Regent's Park: From Tudor Hunting Ground to the Present by Paul Rabbitts

Book 35, Regent's Park: From Tudor Hunting Ground to the Present, was a fairly dull book. It was like going back to the Local History section of the library, except that instead of reading about the area around Dorking I was reading about a park in London.

The problem is that I don't know Regent's Park very well (there are not many parts of London that I can say that I do). I have walked though it from the tube station to the zoo several times, but my focus has either been getting to the zoo or getting home from it. The book assumes a knowledge of Regent's Park that I don't have. It doesn't even have a modern map of Regent's Park, which is much bigger than I thought. I found it on Google Maps on my phone and had a look, that's the best I could do in the name of research.

Having said all that even if I knew every tree in Regent's Park on first name terms I don't think I would have found this book very interesting. I basically shouldn't be reading it, it's on a bookcase that I have to get through to complete my mission of reading a book from every case in Dorking library. I award Regent's Park 3 out of 10. I can't imagine who could possibly be interested in it to this level of detail.

I will however visit Regent's Park and look round it properly. Even though the book wasn't great it has sparked my interest in it a little, sufficient to actual head there and see it as a destination in it's own right rather than somewhere to walk thorough. Who knows what may materialise from this journey?!

A few books have not got great marks but have changed my life in small ways. I have the rudiments on coin collection thanks to Coin Collecting for Dummies and I am listening to music again thanks to The Ninth (Mozart's Complete Pianco Concertos as I read this). The books weren't great but they inspired me. That is the legacy of this project, to expand my life and interests by giving me ideas on what I want to do with my time. It's also the great thing about non-fiction - fiction is enjoyable but ultimately pointless. Non-fiction, being about the real world, can enrich me and my life in way that made up stories never will.

For book 36 I move on to a bookcase that is dominated by books about dogs, I am terrified of dogs so I see no point at all about reading a book about them. However a book about being a vet is the one that stood out.

I enjoyed All Creatures Great and Small as a TV series when I was young, but have never read any of the books. I have read books by doctors and surgeons they have been interesting because they are problem-solving sort of professions, not dissimilar  my own when I am often hunting down bugs in computer software. I couldn't be a vet because of my fear of dogs, but I like animals, and I can think of a lot of worse things to do. Let's find out!