and friends' stay in Peterborough looking for the abbot who seems to have disappeared.

Also finished The End of Innocence. It was good, a mix of personal stories interspersed with the more factual narrative. With it being a book originally published in the mid-1990s and reprinted in 2021, as a reader you have a different point of view than the first readers at the time.

Currently reading
In the middle of The Instrumentalist Harriet Constable, which I'm really enjoying. And have just about made a start on The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian

Reading next
Not sure

After five months and eight appointments, the tooth that started troubling me in June now has its permanent crown. The fitting it today was a bit trickier than I or the dentist had imagined, but we got there in the end. We have a health-related cashback benefit at work so I finally put the paperwork together and submitted a claim. Usually, it's just a question of attaching your receipt and that's it, but with so many appointments and payments made in stages, I ended up putting together an entire document in addition to a scan of the treatment plan and scans of the receipts. Not sure if it works out, and even when it does, it's not going to be anywhere near the entire cost of treatment, with my cover being just at the basic level where I don't pay anything extra.

I think I'm due a normal check-up soon, but perhaps that will be pushed forward with the number of times I've been at the dentist over the past months.

This morning brought sunshine, slightly hazy, but absolutely gorgeous nonetheless. I ventured out for some parkrun tourism and it was great to be out in that sunshine, even if the wind was rather brisk and chilly.

My train from Edinburgh departed at midday, so I didn't really have time for anything apart from parkrun. The journey was uneventful and I spent it reading. And the cross-London transfer and train journey home were equally unremarkable. There were some delays and changes on GWR trains after Storm Claudia, but that didn't really affect me, as I'd always aim for whichever would depart next. All the issues were apparently further west down the line.

Today, I started my day by heading out to the National Galleries Modern. There's actually Modern One and Modern Two, but I only went to the former. There are some sculptures outside, too. Like the name suggests, the art on display is from 1900 onwards or so, mostly organised thematically. Very enjoyable. I had lunch there before taking the steps down from the museum to the riverside and following the Water of Leith walkway for a while for my walk back towards the city centre. There's an Antony Gormley sculpture in the river, and a riverside AIDS memorial.

Before going to the National Museum of Scotland, I made detour to the National Galleries National shop. At the National Museum, there was so much to see I barely made it through two areas.

The weather today was a clear improvement on yesterday: clear and bright if not particularly sunny, although breezier and a bit colder than yesterday. It had cleared rained during the time I'd been in the National Museum, and there was some more before I made it back to where I'm staying. I probably don't have time for anything much tomorrow before my train south departs.

The main plotline of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) alone -- with no sidequests, exploration, minigames, or collections -- takes ~50 hours. So, roughly, 2 old-fashioned US TV seasons of 22-26 episodes or 3-4 epic Peter Jackson movies. Here's that plot, summarized:

( Massive spoilers )

Last night, instead of starting to settle for the night I headed out to travel to London Euston to catch Caledonian Sleeper to Edinburgh. I got onboard soon after it opened after 10.30pm and settled down to sleep fairly soon, but wasn't really asleep when we departed a quarter to midnight. I slept rather fitfully and when my alarm went off at seven in the morning I thought there was something odd going on. It took me a little while to figure out what it was from what was hearing and what Caledonian Sleeper had messaged. We were being held at Carlisle because the line was blocked ahead. The reason was initially cited as a broken-down train, later they suggested the breakdown was related to flooding on the line. In any case, we stood at Carlisle long enough that the Edinburgh portion ended up arriving over two hours behind schedule. That was actually fine with me, as I'd been wondering what I'd do in the morning if it was raining heavily and I'd have two hours to kill. In the end, I just took my bigger bag to left luggage and headed straight out to the National Galleries of Scotland, the National, and enjoyed looking at art there. After it, I went to St. Giles and had a look around and did some walking about at the castle end of the Royal Mile. And then went to the castle, where I had the official guided tour, followed by visiting some of the buildings at the site. Even on a grey rainy day, the views were wonderful. And although rain made it harder to just enjoy walking around, it wasn't anything I hadn't expected and the forecast for tomorrow is better.