John Self is now on Bluesky
@john_self
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“Do you know, if she put all the cocks she’s had end to end, there’d be enough to fit a handrail round the world. Drink up, dear!”. Yes, drink up! I wrote this tribute to the late, great Paul Bailey:.
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Mr Silly’s shoes are made of custard creams, discuss
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@lauralexx @govindajeggy The outrage here is that the only legitimately landscape cereal - Weetabix - has been placed in portrait orientation.
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Having a bit of a cry at this tragic fairy tale of the magical apple-cheeked landlord who might have to sell his 27 remaining properties to stop the wicked Corbyn from taxing him more.
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Walked under a tree today and caught the coronavirus. Didn’t expect it to be this big tbh.
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I didn’t realise they were erected that close together.
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@lauralexx @govindajeggy And in fact (I can’t believe I’m discussing cereal boxes on a Sunday morning) boxes like this can be placed in either orientation as shelf space permits. Front/back:
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Here's the good news you've been waiting all of 2018 for.
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Annie Ernaux's Nobel win means that, in the UK, three of the last eight Nobel literature laureates are published by @FitzcarraldoEds. An extraordinary strike rate by any standards.
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Writers who died in 1950, and whose work will therefore be out of copyright in the UK and EU on 1 Jan 2021:. - George Orwell.- Edgar Rice Burroughs.- Olaf Stapledon.- Cesare Pavese.- George Bernard Shaw.- Edna St Vincent Millay.- Rafael Sabatini.
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A minute's silence please for the brutal murder of a great joke (which actually went: 'When I die I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my father, not screaming in terror like his passengers').
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Day 1 of Homeschooling. Tiddler had to write a haiku on the subject of ‘Self’.
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There's a real horror in the cognitive mismatch between the quietness and stasis of most of our lives right now, and hearing that yesterday in the UK, one person died from Covid-19 every two and a half minutes. It's almost impossible to process.
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“OY!! THAT went a BIT FUCKING QUICK!!!”. I wrote this appreciation for the works of the late Martin Amis (just typing that phrase—Jesus), who has died at the age of 73.
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The 5 best punctuation marks in literature, by @kathrynschulz: http://t.co/Ewhs89Bw9r
http://t.co/EkuDjHfTMn.
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Things I still think of as quite new:. - Magnum ice creams.- Big Brother.- GCSEs.- Feature phones.- BBC Radio 5 Live.- Croatia.
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@solomongeorgio @MrKenShabby Let’s not forget this glorious own by Roger Ebert in his review of Schneider’s Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.
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While they’re at it can they also give us some pointers on why northerly winds don’t create jam and how come eating candle wax isn’t making the north and south poles switch places every year. People must have their concerns addressed.
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Splitting the Booker was a terrible idea. It detracts from both winners. As Atwood said, she didn’t need the publicity. The chair’s job is to cast the deciding vote if need be. Very easy for it to happen again now, unless the prize’s Literary Director gets a casting vote now.
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Wish they'd had a camera on Tim Martin's face during Johnson's announcement, like they do with the nominees who don't get the Oscar.
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@KevinGregDennis @kwilliamhuitt Excellent. Goes two better than “pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.”.
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Deeply unhelpful photos in this report - the floral clock hasn't looked like the first pic in a long time. Here it is last year, looking frankly pretty dismal compared to the 1930s photo the BBC report uses.
It's been a landmark in Weston-super-Mare since 1935 🌸.But the group looking after the floral clock say they needed to make it easier to look after. This is their plan ➡️
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Instagrammers like to photograph their books in visually appealing ways. Am I doing this right?
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I don’t actually read the books on my bedside table, I just keep piling more on top until the ones at the bottom compost and disappear.
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Who would you put in Room 101? Trivial quibbles only. For me, people who queue across (and block) the pavement at cash machines instead of making a line along the wall.
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“Master your day, .you lazy human bastard.”. ‘Midwinter’ by Roger Robinson. [From his Forward Prize-winning collection A Portable Paradise]
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Kathryn Schulz on the greatest punctuation marks in literature: (via @RichardNSkinner) http://t.co/ngMdkv3PEe.
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@davidmackau THIS is a tone shift.
This is now my favourite political segue of all time & it’s doubtful I’ll ever stop laughing.
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Are we sure this result is accurate? I’ve seen some pretty compelling Twitter polls that would suggest a very different outcome.
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TIL that in his 1968 novel Enderby Outside, Anthony Burgess used the word 'onions' three times consecutively in a sentence -- twice.
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What is it about 2020 -- or is it just middle age -- that makes me backward-looking in a way I've never been, listening to the music of my teens and 20s, remembering friendships, reflecting on the passing of time in a ruefully sentimental way?.
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Five years ago next week, I left my job and started on a new adventure, writing about books for a living. Amazingly, I'm still going. Many thanks to all the editors who have commissioned me, readers who have clicked my links, and publishers who have fed me with books.
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Have now spent too much time wondering what expletive Noel Gallagher might have used that begins with a vowel sound.
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As dad of the household, one of my chief duties is to use the rear two slots of the toaster that nobody else uses, so the whole thing wears out evenly.
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Marcel Proust died 100 years ago today. On his death, his friend Jean Cocteau, noting the manuscript volumes of ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’ by his body, observed that “that pile of paper on his left was still alive, like watches ticking on the wrists of dead soldiers”.
