Since at least my A-Levels, I've believed each book is a product of the text and the reader rather than having a single objective meaning. I realised yesterday that the greatest evidence of this lies not in complex literary theory, but rather in re-reading. When I first moved out of my mother's house, I—as many … Continue reading The Book is Not the Book
reading
Psychometric Trigger Locks
As Colleen Hoover writes trigger warnings can be a complex topic. How does one balance protecting people from traumatic reminders without spoiling books for others? Perhaps the answer, and other similar advantages, lie in expanding existing book-site technology. Having known more than one person who's suffered from a species of traumatic stress or phobia, I … Continue reading Psychometric Trigger Locks
A Mask Creates Whitespace
For as long as I can remember, I've loved the taste of words. Not synaesthecially, not the way I love the taste of a good meal, but the way words feel in the mouth and in the waiting to be spoken. Which isn't why I started writing poetry. I started writing poetry because I didn't … Continue reading A Mask Creates Whitespace
ImmerseOrDie Index Improvements
As long-time readers will know, as well as reviewing here every Friday, I'm one of the reviewers for ImmerseOrDie. So, I'm sharing Jeff's announcement about the new search function there: The IOD index page is now super-charged. With over 300 posted reviews, finding the one you’re looking for was getting a bit dense. But that’s … Continue reading ImmerseOrDie Index Improvements
Sibling of the World
Debbie Manber Kupfer has nominated me for the Sibling of the World Award. While it is more a focused-getting-to-know someone affair than an actual award, I aspire to a sense of ethical siblinghood with humanity. So, I'll happily identify as a Sibling of the World. Whether my answers advance that aim is for others to … Continue reading Sibling of the World
Fear of the Unseen
When I read this article on not picking books by the author's sex or race, I agreed with the spirit: knowing the author's gender, sexuality, or even hat size shouldn't change your enjoyment. However, something niggled at me about it and today I realised what: knowing more than the text often does change enjoyment without … Continue reading Fear of the Unseen
The Death of a Thousand Annotations
Last week's To Be Read Podcast was on the effect of school set texts on later reading habits. Frequent visitors will be unsurprised to know having to read certain books didn't put me off reading, but I did notice an impact on my reading habits. https://youtu.be/EGN9Tg5EE6I My mother worked as a librarian, so I grew … Continue reading The Death of a Thousand Annotations
No Book Left Unread
There are many movements that seek to impose a certain type of book on people: people should make an effort to read books by ethnic minorities, people should commit to read only books by women for a year, people should only read books with diverse casts. I have the same doubts about reducing books down … Continue reading No Book Left Unread
The End Is In Sight
Today's article on Live to Write - Write to Live is about not finishing books. Which, as such discussion always do, reminded me that I can name all the books I haven't finished since I was fifteen; which sounds like a harder feat than it actually is. Because there are only three: Tolstoy's War and … Continue reading The End Is In Sight
Books. Cats. Life is Good.
Or maybe not.... I have yet to find a terrible piece of art by Edward Gorey. Unfortunately it seems his quotations don't hold up to similar stress testing. I tried to take more photographs of Jasper getting properly settled, but all the chuckling stopped me holding the camera steady.
