Category: 2014
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Week 7: Clever Girl vs Things Unborn
Two things are unavoidable in Bristol novels: slavery and the suspension bridge. I’m now almost certain that a reference to Bath Spa University will have to be added to that list. Tessa Hadley would have walked alongside C.J. Flood, Nathan Filer and Anna Freeman at Corsham Court in Bath as she lectured and still lectures […]
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Knitting in August 2014
My knitting news seems to expand and change by the day and invariably I just don’t get around to writing it down. At the back of my mind there is a thought of cataloguing different ideas, techniques and patterns in a more coherent and sequential way. A taxonomy of knitting, if you will. I haven’t […]
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Week 6: Eye Contact vs Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion
Airship Shape and Bristol Fashion is published by Wizard’s Tower Press who also produced the tribute Colinthology. They are a curious publisher who specialise in science fiction and fantasy but don’t want submissions and won’t read them if you send any. This isn’t the only reason they have become a firm favourite, they are also […]
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Week 5: the Fair Fight vs the Accidental Proposal
Once again I got it wrong in the case of a book’s setting. The Accidental Proposal is set in Brighton, not Bristol. It wouldn’t have fared well against Freeman anyway so I won’t say any more about it. The Fair Fight is Anna Freeman’s debut novel after completing her BA in Creative Writing at Bath […]
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Week 4: Bristol Bells vs Where’s My Money?
In front of a low, old house, opposite St Mary Redcliffe and tall business buildings, there sat a thoughtful effigy of Bristol’s best known literary figure, the boy poet Thomas Chatterton. This figure is hidden whilst the house is being repaired but a plaque still helps identify the location. Feeling disgruntled and under appreciated in […]
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Why writing is better than thinking
I’ve known a few psychology students and graduates but only one has said something that I still remember over a decade later. We were talking about the difference between thinking and writing and she pointed out that you write linearly. Linear order forces your writing into some kind of structure, but thinking, as Tony Buzan […]
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Order of play for the Bristol Book Tournament
The following table shows the order of play for the tournament. Group 2 v Group 4 Group 7 v Group 1 Group 5 v Group 3 Group 8 v Group 6. For the first month, for example, the books competing will be as follows: Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending vs CJ Flood’s Infinite […]
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A House in the Sky, A Memoir of a Kidnapping That Changed Everything
At 18, Amanda Lindhout moved from her Canadian hometown to the big city, saving tips as a waitress to travel the globe. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a reporter. In August 200, she travelled to Somalia to report on the fighting – and was abducted. Her story illuminates […]
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The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
This personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy from award winner Rebecca Solnit is a fitting companion to her beloved A Field Guide for Getting Lost In this exquisitely written new book by the author of A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how […]
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Ephemeral Knitting #2
I’ve called this post Ephemeral Knitting rather than ‘My week in knitting’ because it occurred to me as I was writing the second week, that I was putting all the stuff together which could be found in something called a magazine. Hooray, I thought. I’ve always wanted to create a magazine and this might be […]
Ephemeral digest 