Could Stieg Larsson write?

Interesting titbit from adventurer, motivational speaker and general man-of-parts Robert Twigger.

The books they carried

Complete manifest of reading matter taken on recent 9-day 'field' exercise:

War - Sebastian Junger
Negotiating with the Dead: a writer on writing - Margaret Atwood
Walking to Hollywood - Will Self
The Last Novel - David Markson

Squaddie banter UPDATE

The best thing about the Urban Dictionary's entry (so to speak) for 'squaddy mattress' is that the examples are so clearly verbatim.

(Discuss.)

The shit

[With thanks to FM.]

Hamlet - in context

To die, to sleep;
to sleep, perchance to go on Amazon
a bit...

Squaddie banter (or, Wednesday nights in Weymouth)

- Still, it beats 'being a prefect' as a highlight on your CV.
- I wasn't made a prefect.
- Oh dear. Did one biff up in one's Latin grammar?
- Nah, we never done Latin.
- ...

Why, Google, wiz zees 'andy auto-corrects you are rilly spoileen guz

Il a etait manger par le Gare de l’Est

About 81,900 results (0.31 seconds)

Did you mean: Il a etait manger par le Gare de l'Est

InDefinition - 50

malappropriate, v. to abuse the English language

Interesting reading

Foreign Policy's Thom. Ricks on what US juniors officers actually read.

No 10 I find particularly interesting...

Dickensian status update

Cartoon above the old subs' desk at the Sinde. At one end of a long oak table is Charles Dickens, head in hands, sobbing. At the other, a Victorian sub, his quill raised above a manuscript, saying, "Come now, Mr Dickens, it was either the best of times or the worst of times. It surely can't have been both."

- Nick Cohen, Facebook.

Kicking off the RBS 6 Nations: England v Scotland

England are favourites to win this one, but nobody is predicting the outcome.

- John Inverdale

Alain de Botton - in context

Marriage therapists say: only fools rush in?

Classical

My mother writes to inform me that the enigma of Joyce's Oirish masterpiece Ulysses is to be celebrated in a series of 'massups'.

Chuckle.

Dyer transcription

While writing up a recent interview with G Dyer, I stumble upon this classic typo

I can’t even decided whether it should be in the present or past tense

and this transcription dilemma

I had fun writing this – exclamation mark[!(?)]

Suggestions on a postcard, please.

Ohhh super!

Just on Facebook, from Hugo Schmidt:

The next editor who jerks me around like this will find himself cocooned to a wall in Habsburg so that German females can lay eggs in his brain.

 I don't know if one can technically be cocooned to a wall; but you have to appreciate the sentiment.

Life of Larry

I used to assume that Lawrence Durrell was just a ghastly old fruit who liked to wear hats.

Now I suspect that his mother made him write in an unheated house.

What the Dickens?!

News just in: million-selling social commentator mined real people for material.

Kill all the Penguins!

Unbelievable.

Five essays on Sebald

to be found starting here, on BBC iPlayer.

The thing(s) about men and women - illiterary classics

Girls with slingshots

and

Why men shouldn't write advice columns

Sound familiar?

London Review (LRB) @LRB

Tonight! Two of the editors of Beckett's letters will be @lrbshop to discuss the project.

A city lane. A bookshop. Evening.
ESTRAGON: Is this some sort of elaborate in-joke?

Funny

Alain de Botton @alaindebotton

Religionforatheists.com enters at no.6 in Sunday Times Bestseller list. Contrasting religious and secular interpretations for this.

InDefinition - 49

homagenised, adj. venerated to the point of sterility and cliché

#dear

Communiqué received by a friend of mine who may or may not be of a military bent, from a senior figure (likewise):

And it's not 'Dear Sir'. I'm not a bearded leather elbow patched geography master at your posh public school, reading your soppy inky juvenile love notes quoting Shelly, in a bid to entice me to give you a bumming after prep.

On the two types of story (superb!)

the hectic experimentalism of the so-called McSweeney's short story (reflexive, impertinent, typographically playful, slightly annoying)... emerged around the turn of the millennium to challenge the dominance of the so-called New Yorker short story (calm, humane, sparse, slightly dull).

- Robert Macfarlane, Sunday Times

Alain de Botton will discuss his new book Religion for Atheists at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

on April the 1st.

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 7

ka-SHAAH - US, the sound of small-arms fire going past one's head (contra Tsik! and tssigke! e.g.)

[With thanks to Sebastian Junger's War.]