Lazing on a sunny afternoon

Mrs. Kinch and I were away for a few days in the country.  It was a blissful holiday, which mainly involved sleeping for forteen hours a day and sitting in the garden, reading and drinking gin and tonic.  

While we were away I finished "Imperial Sunset", RF Delderfelds account of the final years of Bonaparte's Empire.  It was very readable and delightfully gossipy in much the same way as his March of the Twenty Six. It's always intriguing to read a book written by someone who disagrees with you on a fundamental level. Delderfeld is very much an advocate of Bonaparte and distributes praise or blame based on loyalty to him. He is also good at giving a sense of the social side of the Napoleonic Empire, though I'm skeptical of his analysis. Something I've noticed that when trying to get a series of events in history straight in my head is that it is often the lighter books that help me remember.  I am much better at remembering a constructed narrative even if I think part of it is wrong.  It is easier to account for a slanted narrative than to try and remember a series of events dispassionately recorded. The authors skill as a novelist is used to good effect. 

Good light reading.   Recommended. 

Not quite as impressive as Stryker's collection of cavalry - but getting there

Hobby wise, there hasn't been much going on.  I've set up the great basing project in one corner of The War Room.  A couple of this years Ebay purchases and other bargains have been sitting in boxes for a while and need to be converted to the Kinch house style. 

So there will be lots of little painted me being glued to bits of MDF, their bases covered in filler and painted and then hit with a spot of static grass.  It's not a bad complaint to have to be honest, but it's not the most lively hobby activity either.  I shall have to find something suitably riveting in the audiobook line.