2024-12-19
I read 74 books this year. I’m not reviewing them all; I don’t remember them all. However, a few of them stuck with me for various reasons: The Golden Notebook, The Magus, The Interrogators, Martyr!, Money… It’s been a good year.Literature
2024-03-10
For the past few months the days have been long and dark. Somewhere in the middle there it snowed and it stuck for a couple of weeks, slowly hardening into sheet ice. We’re through most of it now. Last week, in the courtyard behind the apartment the trees started to bud, and now there’s sun enough to catch the green rippling along all their branches. Spring, maybe. In the dark months I kept my head down and worked. Ugly, stupid work. Pointless work. Now just as spring comes I’m sick.
Notes from Granta 165 (Deutschland)
2023-12-27
Notes from a really damn good issue of Granta about Germany. Featuring non-fiction by Alexander Kluge, Peter Handke, Fredric Jameson, Lauren Oyler, Michael Hofmann, Peter Kuras, Adrian Daub, Peter Richter, Lutz Seiler, Ryan Ruby, Jan Wilm and Jürgen Habermas. As well as a conversation between George Prochnik, Emily Dische-Becker and Eyal Weizman.2023-12-16
The world is enough to make you crazy. The city is enough to make you crazy. The building is enough to make you crazy. The way lint builds up on the desk right in front of you, given enough of everything else, is enough to make you crazy. I’ve deliberately contracted in the past couple of years. I’ve tried to become less of a jangly ball of reactive nerve endings. I think I used to be a gaping maw that inhaled current affairs from near and far and exhaled analysis and anxiety. I try to do less of that. Touch grass, if you will. I still read a lot but I try to read fewer feeds and more books and long articles. Is it helping? Do I still feel obligated to have a working knowledge on this or that current thing? Well…
2023-11-27
It feels like there’s a lot of war going on. Whenever that happens I really feel my ignorance; it seems like if thousands of people are dying about something, I should understand what that something is. So here’s what I’ve been reading lately about war.
2023-08-29
While I claim that the reason I haven’t emerged as the foremost British emigré writer of our times because I simply don’t have time between watching movies and drinking beer: Franz Kafka wrote stories on the side, at night, when he was tired. Enjoy this profile not of his literature, but his day job: “I am more interested in his insurance affairs.”
2023-04-25
We are about to share a media experience together. Please switch off and put your phone away. Please switch off your smart watch and annihilate any other illuminated sources of time. Please strive to be entirely within the world created by the shared experience rather than in your own life or even your own body, whose use should be constrained to the sense organs need to consume the experience and the parts required for breathing, crying, and perhaps laughing. Limit then, itching, fidgeting, coughing, sneezing, farting, and throat clearing. I, of course, might start scrolling through my phone if I get bored.
2022-10-07
First I have a whole collection of maps. There’s a map to show where in the world Wikipedia edits are coming from. There’s a map that shows all the different kinds of planning boundaries that overlap the in Britain. There’s an incredibly detailed weather map. Finally, here’s a whole series of maps that examine how much various governments fudged their COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation, and mortality rates.
2022-09-25
Take these for the pain
twice daily after eating
Take these for a headache
and these for your tired legs
Take these for a pain in the neck
in the mornings
Take these if you miss your train
And you can’t see the funny side
Take these if you suffer
Take these for loss
or a twinge in the heart
Take them in the evening
Stand by a window you can’t see out of
Take with water and look into the dark
For as long as you can bear
2020-10-12
I read The History of the Bible this weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I have a little collection of books about theology now, not because of any interest in faith but because I think it’s an interesting vein of history and culture. The bible is so often quoted, wittingly or unwittingly, in popular culture and everyday speech. Here are some good excerpts from the book.
The first I’ve included because I like the readings of the Old Testament that give God a personality. In this case it’s a taunting condescention. I also just think the language here is amazing.