Continuing Brit the Elder's fun quiz for all book-lovers (see part 1 here). Simply identify the literary work and author from the initials. A few are slightly obscure but you'll know most. There's also a clue for each one. Readers are free to post answers in the comments, so don't read those if you ... Read More...
Month: June 2012
London foodie journalist goes native in Italian village? Elberry finds his expectations exceeded by Tracey Lawson's account of the exceptionally healthy lifestyle of the people of Campodimele... I feared this might be an "I adore peasant food!"-style book by a London fool with a Tuscan villa. Certainly, the signs were not ... Read More...
Mark Pack was tormented by a cursor - but to good effect (you can buy his book here). I have learnt to hate the flashing cursor, sat at the top of a blank page in Microsoft Word. For many people, my discovery of something to hate about Microsoft Word, Microsoft or ... Read More...
Squeeze into an old pair of flares, polish the gold medallion, start gyrating those hips, point to the ceiling, now the floor. And big smile. Yes, it's that disco music... On the night of Thursday 12 July 1979, disco was declared dead. More than 60,000 people – ten times the usual ... Read More...
I recently bought a new alarm clock. I was trying to find a traditional style design in standard-issue silver, with a supersized, super-loud bell. Instead I was attracted by one that, though conventional in design, suited my bedroom’s colour scheme. The problem is that, being designer-black (not just the clock-face, ... Read More...
The lucky winners of the latest Dabbler Book Club selection... Free books. What's not to like? We had a dozen copies of Mark Haddon's latest novel The Red House to give away to Dabbler Book Club members (find out more here). Here's how The Guardian introduced it: The Red House is a closely observed domestic drama that ... Read More...
This week, catching a morning's minion... I caught this morning morning’s minion, with a combination of cunning, inhuman patience, and a big net weighted with baffles. I lay in wait from before dawn, behind an arras, primed by a flask of vitamin-enhanced Squelcho! from which I took regular slurps. Then, as ... Read More...
Mr Slang traces the original Dabbler - a 'babu' conceived by Rudyard Kipling... The lexicographer’s role being not to anticipate but to analyse I was not here for the creation, and am therefore unaware whether or not the quote that provides both rationale and motto for the Dabbler’s daily efflorescence was ... Read More...
Nige recalls the day (26 June 2011 to be precise) that he fulfilled a lifelong lepidopterist's dream and first spotted that most elusive of butterflies, a Purple Emperor... I'd had dubious glimpses of this largest and most elusive of our butterflies in the past: high in the treetops, briefly outlined against ... Read More...
Continuing his tree house theme, Jonathan Law peeks into the arboreal dens of two great poets... To an averagely imaginative child, a tree house surely offers a unique combination of delights. Like other outdoor dens, it is a liminal space where the wild consorts oddly with the domestic and the homely ... Read More...