Tuesday, 17 April 2012

The Eliot app

If I were to go out and purchase an iPad just so's to be able to read the Waste Land in its new-and-million-selling app incarnation, it would - I estimate, at a total of about £400 - be by some margin the most expensive book I have ever bought.*

But this article has given me cause to consider it.**

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* not to mention, of course, that I already own a copy.
** also, see third paragraph from bottom for splendidly ironic dysfunctional-meta-data gaffe.

Curious piece about Naipaul by Bolaño that probably wouldn't have made it anywhere unless Bolaño were not only famous but dead

Here.

Two good news

1) William Boyd has been booked to write the next James Bond (novel, not movie).

2) Some American woman* who writes novels ('novels') in txt [sic] has become the most complained-about author in the US library system. (Though not, of course, on account of her abuse of the English language.)

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* Her name is Lauren Myracle - which I reckon is about all you need to know.

Ulster 'humour'

The earliest I could fit you in this afternoon would be around midday, actually.
- Mark the barber

Sunday, 15 April 2012

'google', v. tr. UPDATE

A friend and colleague writes to suggest that: 'in Sense of an Ending' Julian Barnes 'is "doing" Ian McEwan, so then to me at least it feels more natural.'

She goes on to float the idea that JB's [entirely reasonable] sourness re. never having won the Booker might finally have driven him to consciously pastiche the double-winning McEwan by way of a fuck-you to the Man Booker prize committee. A grim theory, if correct - since they promptly handed him the prize.

[With thanks to AC]

Style guidance

Does one 'shit' a shit and 'crap (out)' a crap? On paper, I mean. Is it better - in these circumstances, if no other - to be varied and eloquent, or straightforward and logical?

Saturday, 14 April 2012

'to google', v. tr.

Unless I much mistaken, the verb 'google(d)' - small G - appears in both Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending and in one of his stories in Pulse.

That doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

Killer stats

Interesting statistics on books, the internet, and (probably) how much shit people read these days.

Twitter classic


I will be privately sending this to a small number of people... [link]