bookofjoe

The New Confessions — by William Boyd

A few years ago, after finishing yet another wonderful novel by Boyd, I decided to stop fooling around and buy all the rest of his books I hadn't yet read in one fell swoop, rather than order them piecemeal over the coming years.

Good move.

Because having a total of eight Boyd titles (seven novels and a short story collection initially, now down to five novels) sitting there on my prime "to-read" shelf — I have a six-tier "to-read" bookcase that's overflowing — makes me very content, knowing that no matter how bad or hard or otherwise unrewarding my current reading matter is, relief and pleasure is always close at hand.

"The New Confessions," published in 1987, is Boyd's fourth novel and sixth book (he's written seventeen).

Browse it here.

A peculiar and salutary thing about Boyd's writing is that it invariably soothes one's soul when troubled, thus making his books a perfect anodyne to life's inevitable crushing blows.

His style somehow lends itself to states of mind which simply can't make sense of most writing.

If you're in the mood, feel free to explore Boyd's website.

I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

Roccarina Hardwood Chair

Designed by

London-based

Ian Spencer.

Bespoke.

£4,250.

'The Pros and Cons of Auto-Tweeting Blog Posts'

That's the title of an excellent August 17, 2009 Performancing.com article by J. Angelo Racoma which I happened on while Googling for a service other than Twitterfeed that auto-tweets blog posts, seeing as Twitterfeed stopped working for me about a week ago for no apparent reason, though I'm beginning to think it may be due to a password change forced on me by Twitter as a result of someone having compromised my (and many other) accounts.

Anyway.

Wrote Racoma, "For a while, I thought having these updates on auto-pilot seemed good. But then I realized I, myself, ignored automatic update notifications from my Twitter friends most of the time."

And: "People easily get tired of automatic tweets."

A comment on Racoma's piece: "I totally agree. Putting our blog posts on auto-tweet defeats the conversational tone of Twitter."

You know me, always looking for the lazy way out: I'm gonna stop trying to fix the glitch and leave it broken.

From now on my tweets are just that.

Agree? Disagree?

Don't know? Don't care?

Yeah, that works.

[cartoon by Brad Fitzpatrick]

Magnetic Window Cleaner

Wonderfully ingenious.

From the website:

••••••••••••••••••••••••

Magnetic Window Cleaner

A powerful magnet securely holds both sponges in place while you clean, so whatever you clean inside gets cleaned outside.

Simultaneously cleans the inside and outside of a window, cutting cleaning time  in half.

Second and third story windows are no longer a problem.

No ladders necessary — safe and saves time and effort.

5" x 4.5" x 2.25".

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

$14.98.

TVTrip.com — Hotel videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then one second of 24-frame-per-second video is worth... hold on, let me find my calculatory... 24 x 1,000 = 24,000 words.

And one minute of video = 60 x 24,000 = 1,440,000 of them.

But don't take my word for it.

Have a look here instead.

From Christina Talcott's review in this past Sunday's Washington Post Travel section: "... when it comes to hotels, most sites show only photos. How 20th century!

"TVTrip.com one-ups the others, with videos shot in and around hotels. When it launched in 2007, the site had 2,000 videos — which it shoots on location and produces in-house — from North American and European cities. The number has since ballooned to more than 10 times that....

"All the videos are in the same style, which helps viewers see the differences among hotels: There are shots of the exterior, the lobby, different types of rooms (from standard to deluxe), as well as restaurants and gyms, with New Agey, techno or jazzy soundtracks. The site includes shot after shot of neatly made beds, tasteful hotel bars and — key for solo female travelers — the surroundings, showing whether there's a potentially seedy park across the street or a noisy club next door."

Fair warning: There goes the day.

Send me a postcard.

Flask Playing Cards

As natural a combination as PB&J.

From the website:

•••••••••••••••••••••••

Flask Playing Cards

Flask with playing cards inside keeps you ready for an impromptu card game.

Be ready to deal at a moment's notice with this stainless steel flask that discretely hides a deck of playing cards.

4" x 3" x 1.25".

••••••••••••••••••••••

$29.98.

Vampire Power

Got my attention.

I guess that's what an ad is supposed to do, what?

Above, page 165 of the new (November 2009) issue of Wired magazine, introducing iGo's new ad campaign.

Rotten Egg, Moldy Cheese, and Toothpaste Jelly Beans

But wait, there're more: how about Centipede, Pencil Shavings, Canned Dog Food, Baby Wipes, Skunk Spray, Booger, and Barf?

Those are the flavors in Jelly Belly's new BeanBoozled line of Halloween-prank-themed jelly beans.

Nice twist: "The candies... mix together sweet and disgustingly-flavored jelly beans that look exactly the same.

"Pick a yellow candy and you might be tasting buttered popcorn, or — if your luck is down — rotten egg. A white bean could be posing as coconut or baby wipes, and a blue one might have the flavor of berries or toothpaste."

Get yours here.

[via Josh Friedland and The Food Section]