A personal list. You might have your own. 1. Stick it in the end pocket of a soft bag when you’re travelling and rest your feet on it. 2. Pick it up off the bookshelf late at night when you just want to re-read a chapter for old times’ sake. 3. Dog-ear a page (and [...]

Enhanced Editions found via James Hogwood Intrigued by this. A multimedia iphone ebook app that lets you switch between text, audio and video without losing your place. It all looks beautifully seamless. Despite the fact that I’ve never been one for audiobooks or ebooks, I’m seriously tempted to give this a go. But although I [...]

In the spirit of ‘blog all earmarked pages’ thing to which I can find no reference on the internet at all at 6.15 on a Saturday morning. (edit: because it should be ‘blog all dog-eared pages‘) Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could [...]

David Foster Wallace is dead. He was my favourite writer. Both his prose and his non-fiction have a wit and intelligence that I’ve struggled to find in anyone else. I remember reading The Girl With Curious Hair and The Broom Of The System and A Supposedly Fun Thing… in the mid-nineties I guess, almost wide-mouthed [...]

I heart Mark E Smith. I only have three chairs in the house: one for the wife, one for me, and one for a guest. No more. One guest at a time – that’s my philosophy. You don’t want your house turning into a hippy commune. His “explosive new autobiography” is being extracted in the [...]

Popped into my local bookshop on Saturday and was intrigued to see the slim volume above. It’s a treasure. ‘What is Sport?‘ (google books preview here) was written by Roland Barthes as the commentary to a Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary, made by the little known Hubert Aquin. Essentially, Barthes was invited to write 5 pieces [...]