Books1-3, Kitchen near disaster, New orchid, BT or sad sign of the times?

Not really any new challenges to report at the moment, but I'm enjoying Emma's Count of Monte Cristo, I'll try & read 60 "mind-improving" books & comment on them as I go. It will take much more than a year, any sensible suggestions welcome. I'm ruling out things I've read before. This year I can list Darwin's Barnacle, not as geeky as it sounds, as bit technical in places but a fascinating insight into him & his obsessional & hypochondriacal traits. I think I mentioned Periodic Tales, a quirky quest to collect all the elements, with their histories, again not too technical for us normal people.
The kitchen disaster counts as a new challenge (16), we got a good second hand cooker for Amy's house, but found it was 4mm too wide for the space. The previous skanky one was a small one, much too small for  "normal" space. Problem solved by removing the top, dismounting the units from the wall, sawing off a bit of skirting board in situ as water pipe was put in after it, like a 3D puzzle, then just sliding the whole lot a centimetre & reassembling it all. Graham the Wonderful has a machine which can cut the 1cm off the worktop. The best bit is that the floor tiles now fit the space beautifully as I had to trim it round the pipes, so better than before.
Walking in Somerset last weekend with Gail, Eve Denise & Roger I found a fly orchid, a first for me, but not really a challenge. Finding all the British ones would be!

Finally, I went into the bank & was served by a nice young man I'd met before, in a wheelchair, I suspect from a cervical spine injury, he said he'd remembered me because I had been polite last time, how sad that that's memorable.