When did the 20th of March become the first day of spring? I saw lots of mentions of it yesterday, and they’re even saying it on Radio 3 this morning.
Currently reading: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose 📚
And on page 40, this quote:
Finally—and there is no way to convey this unless you read the sentence aloud or at least, as your first grade teacher cautioned you not to do, say it silently, word by word, in your mind
What are they teaching kids in American first grade? What does she mean, you were taught not to say it word by word in your mind? How do you read without doing that? Or at least learn to read?
📗 Books 2025, 6: The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie
Christie does the supernatural! Or not? And reaches the 60s.
This isn’t a story so much as a floating mass of jellyfish tendrils with which the viewer intermittently comes into contact. And the show’s premise is a joke that neither a Hollywood millionaire or a Silicon Valley behemoth have any right to make. It’s a long, long exercise in seeing how long your customers will tolerate being laughed at.
I don’t agree with the early part of this New Statesman article, but there are some good points in it, not unrelated to my post the other day.
The Severed Floor is not the Black Lodge
In which I complain about Severance being too slow, not guaranteed to finish, and not Twin Peaks.
I wish people wouldn’t post links to videos without warnings. You tap or click through to read something, and suddenly a video blares out. Most annoying.
Maybe You Can Post Your Way Through Fascism
Some thoughts on how that post about posting not being enough might have discouraged some writers.
📗 Books 2025, 5: Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
As The Dispossessed starts with a wall, Annihilation starts with a tower. And as LeGuin’s wall round a spaceport both closes the planet off from the rest of the universe, and encloses the universe, depending on how you look at it; so VanderMeer’s tower has its topological oddity. It starts at ground level and goes down, into the ground underneath it, rather than rising into the air.
Or so the Biologist sees it, But this is Area X, and things are rarely as they seem.
The Biologist is the first person narrator. Accompanied by three other women — the Psychologist, the Anthropologist, and the Surveyor — they are the latest in a series of groups sent in to investigate the mysterious zone.
Almost everything is unexplained in this book. It is incredibly compelling, gripping, even, but everything remains unexplained, the ending is open. Yet while there are three more books in the series, I feel it’s such a perfect little nugget, beautifully crafted, that to read on would almost spoil it.
I suspect that’s not true, though. We are in safe hands with VanderMeer, so I expect the continuation will be sound. I remember my friend Simon having a similar response when he read Hyperion. Its perfectly-crafted open ending seemed to him like it didn’t need a sequel. But of course The Fall of Hyperion was magnificent, and so were the two Endymion followups.
Anyway, this is great, but you probably already knew that, what with winning awards and being ten years old.