It is almost 20 years since I signed up for that “new” website all my techie friends were talking about. You know the one: it limited us to 140 characters back when we called everything “Web 2.0.” Good times. Now in 2026, I find myself signed up for yet another micro-blogging platform (yes, they really […]
2024 Booker Time: Yael van der Wouden – The Safekeep
Publishers Description It’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother […]
Readwise, Reader and the ‘death’ of RSS
What do we want? RSS, when do we want itâĶ I can still remember what a game changer RSS feeds were to me as a librarian/information professional . I could bore for team GB on the subject and why not having a feed reader and hundreds of feeds was a crime. Today, no one really […]
2024 Booker Time: Percival Everett – James
Publisher Description: Enthralling and ferociously funny, James by Percival Everett is a profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love. It is also a bold reimagining of Mark Twainâs Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as the enslaved Jim emerges to reclaim his voice and defy the conventions that have consigned him […]
Twenty
So I feel bad that I didn’t realise that this blog turned 20 at the start of the year. That’s what not posting for two years will do I guess. I recall those heady early years when I would post multiple times a day. There were less routes to get your voice out back then. […]
2024 Booker Time: Rachel Kushner â Creation Lake
Publisher Description: Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. âSadie Smithâ is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, […]
