Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. – Christopher Morley
Archive | May, 2010
“Stone in a Landslide” by Maria Barbal
One of the things I have always loved about a good book is the way it takes you into places and times you’d never otherwise have a chance to experience. This book conveys utterly convincingly the experience of growing up in a small mountain village in early 20th century Catalonia. I really felt as if [...]
Women
Sometimes you think things are not so bad really, and then you see a statistic like this and it just makes you really angry: Women perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own 1% of the property. – New Internationalist magazine, March 2010 issue
Monday morning inspiration
Remember you don’t know the limits of your own abilities. Successful or not, if you keep pushing beyond yourself, you will enrich your own life – and maybe even please a few strangers. AL Kennedy The Guardian, Feb 2010
“Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino
I thought I would have liked this more than I did. I like most of Calvino’s books, and in this one the writing is absolutely beautiful, the observations on cities are clever and insightful, and the structure is innovative. But somehow, for me, all of these ingredients didn’t add up to a very rewarding whole. [...]
“So Long, See You Tomorrow” by William Maxwell
I love Harvill Press. Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to the publishers, because I find most of them produce roughly the same mix of books I love, books I hate and books I don’t care about. But with Harvill, I know for sure that every time I see that little panther symbol, [...]
Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary 2010
My publisher, Legend Press, just announced that submissions are open for the 2010 Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary. This is the contest that gave me my break into publishing when I won it in 2008. The prize is £2,500 and a publishing contract. You enter the first three or four chapters of your novel and a [...]
Monday morning inspiration
Never take advice from anyone with no investment in the outcome. David Hare The Guardian, Feb 2010
Progress in Microsoft world
In most areas of technology, things have changed quite significantly since the year 2000. Look at the latest iPod next to an early MP3 player, for example. Or websites whizzing with Flash and Java and Ajax and all that, next to a basic HTML site designed for a 56k AOL dial-up connection. In my own [...]
“t zero” by Italo Calvino
This is a bit of a strange mix of stories. Some are narrated by Qfwfq, who tells in first person stories of his experiences as various entities such as a unicellular organism at the creation of the universe. Others read like a well-written, literary version of a physicist’s thought experiments. All are interesting and thought-provoking, [...]
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