(Source: amandaonwriting, via puppetstrings)

Lately I’ve been doing something rather unexpected. I’ve been reading a book. For fun.

I remember hearing actress Diana Quick on the radio a few years ago, explaining how her English degree had ‘stopped her reading for three years’. I know how she feels. It’s taken me a long time to regain the spirit of voracious reading that led me into a literature degree in the first place - and which that three years of reading lists, essays and determined analysis almost beat out of me.

Thankfully, I can now pick up a book without an ulterior motive, and The Map and the Territory by Michel Houllebecq is my latest choice. My flatmate is a fiction buyer for Waterstone’s, and so our living room is filled with books she’s brought home from the office, and this one caught my eye because it looked odd, and I like odd things. There was something about art, murder, and Paris on the jacket, and so I gave it a go.

It’s… well, it’s well written, but very, very French. In a bad way. Especially in its attitudes towards women. Men are described in terms of their temperament, and their emotional pain, (every man is in emotional pain), and women are described in terms of their tits and arse. Seriously, if I have to read the line ‘Olga’s perfect breasts’ once more I might have to throw the book across the room. Beautiful, inconsequential women encrust the novel like jewels at a cocktail party, and are met with the cool indifference of the troubled protagonist who is so intelligent as to be beyond such things. Even that ‘sumptuous black girl’s plump arse’ or whatever the last casual reference was. Oh dear, Michel.

Possibly this is more beautiful in French - I’m reading a translation - but the wafer-thin plot was also giving me pause about finishing up. It has that air of extreme philosophical importance that I can imagine happening in a cafe full of cigarette smoke, hipsters, berets and bullshit. The reality is that nothing is happening, and as a writer, if you’re not bothering to tell me a decent story, I don’t see why I should put up with you for 400 pages. But then someone got murdered, so I kept on reading.

Does that make me fickle? Possibly I’m too demanding. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Because I’m not being graded, I’m not reading it to impress anyone and it’s just for pure fun. So I don’t mind if it’s not perfect, or a bit sexist, or a bit slow. It’s a book. It’s not perfect. Plus ca change.

A photograph of the old Angel station from the 1980s, before it was remodelled in 1992.

(Source: hamishreid)

Why social networking is making us lonelier. Sherry Turkle is a psychologist, and in this talk for TED, she makes a clear and convincing case about how digital technologies are separating us from each other - and make us feel like solitude is a problem that needs to be solved.

It’s a bit of a hard sell, being a digital producer who doesn’t like technology, but there’s an awful lot I agree with in this talk - especially how we have allowed our lives to become hijacked by the beck and call of texts, phone calls, emails and social media updates. There’s a level of urgency that comes from mobile devices that I don’t really approve of. Just because email allows you to respond instantaneously to a message, it doesn’t mean you should have to, or be judged as being slow or lazy if you take more than a few hours to respond to someone. At best this makes us hurried and stressed, and at worst, inferior, or useless - like we can’t play the modern game.

Aaron Sorkin. He’s back.

Oh my God, so much yes.

I had forgotten about this.

While the BBC’s current documentary series about the London Underground is very good, this 40 minute documentary from 1989 is an electric example of terrific documentary filmmaking, as well as a fascinating snapshot of London. I tracked it down in the BFI’s videoteque suite a couple of years ago for some research, but I’m thrilled to find it’s wangled its way to YouTube. Award winning director Molly Dineen casts her camera silently, brilliantly and entirely without judgement at a group of people getting on with their lives. And by god it’s interesting.

Some things to note: there is no voiceover. There is no ‘I’m on a mission’. No framework or repetition. There’s juxtaposition, colour, atmosphere, and place that tells its own story.

Forget that it’s about the tube: this is a truly brilliant film. The first 60 seconds will make you realise everything that’s wrong with contemporary documentary. It’s a raw historical artefact. It’s funny. It’s compelling. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s about something that should be completely mundane. Watch it.

The London Underground, the 1890s.

I love this photograph. Wooden floorboards. Umbrellas. Old adverts. It makes me think how strange the everyday is. How strange today will seem, tomorrow.

(Source: the-randy-dandy)

Adorable. Watch if you like books, libraries, or want to see what no-budget digital content can do.