A little story here for anybody who has ever struggled with the T9 predictive text facility on their mobile phone. Whereas some people struggle with it, an Italian commuter has, over the course of seventeen weeks of commuting used his Nokia 6630 to write a 384 page novel! The result of his labours is now [...]

So after a bit of discussion, we decided to head off into London to attend the 24 Hours of Flickr London event. Although it involved dashing home from work, and an hour on the train each way the prospect of seeing my picture hung on the wall, as the pictures had been at the Berlin [...]

I’ve just ordered my copy of the 24 Hours of Flickr Book which was published this week via blurb.com one of a number of Print on Demand companies.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was really chuffed to have one of my pictures selected for the book, even more so when I discovered how many of the [...]

Quite often with two part stories, the second part is by far the weakest, almost as if the writers had put everything into a spectacular cliff-hanger, and then don’t know what to do with part two. With Human Nature being such a great first part, coming to part two there was a definite question mark [...]

Well at least it is the weekend tomorrow. As you can probably gather from my post from lunchtime, today was anything if not frustrating. After establishing that there was probably something installed on my development machine that was causing the problem, hence why the laptop was loading up the control I set about un-installing anything [...]

Yesterday, this years Comic Relief appeal reached it’s climax with eight hours of TV on BBC1 and BBC2. Yet again it pulled in the donations at a fantastic rate, reaching the fantastic total of £40,236,142 by the end of the night (as a comparison, the BBC’s own Children in Need managed £18,300,392 last year).
The show [...]

I’m quite amazed to hear that Jeffrey Archer, who had such a spectacular fall from grace when he was convicted for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 2001 after lying in a libel trial, has co-written “The Gospel According to Judas: By Benjamin Iscariotâ€?. However Reuters ran the story last month, Ruth Gledhill [...]

Mum has continued to post her sermon archives to her blog. Included in the latest batch are ‘The Frog Sermon‘, an earlier version of which took her to the finals of the Times Preacher of the Year competition in 1996. (Incidentally Rev Richard, our Priest in Charge at St James was a finalist in the [...]

As you may know, a biography of Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford is to be published next week.
As is usual with high profile biographies, parts of the book are being printed in the papers – three guesses as to which particular part of his life the selected extract in the Times today chose [...]

Dave didn’t seem to like this – but this is what a modern day War of the Worlds set in Woking might look like.

I have to say, it is always quite strange when you read the War of the Worlds, with all the familiar local place names, because in some ways the places that H.G.Wells [...]

I’m currently reading a copy of “Going to Heaven: The Life and Election of Bishop Gene Robinsonâ€? by Elizabeth Adams, which as the title suggests tells the story of Bishop Gene Robinson, particularly with regards to his election as Bishop of New Hampshire. I’d wanted to read the book for a while, putting in an [...]

Beth spent yesterday at a training course held by a major book publisher in London. Whilst she was there, she discovered that the publisher has a staff bookshop, which offers their books at significantly reduced prices. She asked the course supervisor whether she as a visitor was allowed to buy books from the shop and [...]

(with apologies to Dennis Lee…)
Alligator Pie!
Alligator Pie!
If I don’t get (this book),
I think I’m going to die!
Take away my iPod,
Take away my Sky,
But please, please, please, please don’t make me miss this book!!
From Jasper Fforde.com:

The Fourth Bear
A Nursery Crime
‘…However many photos you see of the Gingerbreadman, nothing can ever prepare you for seeing him [...]

If, like me, you are a voracious reader, then I think that this charity is something you’d like to support. You know that old saying, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’?? Well…
I was introduced to Book [...]

No, I haven’t suddenly switched teaching subjects – this is a collection of stories by Italian Jewish author Primo Levi. It was recommended to me by James, one of the current crop of PGCE students at school, as a more ‘manly’ read – he was a bit taken aback by the titles being bandied about [...]

No, I haven’t suddenly switched teaching subjects – this is a collection of stories by Italian Jewish author Primo Levi. It was recommended to me by James, one of the current crop of PGCE students at school, as a more ‘manly’ read – he was a bit taken aback by the titles being bandied about [...]

OK, now I love this magazine. I first discovered it when visiting Krista and Carson, and hanging out in Chapters one fine afternoon. Carson was looking for the latest issue – and he was kind enough to give me a whole stack of back issues that he had lying around the house.
What’s not to [...]

I decided to get ‘Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger’ by the TV chef Nigel Slater for a couple of reasons – first, I seem to have this obsession with toast recently – see The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton and Jasper Fforde’s creations – but also I thought perhaps it would [...]

I decided to get ‘Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger’ by the TV chef Nigel Slater for a couple of reasons – first, I seem to have this obsession with toast recently – see The Interesting Thoughts of Edward Monkton and Jasper Fforde’s creations – but also I thought perhaps it would [...]

I can’t believe it myself.
Upon finishing an extremely good ‘Anansi Boys‘ by Neil Gaiman this afternoon, I have officially read 50 books this year.
I either need to get out more, or get a new hobby…