Books on blot.blog

Weeknotes – 1743 of 4175

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0100

Hi all 👋 Hope you had a good week. Here’s what I’ve been thinking, learning and writing.

🧠 Things I Learnt

I read mostly about Robert Cotton in The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club this week.

He was a Member of Parliament, but he’s mostly remembered for his high-quality manuscript¹ collection. Though sadly a lot of his books were lost or damaged in a fire in 1731.

I thought it interesting how genealogy and ancestry determined personal status in Tudor and Stuart England.

You Don't Need More Content – You Need Better Attention

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 07:40:12 +0000

Reading Henrik Karlsson ° got me thinking about the importance of high quality ‘inputs’.

Every day, we wade through dozens of blog posts, when our reading list is full. We browse book reviews, despite having shelves of unread greatness. We scan Rotten Tomatoes, while our watchlist already contains more masterpieces than we could watch in years.

Consuming excellence isn’t a search problem. It’s a focus problem. I know which blogs have a low ‘hit’ rate. I know early on when a book isn’t good. I know I rarely gain anything from visiting a news site.

Hunter S. Thompson died 20 years ago today

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 09:17:00 +0100

Raising a glass of Wild Turkey to Hunter S. Thompson, who died 20 years ago today. The father of Gonzo journalism, he was a rebel, trailblazer, and master of chaos. (1937-2005) 🦇

If you’re unfamiliar with this work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell’s Angels are good places to start.

And I have a particular soft spot for his novel The Rum Diary – it’s a great holiday read.

Give me some citations please

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 10:57:16 +0100

I recently started reading "Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire" by Roger Crowley. While I’ve only highlighted two passages so far, both of them contained incorrect information.

The first passage:

The Romans knew of the Canary Islands, a smattering of rocks off the coast of Morocco, which they called the Fortunate Islands and from which they measured longitude.

4000 Weeks: Embracing Limits for a Fuller Life

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:20:06 +0000

Ever feel like you’re hurtling through life, desperately trying to cram everything in before it’s too late? Oliver Burkeman’s book “Four Thousand Weeks” aims to help you (4000 weeks is 80 years, the average human lifespan). But it’s not your typical time management book. It’s a philosophical and practical look at why you’re stuck in the hamster wheel of “getting things done.”

I read it recently. So let’s take a deeper look at it and it’s ideas.

Little Links & Notes 6

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 08:14:09 +0100

‘A new ‘miracle’ weight-loss drug really works — raising huge questions’ (Financial Times °).

It’s pretty pricey right now. Costing $1,350/mo in the US.

Something interesting about being obese:

Once it becomes obese, the human body tends to push itself to rebound to its previous highest weight. Scientists don’t fully understand why, or how to stop it.

The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century (The Guardian °). I usually hate these sorts of lists and massively disagree with them. But this one is actually pretty good.

Caffeine, late nights and book introductions

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It’s late. But I made the fatal mistake of having two sources of caffeine today and I can’t get to sleep.

Well, it’s not even that I can’t to sleep. I haven’t even attempted to get to sleep. Because I can just feel that my brain is too caffeinated right now, so I haven’t even bothered trying.

I tell you what though, caffeine is wasted on me in the morning. I mean it does it’s job. Gives me a ritual, perks me up, makes me go to the toilet - the usual suspects.

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I had no idea you can send documents and eBooks (!) to your Kindle via email. Why have I been plugging mine in all these years?!

‘Norm Macdonald, comedian and former SNL cast member, dies at 61.’ The Guardian [c]. He died of cancer.

’‘Why do they have to be brilliant?’ The problem of autism in the movies.’ The Guardian (Simon Hattenstone) [c].

When to quit a bad book

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Taken from an article on Farnham Street, ‘How to Remember What You Read’ [c]:

Author and librarian Nancy Pearl advocates the “Rule of 50.” This entails reading the first 50 pages of a book and then deciding if it is worth finishing. The Rule of 50 has an interesting feature: once you are over the age of 50, subtract your age from 100 and read that many pages.

Salman Rushdie's next novel will be serialised on Substack

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Guardian [c]:

It will be a digital experiment in serialising fiction (“the way [it] used to be published, right at the beginning”) with new sections coming out approximately once a week over the course of about a year, he says.

A surprising number of the classics were originally serialised: Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers is the best known example, but there is also Madame Bovary, War and Peace, and Heart of Darkness. Rushdie references the experience of Samuel Richardson, who serialised his novel Clarissa in 1748.

Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV show explained. What can they film?

elliot@clowes.me (Elliot Clowes) — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Amazon Chronicles (Tim Carmody)°:

In his lifetime, J.R.R. Tolkien published two works of fantasy set in a section of the planet Arda called Middle-Earth: The Hobbit and then its multi-volume sequel The Lord of the Rings. While there are hints of other lands and ages in The Hobbit, it’s really in The Lord of the Rings that it’s decisively revealed that these stories take place at the end of the Third Age of Arda…