Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is, fittingly, filled with flights: flights of imagination, anxiety, and even selfishness. Each tangent helps turn this ostensible writing guide into a piece of work that is both hilarious and relatable. Especially the selfishness — because, hey, we’re all at it. Here’s one such flight: Lammot’s two-page mission to find out the name …
Marginalia
Question: How do you start a fight at a book club? Answer: Ask them about marginalia. Marginalia — the practice of jotting down notes in the margins of a book — is a divisive topic. The mere mention of it guarantees a bust-up among the bibliophiles, transforming the literati into the Bitter Arty. What’s more …
The Adult Stabiliser Mindset
Picture the scene: a 45-year-old man is learning to ride a bike. In his every day life, he is well respected — a headteacher or an engineer or, say, a biscuit-factory manager. Right now, however, he is wobbling his way around a park, surrounded by scores of fellow learners — all 40 years his junior. …
Mental Models
I get a kick whenever I discover that two unconnected books both touch upon the same theme. It’s as if they’re in cahoots, holding secret meetings on my bookshelf. Or, in a less colourful world, as if I’m cottoning onto a pattern. Either way, it’s a buzz. I felt that buzz recently, when reading Anne …
Pixar’s Early Drafts
First drafts are meant to be terrible. They are the vomit drafts. Thoughts are meant to splurge out into the world, with that single good idea emerging alongside all those hideous ones, like a cuddly Mogwai surrounded by Gremlins. Ernest Hemingway (possibly) summed it all up when he uttered: “The first draft of anything is shit.” …
TOR Art
TOR sure knows how to illustrate their stories, using art that is altogether exciting, terrifying, lonely and — I’ll say it — dreamlike. It’s a fantastic place to discover new artists. These two, in particular, create some stunning work:
Collecting Randomness
Humans are hoarders. Collectosapiens. Stamps, train numbers, bird songs, you name it — if something exists, then there is a collection of it. Yet despite knowing that, I felt a spike of joyful surprise upon hearing this sentence: “We also collect randomness around the world.” Collections and randomness make for an unlikely pairing. Collections tend …
Three Men and an Idea
Ideas don’t spring from a vacuum. They don’t turn up at your door, fully-formed, like in Three Man and a Baby. No, to cook up an idea you need the right people in the right place — a twinkle-eyed Ted Danson, a Plot Device Lady, and some moonlight. This is obvious, right? Except, according to …
One Finger to the Big Screen
Have you ever walked out of the cinema mid-screening? If so, then you have my respect. I’ve considered it a number of times. Johnny English had me feeling nauseous, partly due to John Malkovich’s bizarre french accent. Yet I sat there, dry-heaving into my Pick ‘N’ Mix bag. Why? Because I’d inadvertently signed a social …
The Learner Experience
As someone who’s often hunting for a sneaky nap-time opportunity, I am, for the most part, excited by the prospect of self-driving cars. That said, there will be inevitable losses, most of which have been discussed to death. One such loss — albeit a quiet one — has been on my mind recently: the loss …