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The Peasants, Władisław Reymont’s four-part, 900-page epic of peasant life in early 20C Poland, is out now in a new translation by Anna Zaranko.
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Don’t worry, by sharing for free a paywalled article, you’re helping put news organisations out of business so there won’t be as many reports like this to make you angry in future 😀
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The browser looked from Animal Farm to Animal Farm, and from Animal Farm to Animal Farm, and from Animal Farm to Animal Farm again, but already it was impossible to tell which was which.
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Anyone remember the olde worlde novelist Zadie Smith?
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“Like many showy personalities, he is of weak character. He supposes himself to be Winston Churchill, while in reality being closer to Alan Partridge.”. Get off the fence, Max.
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The extraordinary opening of Joan Didion’s essay ‘The White Album’, where every line drives you on to the next, and every paragraph makes you keep going until it’s time to turn the page.
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Best thing about this headline is it shows that people laughing at blue passports has really ruined Paul Dacre’s Christmas.
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"In London, it's said you're never more than 6 feet from a difficult woman." . 'Difficult' by Helen Mort:
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Reminder that this is what Danielle Steel's desk looks like
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Tadpole Self has written a story with a fight in it.
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Hi I’m Henry I wrote a bunch of books that are all exactly the same length
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Must. Resist. New pocket hardback non-fiction from @classicpenguins, design by @CBickfordSmith
http://t.co/LTnx531uYt
http://t.co/9aQWaMXhuy.
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@MrKenShabby @tomhfh @michaeljswalker Came here to say this. Genuinely having a cognitive mismatch moment at a Guido writer suggesting that wealth and privilege are to be frowned upon.
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@aljwhite Photographer: "could you just interlace your tattoo-obliterated hand with hers so that it looks like a massive alien claw? Lovely, thanks. *click* *click*"
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'Reading Rushdie’s characteristic tidal wave of pathological pun-making, paragraph-long lists and how-do-you-do-fellow-kids cultural memery, made me think of Frasier asking Niles: “When was the last time you had an unexpressed thought?”'. My Booker guide:.
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All books should open new chapters like this.
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@Baddiel J. K. Rowling says she followed this breathing technique, recommended by her doc husband.
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Easter Eggs from the 70s and 80s. Shockingly, no mention of 'Easter' on the front of most of them then either.
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Instead of stupid things like ‘Sounds good to me!’ and ‘How about Friday?’, Gmail’s auto-suggestions should be responses appropriate to any situation such as:.• That escalated quickly.• Seems legit.• Sir this is a Wendy’s.• Well done everyone.
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@Pandamoanimum @justplayed It’s up there with this:.
It's a year today since Prince died. So a reminder of this, because sometimes sadness can still bring laughter.
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What does a writer do all day, Philip Roth?
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I think the caption should clarify that it wasn't this colleague.
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Today I learned that Scrappy Doo's Wikipedia entry is nine times longer than Marcel Proust's.
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Things I believed I would see a lot more of in life based on the childhood comics I read:. • Lost property offices.• ‘Keep off the grass’ signs.• Magicians in tuxedos.
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The Penguin Book of Oulipo, edited by Philip Terry. Out at the end of this month. (The back cover recreates the book’s title using the Oulipian constraint n+7, which replaces each noun in a text with the seventh one following it in a dictionary.)
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In June, Granta will reissue Virginia Woolf's diaries in their full, unabridged, five-volume form, with new introductions by Margo Jefferson, Siri Hustvedt, Adam Phillips and more. Chunky hardbacks, £30 apiece.
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@akblakemore @sarahgperry1 As Elif Batuman pointed out re the fact that the dog in Chekhov's Lady with Lapdog doesn't have a name: "No contemporary short story writer would have had the stamina not to name that dog.".
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The artist Tom Phillips died yesterday. He’s probably best known for A HUMUMENT, his treated version of an obscure Victorian novel (A Human Document by W.H. Mallock), which made every page into an extraordinary work of art. The final edition was published in 2016.
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Listening to The Divine Comedy albums in order and struck, as I have been before but never quite so forcefully, at the depth and scale of Neil Hannon’s talent and imaginative energy.
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Bad news, everyone. Looks like Penguin are issuing all of John le Carré’s novels in this (to me, irresistible) look. May as well set up the direct debit now.
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The LRB gets stick for not having enough women in it, but look - they've done a themed special and made it pink because women like pink.
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Also, someone needs to explain to the magical landlord that you only pay CGT when you sell something at a profit, so any "huge bill" will be by definition a fraction of the money you're making from the sale.
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“My own particular weakness is a refusal to learn the difference between ‘which’ and ‘that’.”. Julian Barnes on being edited by The New Yorker (from Letters from London):
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"My government will make it a criminal offence to write PARTY TIMEEEEE on your Instagram story when you mean PARTY TIIIIIME."
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Delighted to find this beautiful 1987 Virago edition of Angela Carter’s 1974 collection of stories Fireworks in a charity shop today. Cover illustration is by Hiroshi Manabe.
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RT if you always copy and paste rather than cut and paste just in case you never see it again.
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Rereading this shortly. Could it be a literary universal solvent, that rare book that everyone likes?
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@mrnickharvey I'm afraid, essential as it is to the rhyme and tone of the song, "I'll do what I should have did" in 'Real Gone Kid'.
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