Dave

Gmail Journal

Interesting post here on using a gmail (or indeed any free webmail account) as a journal or note-taking system. The great thing about using Gmail is of course the labels which means you can organise your notes easily. I might try using this, although I do tend to use this blog to make notes of things.

Perhaps I might use my spare Yahoo! email address for this, becuase at least then it is in the same place as my online calender and stuff. It would be easy enough to set up folders on the email account for each type of note, which I would then put in the subject header, meaning that stuff can easily be found.

I have 50 Gmail invites to give away, by the way.

Sideways

I have just invested in this:

Sideways, by Rex Pickett

Which I saw in Waterstones, strangely without a UK price on the back. It turned out it was £8.99.

My interest was first sparked by this article in the Guardian, which made it sound like a very amusing read:

One final point: Rex Pickett did not, just for the record, stagger into a winery and drink down the wine from the dump bucket, as Miles does. “No,” Pickett says. “I did not do that in a winery. I did it at a high-end tasting.” He laughs. “Everyone else was horrified. But I thought, hey, there’s a thousand dollars’ worth of wine in there, and I need another drink.”

It is also quite remarkably bound. It’s, er, floppy. I can open in on my desk and it just stays on the page I want, without breaking the spine at all. Great!

The Wasp Factory

I’m going to try and blog more about the books I am reading at the time, my thoughts and stuff as I am going through them. This will be especially true when I embark upon Ulysees, which will need plenty of notes taking just so I know what the hell is going on, I reckon. In fact, I’ll create a a sub-category under reading of Book Blogging, so all these notes can be pulled together.

The Wasp Factory is weird. Now, I like weird, and I am not squeamish in the least. But this book is so strange. The atmosphere, which I have seen described as ‘gothic’, which I guess it must be, is just so unsettling. The world that Frank, a sixteen year old, lives in is so different to anyone elses, yet similar enough to be very disconcerting. I’m about to start Chapter 4. This is peculiar but gripping.

Panic Over

I found A Prayer for Owen Meany this morning, thank God. Wedged between two bookcases. Good job I didn’t buy another copy yesterday! Instead, I did get three books:

  • Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Any Human Heart – William Boyd
  • The Cider House Rules – John Irving

Which should keep me going for a while…

Load more posts!