A walk, a train ride and another walk; the office to home, the home to the office. It’s a thin but strong thread, past hotels and theatres, schools and council houses. This evening, past a Japanese couple, silk and suit, flowing seamlessly from a Mercedes to the Opera House, and a bundle of sleeping bagsContinue reading “The best books I read in 2012”
Author Archives: Alex
Year in Reading, 2012 (second half)
Thanks to work, I spent the second half of the year with even more and ever better reading devices than ever before – iPhone 5, retina iPad, Kindles of many stripe – but the list of books read is as slender as it’s been since I started tracking it. While I’ve been really enjoying savingContinue reading “Year in Reading, 2012 (second half)”
On Pulphead, the best book I’ve read so far this year
‘It took me several months to make it back, and he grew annoyed. When I finally let myself in through the front door, he didn’t get up from his chair. His form sagged so exaggeratedly into the sofa, it was as if thieves had crept through and stolen his bones and left him there. He gesturedContinue reading “On Pulphead, the best book I’ve read so far this year”
Year in reading, 2012 (first half)
One of the few regular things I’ve done regularly on this blog is tracking books I’ve read; I started the year off by defecting to Pinterest, but got nowhere with it. Something about that layout. For all that people make out Pinterest is a site for curating and collecting, it’s really a shop, isn’t it? ShowingContinue reading “Year in reading, 2012 (first half)”
My new photo project
It’s been over a year since I walked slowly away from Flickr; I really love Instagram, but I take Instagram photos for my Instagram friends with it. Since my quiet exit from Flickr the pictures I take with my dSLR have just been sitting on my hard disk, and every now and then I’ve takenContinue reading “My new photo project”
Inside the Biosphere
A photo from this time last year, taken inside Montreal’s amazing Biosphere. Designed by Buckminster Fuller and built in 1967 for the World’s Fair, it’s a geodesic dome, strong, light, and enclosing a huge amount of space. It’s a beautiful building – full of benign faith in the future.
Michael Lewis: You are lucky and so there is a debt there
“This isn’t just false humility. It’s false humility with a point. My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don’t want to acknowledge the role played byContinue reading “Michael Lewis: You are lucky and so there is a debt there”
The thing is not just about the thing
“If you think you’ve got writers’ block after 45 seconds of not writing, you don’t need an app, you need someone gently to tell you that you should consider the possibility that writing is not just about writing, it’s also (and maybe mainly) about the space in between the writing, when nothing seems to beContinue reading “The thing is not just about the thing”
Bill Murray on dying
“You’ve gotta go out there and improvise and you’ve gotta be completely unafraid to die. You’ve got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time. You’re goin’ out there with just a whisper of an idea.”
Half decent Bill Murray interview in Esquire; I’d say he’s earned the write to give the kind of advice you’d imagine Hemmingway would give.
Some thoughts on the books I read last year
Yes, yes, I’m only getting round to this now. I was going to leave it, but then I was chatting with the Canadienne about The Lighthouse, a strange, light and surprisingly strong Icelandic novel I read in 2011 and I suddenly realised I had a few things to say. Maybe I was tired at theContinue reading “Some thoughts on the books I read last year”
The Wired Jester 