Media Diet Week 41

Press: the turmoil on the financial markets around the world this week has meant the papers have been out of date even before they rolled off the presses. Fortunately, papers these days are online too and the best ones update hourly or even faster. Print editions are best left for in-depth background features as the headlines change so rapidly. I've been glued to the Guardian this week for financial updates and also Robert Peston's blog on the BBC website, which to my mind has the most incisive analysis and most interesting forecasts. The best other material I've read this week is the Guardian's G2 special today on deafness. It's great to see disability being covered intelligently and with some humour too. More please.

Blogs: there seems to have been a theme this week out there in cyberspace - word lists. First, I stumbled over Difficult Words, which was a fairly comprehensive list of words that are often confused with others (hat-tip to Juliet). I also rather enjoyed BBC Magazine's wordy musings this week - the bizarre story of the dictionary reader, Ammon Shea, who is a tad obsessed with the vast vocabulary of the English language. Following on from that, the Magazine published our 50 favourite words, some of which are splendidly silly. And there's also the Magazine's very handy list of financial jargon, which is pretty useful right now. When editing financial stuff (daily in my case), these are largely familiar to me but I've yet to see my clients using "dead cat bounce". Still, at least I'll know what it means if it does crop up.

TV/radio: a thin week as I was out a lot and, as usual, resorted to BBC iPlayer to stay up to speed with EastEnders and The Archers. I managed to catch all of Place of Execution, which finished this week, a fairly faithful adaptation of Val McDermid's brilliant crime novel. The only other telly of note was Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which I used to watch religiously when Mark Lamarr was in the driving seat. I lost interest when they tinkered with the format (now back to how it was) and I never quite took to Simon Amstell. But Buzzcocks was essential viewing on Thursday as Stephen Fry was guest captain oppposite Phill Jupitus. Needless to say, Fry was his usual brilliant self, but I don't doubt viewing figures were pushed higher after Fry made an appearance on Twitter the same day. Within hours he'd amassed a following of thousands and I was overjoyed when he started following me in return. Whodathunkit?

Books: busy week, so still only a third through The Arsenic Labyrinth. How did I run out of time to read books? Twenty years ago, on a career break to do my degree, I thought nothing of reading 7 or 8 books a week and I went out almost every night back then. These days it seems to take a month to get through just one.