Welcome to my reading record: all the books I've read since 2009. 2020-present 2026 (to date) 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2010-2019 20...
Since the last set ran out , here are the page markers I currently use: I can't believe I'm saying this but they're from the middle of Lidl. Simon Munnery sings: Lidl! Lidl! Smells of widdle! Food round the outside! Junk in the middle! I usually favour paper stickies because there is too much plastic in our lives. I have betrayed my values. But plastic stickies are, I'm afraid, superior to paper…
My sticky notes from Black Bag , by Luke Kennard: A boy in a girl's bathroom: Her soap appears to have been carved raw out of the side of a cliff; shampoo and conditioner in two enormous apothecary bottles I cannot imagine transporting for refills. Perhaps they are left outside the front door and refilled by an attendant with a horse-drawn vat. I pick up a wooden toothbrush and scan around for…
From Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai (1996) The thing about the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is that even I don't have a clue what it all means. It's been the same with every book I've ever written -- I don't understand them.
My sticky notes from The Day the World Stops Shopping , by J. B. Mackinnon: On the problem: The twenty-first century has brought a critical dilemma into sharp relief: we must stop shopping, and yet we can’t stop shopping. At the turn of this new millennium, according to the United Nations’ panel of experts on international resources, consumption quietly surpassed population as our greatest…
My sticky notes ran out. Thank you for the daaaaays / Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me...
My sticky notes from How Not to Die (Too Soon) , by Devi Sridhar: On the social dimension of health and why self-help is bollocks: You might wonder why you should read this book if its about our limited agency... In search of longevity, you could expose yourself to sunlight first thing every morning or take an ice bath, but if the air you are breathing is not clean, the water you are drinking is…
My sticky notes from The City and Its Uncertain Walls , by Haruki Murakami: On quitting a job: And then one morning I handed my boss a letter of resignation. I couldn’t go on doing this job. I had to remove my body and mind from the track I’d been on — even if I hadn’t found a new track to try. My boss was surprised by my sudden request. Up until that moment, I’d given no indication that I was…
I finally finished that 600-page tombstone of a book by Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian film critic. Here are the films I took away from it to watch: Went the Day Well? (1942) Charulata (1942) Tales of Hoffman Juno (2007) The Illusionist _ (2010) Kick-Ass (2010) Nostalgia for the Light (2010) Homo Sapiens (2016)
A sticky note from We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It doesn't say much about this book in particular. It just struck me as enjoyably odd: I am calmly and carefully considering each word. It is the equivalent of you sitting in a chair by your own personal bed, crossing one leg over the other, and, with curiosity, watching yourself, your own self, writhe around on that bed.
My sticky notes from How to Live Like a Stoic , by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles: On happiness being a by-product of absorption: The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow. On the mega-old: Today there are an estimated 300 to 450 supercentenarians in the world ... They aren't superheroes but we could see…