Tag: Short Book Review

Monthly Recap December 2023 (and Annual Summary)

The totals for the year [month]: 1134 [74] miles running, 157 [10] pubs, 48 [4] kebabs, 44 [1] fish and chips, 34 [2] short reviews including one in this post. We are now up to date on the write-ahead-to-ensure-daily-posts project and will now return to merely occasional posts. Hopefully, the quality improves but don’t count on it. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):

On a trip to Walsall, I was crossing one of the bleak rail bridges the town seems to specialise in (this streetview captures the essence of this bridge) and caught a glimpse of a New Year’s Resolution suggestion:

The resolutions for 2023 were to log 26 new venues, each, for Fish & Chips and Kebabs (completed on 11 and 09 May, respectively); to publish one post per day (prewrites done in June with certain on-the-day posts like Thanksgiving and Christmas pending until on-the-day happened); and, to finish Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (18 January), The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (10 May to beat Debra’s arrival since she gave me the original copy for a birthday back in the 80’s), and Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce (failed). Shameful, but I did read other stuff (you should really read the NONFICTION “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot for instance). No resolutions for 2024, but the Joyce is still on the shelf.

The month started cold. I found a loving home for the lab’s forlorn FTICR. I noticed I was on several publications’ author lists for which I would have been more comfortably buried in the acknowledgements. We attempted a Christmas tree with Jimi (he did well…next year we’ll try baubles). I put in a little more flooring and roof insulation in the attic. We ate and drank too much but substantially less than in Decembers past (for no explicable reason other than I think we might be slowing down, generally). And, my work Secret Santa gave me some laboratory based shot glasses:

This photo could be just some poisoned rats but I never saw any on the street before. Then one turned up early December in front of a house a few doors down, was cleared away, then a few days later another with two young ones turned up in front of the same house. Coincidence notwithstanding, it smells like a gang warning to a big rat and two little ones. 

Spotted this shipwreck on the run home from Mad O’Rourke’s the last workday of the year:

No Phones, No lights, No Motorcars,
Not a single luxury.
Like Robinson Crusoe
It’s primitive as can be.

But, now the month and this bastard of a year are over. Happy New year to you all and do feel free at midnite to wish us a happy 38th anniversary. 

Sidenote 1 Jan 2024: an old friend did just that, thanks, and it reminds me — as I treat my hangover — of this little meme from two versions of this blog past:

Short Book Review: Changing the World is the Only Fit Work for a Man

Yeah. You should read it.

Howard Gossage would have hated that, telling you what to do. He seemed to really believe that advertising — while still being dishonest at its core — should have a conversation with the end consumer.

He also had a more ‘event’ idea of ‘advert’ than just print or short video. The stuff about St Kitts and Nevis independence movement and his proposed advert campaign is minted. Literally, since it included generating a currency and a flag..

Gossage died, quite cheerfully, on this day in 1969. His friends included anyone you ever thought was hip from around then. Anyone.

Short Book (and Docudrama) Review: We Own This City by Justin Fenton (and David Simon)

They are both harrowing. The multiple timelines make the book a little easier to follow and hard to put down (although we watched the drama over the course of two days). You should read and see them and despair for America.

Short Book Review: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I watch zombies on public transport transfixed by TikTok videos. The movie, Infinite Jest (aka, ‘the Entertainment“), from which this prescient novel takes its title, could easily develop from this stupefying nonsense. Lot’s of other disturbingly astute predictions also creep in (Zoom calls, sure, but also the filters to disguise one’s appearance in them to mention just a couple).

At page 500 I found one of my old business cards from the FOM Instituut/AMOLF with the words, “if it works on salami it will work on anything.” Nothing to do with the book, but something Jaap Boon uttered during a group meeting I was leading the first time I tried to finish this monstrous tome. It still makes me grin.

And, it’s alright. If you are one of the few out there who still read, you should read it. Don’t skip the end notes!