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Ribblestrop
Today I read another book set partly underground, the rather odd Ribblestrop. Rather than being full ofexcrement-encrusted soldiers, it’s populated with some fairly likeable children (one with an indestructible head, another missing a toe but with a mysterious fortune, a feisty heroine, a gang of eccentric Himalayans), some unlikeable or ineffective adults, an underground labyrinth […]
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The Subterrene War Trilogy
After devouring the first two parts of Ian Tregillis’ Milkweed Triptych, I was given as a bonus item the first chapter of T. C. McCarthy’s Germline, which seemed a fairly gung-ho future war story. But it was for free and I was in a bookshop in Taipei two weekends ago, so when I found the […]
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Congratulations! (again)
This feels like further disappointment. OK, I may be outside of the dreaded 99%, but that still makes me just one in a million. That doesn’t seem as special as I’d hoped for.
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Congratulations…
I got an email from LinkedIn, to congratulate me on being in the top 10% of all the profile pages, ranked by views. Only trouble is, 10% of 200 million is still quite a lot. “I’m one in 20 million” doesn’t have quite the right ring to it.
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Don’t do race jokes
When I moved to Singapore, one thing that I noticed was that it felt as though a lot more material was based on racial stereotypes. I think that’s partly because the scene was more homogenous in Hong Kong: apart from Vivek Mahbubani, when I started going to the local club the comedians were almost all […]
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Short stories
Every so often, somebody will say that Hemingway wrote the greatest short story ever, in only 6 words: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. Well, I wonder if we can get a bit shorter: Check the safety, Ernie! There you go: biography, dispatched in 4 words. If you didn’t like that, perhaps you can seek […]