Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 433

Leaving London

This is the view from the coffee shop I blog from, the excellent Gran Sasso on Cally Rd. The bottom one is where I'm going. Yes, it's goodbye to King's Cross for one week and hello to the Aegean, where Europe's favourite bankrupt holiday playground is just about to enter high season, signified by hotels [...]

Things You See On Oxford Street

Walking along Oxford Street the other day, I passed some giant dancing dresses. Nobody seemed to notice. I swear living in London is like being inside some peculiar hallucination. Turns out it was advertising some kind of chocolate bar. This is presumably the last stop for creatives on the slide.

The Memory Of Blood

It looks as if there's going to be a disparity of dates between US and UK editions of the ninth Bryant & May novel, with Transworld in the UK launching in September and Random House in the US pushing back to March next year. Meanwhile, here's the US cover in a rather fetching mauve (now [...]

The Speed Of Words

Last night I went to the 25th anniversary party for indie publisher Serpent's Tail, appropriately held in Shoreditch's Book Club, and was talking to Jake Arnott about different writing methods. On the way home, I started wondering why film and books have diverged so radically.

If you've tried to watch a comedy from the eighties [...]

Words We Should Bring Back

'Stingo' is an 18th century expression for strong beer brewed in the back of a pub. It's a word that's come back from the dead.

An 'Antimacassar' is the cloth that hangs on the back of an armchair to stop Macassar oil from marking the plush.

'Secability' meant it was cutable.

'Molrowing' was hanging out with dubious [...]

The Rich Tapestry Of English

My partner is a Kiwi, and although we share a common language, sometimes struggles with the confusing reference-laden complexity of 'English' English. The English language is meant to be flexible and absorbent, and contains more French, Latin and rhyming slang than one would imagine, but it's also peppered with pop-culture shorthand.

The latter sometimes enter [...]

The Virtual Library

I spent a very frustrating few hours trying to find eBooks last night. The system, it seems, is in hopeless disarray. My Sony eReader operates with ePub, a format taken up by Waterstone, and according to the opening page of the online library, WH Smith and, er, Mills & Boon.

WH Smith has a good website [...]

You Couldn't Get Hit By A Bus

Working on my other 'Paperboy'-like book today, I remembered that it was once a dictum stated by every urban mother (and may still be) that you had to wear clean underwear because you could be hit by a bus.

Given today's improved standards of hygiene (ie nobody just has a bath on a Friday night) let's [...]

Re:View – 'Confessions'

Lately the subject of bullying and aberrant behaviour in schools has been in the news a lot, with Lynne Ramsey's upcoming 'We Have To Talk About Kevin' expected to open the topic again. Tetsuya Nakashima, who made the heartbreaking 'Memories Of Matsuko' has directed this extraordinary revenge drama, which consists of a series of confessions [...]

A Non-Fiction Villain

Pamela Geller, American Madwoman, is on the rise. The barking 'birther' blogger who looks like a victim of botched plastic surgery and makes Sarah Palin seem like Germaine Greer is on the attack. What's interesting about Geller is that she's clearly intelligent, but the rabidly pro-Israeli anti-Muslim atrocity denier is so extreme that she can't [...]