A few bits and bobs for your midweek delectation…

• Frames, we got ’em! Yep, Malvern Books is coming along nicely: stick on some wood, slap on some paint, bung up some shelves, and Bob’s your bookstore! (Can you tell we’re getting excited now?)

• Today on everyone’s favorite tote-bag peddling radio station, Leonard Lopate chatted with author Mason Currey about his new book, Daily Rituals, which takes a look at the quotidian habits of creative types. Highlight #1: Apparently Beethoven believed that the perfect cup of coffee required exactly sixty beans, and he would count them out one by one. (If you find this sort of thing intriguing, Brain Pickings has a lengthy post on rituals from the book.) Highlight #2: As always, there was a call-in from a batty rich lady with artistic aspirations. Today’s caller was an über-mom who demanded Currey provide her with a morning writing routine that would give her some “me time” while taking into account her child’s “needs.” She insisted that she was not willing to get up early, did not believe in “the nanny culture”, and refused to let lil’ Augustus watch TV. In other words, you can find her heartrending memoir, Yoga Ate My Brain!, on a shelf near you in July two-thousand-and-never.

• Have you seen the BBC’s much talked about kitty-cat documentary, The Secret Life of the Cat? You can watch the whole thing online…

… but let me save you the time. A bunch of “cat scientists” descend upon a charming Surrey village, attach GPS units to fifty of the village’s finest fluffies, and then track their comings and goings for a week in order to reveal that… cats do pretty much exactly what you thought: they sleep, they steal food, and they engage in the odd territorial skirmish. Yes, my British chums, your television licence fee is going toward SCIENCE. On the plus side, the cats themselves were jolly nice to look at; I’ve never seen such absurdly plump, fluffy, whiskery specimens. Their salon blowouts were impeccable.