Back To Books

I may have injured my wrist through too much knitting. Yes. Really. I’m going to see my doctor tomorrow for my usual ‘why do I keep keeling over, Doctor McKay?’ thing and might just ask him about my poor overworked wrists. I suspect the answer may be to lay off with the knitting for some […]

Fantabulous Faber

Faber and Faber is sending me a proof copy of Andrew Sean Greer’s new novel, The Story of a Marriage. Greer’s The Confessions of Max Tivoli was excellent and I’m looking forward to see how his new novel compares.
Thank you, F&F. I hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship between TS Eliot’s […]

The Timeline of Fictional Events

This is really nifty: The Timeline of Fictional And Fictional Future Events.

1609: A vampire known as the Master converts a young woman dying of syphilis to fellow vampire Darla. The conversion reportedly took place in the Colony and Dominion of Virginia which at the time only included Jamestown
1620: Norville “Shaggy” Rogers’ and Scooby-Doo’s ancestors, McBaggy […]

When I Say Bad, I Mean BAD

Danish blogger Emme has a category of books she calls “matadormix” - “mixed candy”. These books do not ask much of you as a reader: they’re easy to zip through, leave you feeling slightly bloated if you overindulge and there’s a bit of everything in them. “Mixed candy”, indeed.
These past few days I’ve made […]

The Bonfire of Good Intentions

If I’m going to have to rip out another effing row on the neckline on my effing sweater, I swear I’m going to toss the effing thing on the bonfire I’m going to build in our backyard. What do you mean “Well, it’s your first attempt at an actual garment and you did abandon the […]

Books Running Through the Veins

If you can read Danish, it might amuse you to know that the editor of Bogrummet (The Book Room) is my cousin. I sorta-kinda-almost knew what she had been doing with her time, but it had sorta-kinda-almost slipped my mind.
It’s still very cool and utterly amusing in a absolutely-definitely way.

Saturday Linkage

This week I rummaged around on the net and almost accidentally joined a book club based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Thankfully the members correspond with each other online. The idea is that you set yourself up for reading 20 books within a set time (which is very achievable) and some of these books have to be […]

I Should Be Texting You This. Possibly.

Tuesday I went to see my GP again for a non-seizure/keeling over matter and I was met with the immortal words: “Yup, we need to take a closer look at that. Which hospital would you prefer?” I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I still don’t.
So, life is filled with little ups-and-downs at […]

Saturday Linkage

Last night I went into the kitchen and announced: “I really like Tanzania.” My poor, deluded brain had been locked into dream-space whilst I had been battling it out on Puzzle Quest. While my fingers had been busy pairing up gems and fighting wyverns, another part of me had been in Tanzania on a veranda, […]

The Evening Before the Day

Having just finished Scarlett Thomas’ “PopCo”, I find myself longing for non-contemporary novels. I have been reading many books recently but all have all been written within the last thirty years. I long for a different sort of prose, a different perspective. And so I have been looking at my book shelves, thought about the […]