April 2010
44 posts
1 tag
On JASPER JONES by Craig Silvey (Windmill Books,...
Sometimes I think that one of the reasons that I grew up to be a writer was that so many of my favourite characters in the books that I read as a kid saw that as the best possible career, too. Harriet M Welch, Anne Shirley, Scout Finch and Jo March were my role models. There’s a certain inevitability about it; easy to get the impression from reading fiction written for young people that...
On a dog on the 73 bus
He was a small snuffly tan pug named Reggie. I love dogs, but I don’t really like pugs: the people in the house next door to the one I grew up in had two, named Jenny and Penny, and they were so stupid that they would daily wander in to our yard and get horribly lost and then their owner would come out and cry, JENNNNNNNEEEEEEEEE and PENNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. And you can imagine what that was...
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My mother always thought I would be good at...
You’ll be good at foreign languages, she’d say, when I was still in elementary school and looking forward to the special day when I, like my brother, would begin to learn basic German.
But I was not, not especially: my facility with English did not particularly transfer to an ability to learn other languages. German, then French, were a struggle, even an embarrassment. I was never...
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tonight!
“I wanted to believe that the sheer volume of the things I was accumulating might...”
– Modern Love - Counting Candlesticks Is No Way to Measure a Marriage - NYTimes.com
I really like this Modern Love column, maybe because although in most respects I feel perfectly sanguine about my unmarried state, I do regret the fact that I have never had an event in my life where the outcome has...
On cycling in the city
I’ve had a few conversations recently - in life, and online - about how I got started cycling in London. As urban cyclists go, I’m pretty amateur - most days I do four miles to my office and back, at a nice relaxed speed - so I’m hardly an expert.
But it occured to me that perhaps if I had read more blog posts by women like me - not very sporty, rarely seen wearing a pair of...
On the train to Edinburgh
Tonight, it is fraught: full of passengers who have been traveling for three days overland from Germany and Spain, just wanting very much to get home.
We have been on the way for fifteen minutes and there have already been two full-on shouting matches, arguments over seat reservations, soft Scottish voices rendered hard and mean and bellowing by exhaustion. And this despite the signs everywhere...
“‘Bus arrives in Humalasse. Everybody are commanded underground. There is...”
– My newfound friend crush on the Estonian president (below) reminds me of my other other favourite thing about Estonia (where I went on a conference travel press trip): fake KGB-kidnapping corporate team building exercises.
Is this for real? I asked one of my tour guides after I read the brochure....
“I am not Odysseus returning to Penelope after 20 years; it has only been four...”
– Ash Turns Routine Flights Into Overland Odysseys - NYTimes.com
OK, I have a friend crush on the president of Estonia.
“It took me so long to realise why so many writers are alcoholics: because they...”
– Twitter / Alain de Botton: It took me so long to real …
On being scared
My name is Jean and I am not an alcoholic. But I am scared. Always really very scared, and I’d been thinking about that already a lot this week, even before ADB’s pithy and correct tweet.
My writing of late...
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At last, a website! The next event is on April 28th and I hope if you are reading this and you live in London or feel like flying here on a plane (that’s possible again, you know) that you’ll join us.
“Professor Pound’s mechanical zeal extended beyond the laboratory. As a young man...”
– Robert Pound, Physicist Whose Work Advanced Medicine, Is Dead at 90 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
Professor Pound was Dadelstein’s PhD supervisor, and as you can see from this obituary, he was a genuine physics hero.
Maybe we use the internet too much
Judo: I am listening to Weezy Baby Lil Wayne on repeat. I have listened to his one tune, Single, 33 times in the last 16 hours.
Jeano: I know already, thanks to the wonders of Last.fm.
“…a TLC reality show set in a venerable New York bridal shop, in which...”
– ON RINGS AND HAND-WRINGING | More Intelligent Life
A marvelous summing-up of everything wrong with the wedding industry by Emily Gould.
On collective grump
Cycling to work makes a huge difference to my mood for a number of reasons – the exercise, the enjoyable feeling of a self-powered tour through a scenic bit of London (from my new abode, the route takes in the Georgian squares of Islington and much of Bloomsbury, weaving past the British Museum), the fresh air, the thrift, the fact that on the way home I get to pass my favourite shop in all of...
the-other-burg:
There’s nothing more disappointing then biting into a mealy apple. Except, I guess, continuing to bite into a mealy apple, hoping you find a good section.
True, although there is also great disappointment inherent in a cottony peach.
“Just as stupid and sad was the spectacle of the new female parliamentary...”
– Actually, you won’t find female empowerment halfway up a pole | David Mitchell | Comment is free | The Observer
On desperate reading moments
fluffynotes:
‘What’s your inspiration?’ I was asked this question two years ago during an interview for my current job in publishing.
My answer: I read. I read everything, books, magazines, newspapers, the back of a shampoo bottle, the instruction leaflet, ads. Anything.
And how, and how. Since I became a self-sufficient reader, aged five, I’ve found that when I...
“Fox News host Glenn Beck is asking for reader input on the cover of his...”
– Glenn Beck seeks public’s advice on cover of new novel | Books | guardian.co.uk
Glenn, I can’t think of any image more apocalyptic than a photo of Sarah Palin at the desk in the Oval Office.
So I’m disappointed that there is no write-in ballot.
“He deftly side-stepped all questions about his process by saying ‘uh, I...”
– Lauren went to see Jonathan Safran Foer speak at Duke last night, and now I’m all, one of my favourite writers and and I have the same process, incredible.
“Gangsta Love” – Snoop (Mayer Hawthorne Remix) |... →
A song to celebrate that it really looks like it is summer today (even though I still had to wear my winter coat in to work). Via Judo, curator of important seasonally-apropos playlists (scroll to the bottom of the page to play it).
On a home truth
It is simply not possible to listen to This American Life and edit text at the same time.
But I am going to keep trying.
“I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol...”
– Phillip Roth (via wordpainting) (via booklover)
On gas and electric fires
I’ve spent a good chunk of the afternoon editing an article about gas and electric fires…which brings to mind thoughts of the idyllic childhood summers we spent in Scotland. Cold, cold idyllic childhood summers, when the idyll was occasionally interupted when the skin under my fingernails started to look a bit bluish.
My grandmother had a gas fire the likes of which I’d never...
On books that I buy at the airport
In conquering my fear of flying some years ago, one thing that I found was that if I replaced my weird creepy rituals (groping under the seat to make sure I have a life vest; staring at the other passengers to see if they look likely to die in a plane crash) with pleasant ones, I find it easier to get through the experience.
Thus, I generally make a point of getting to the airport early enough...
On still being a bit afraid
Yes, it’s not as bad as it used to be, but I’m still that woman on the plane who is squinting and sighing and leaning in the opposite direction of whichever way the plane is tilting and - if you have the misfortune to be the person sitting in front of me - pressing her palm against the back of your seat for stability.
Related: I hate it on choppy flights, when they can’t really...
On times of intense stress
In times of intense stress, I’ve noted this week, people tend to react and cope in ways that are characteristic of their usual personalities, but to extremes.
In my case, of course, that means that I am reacting and coping by regarding everyone else reacting and coping, thinking, ‘ah, in times of intense stress, people tend to react and cope in ways that are characteristic of their...