Suggestions

I have a friend over on the sofa right now suggesting things I could write in my blog today. But now he's talking about how he always chooses yellow pieces when playing a board game, and that very few people do that. Which is true - you get a lot more red, blue and green fans, probably. I think yellow is an intelligent kind of colour, and I'll choose it the next time I play ludo.

Also, did you know there's such a thing as F-Zero 99? The new and exciting multi-player game on the Switch? It's going to become a new addiction, I think!

More literature

 I'm currently re-reading "Rose Madder", one of the many Stephen King books on my shelves. I do love his writings. This one, though, I always feel slightly unsatisfied with, just because I see it as a perfect example of a story that would be better without all the supernatural stuff.

Without throwing out too many spoilers for people who'd take the above paragraph as a recommendation to go out and read it, the book tells the story of Rose who a fair way into the story buys a painting which seems to have magical properties. A couple of little moments of the painting seeming to be a bit magical come and go, and then (well past the half-way point of the novel) Rose goes into the painting and has an adventure. And all I'm thinking at this point is "when is she going to come out of the painting and get back to the real story?"

In a foreword to one of his short stories somewhere, Stephen King has a little grumble that there wasn't a movie adaptation of Rose Madder, and I personally think they could make a good movie of it - if they cut out the whole thing with the painting. Drop it completely and make the rest of the book into a thriller!

It might be just me, though. One book I can never get enough of is "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon, and I really just read that one for Sam Clay. I can almost skip the more outlandish adventures of Joe Kavalier; I'm gripped by Sam's unexceptional everyday life. I'm obviously the kind of reader who wants his books to be as boring as possible. Writers should try to cater for this kind of audience!

Memory League sign-up time!

 The 19th season of Memory League is getting underway soon - registration is open now and ends on September 20th, so get yourself signed up here! 

It's great fun, whether you're a beginner or an old-timer, so join the excitement! If you end up competing against me, you'll probably win - I'm just hopeless these days.

Literary studies

 Facing a long train journey recently, with nothing to read and a terminally low battery on my phone, I went into a nearby charity shop to pick up a book, and settled on Moll Flanders. I'd never read it, but heard historically good things. The old man behind the counter said "Moll Flanders, eh?" with a sort of suggestive leer, and I agreed that maybe it's a bit too racy to read in public, but decided to flaunt it anyway.

It turns out it really is a very good book, and only minimally scandalous. You can see why it's stood the test of time! The wide availability of classic novels for cheap or free is one of the great things about our modern time, you know.

Recruiters

 Looking at the Blogger stats, I notice someone has been specifically reading the various posts I've made over the years about looking for a new job, or starting a new job, or otherwise discussing my employment status. I tend to be more circumspect about that kind of thing nowadays, because as we progress ever deeper into the twenty-first century, you're increasingly likely to find yourself working for someone who knows what the internet is. I miss the days when it was a secret community known only to the very cool young people.

But yes, I have been looking for jobs recently online, and no doubt attracted the attention of somebody in the business of hiring accountant-slash-financial-analysts. But the ideal employer and/or recruitment agency for me would be someone who's read and enjoyed all the cool non-work-related things I've written about on my blog! I prefer to be chosen based on my general coolness rather than my financial credentials.

Johnny Ludlow country

 I was a fan of Mrs Henry Wood before I moved to Worcestershire, but her hugely entertaining 19th-century fiction is all the more fun to read in her home county. I was in Evesham today, a town I always associate with Johnny Ludlow, whose adventures take place somewhere near there (well, the geography of the earliest ones suggest he lives somewhere to the north of Alcester, but drift a little southwards and settle around Evesham as the series goes on).

More people should be reading Mrs Henry Wood; I should really write about her more often, just to try to create a new army of fans. She was briefly an enormously popular and well-known writer in the 1860s, you know.

It's much too hot

 This summer has hit acceptable levels of hotness and not-raining-when-I-need-it-not-to-be-rainingness, but now that we're into September, it's suddenly gone all uncomfortable. I really need air conditioning. Still, I'll be complaining even more when it's winter. I wish someone would invite me to live in the southern hemisphere for six months.