Dr Mark Dolan

Quite pleased with today's find of a first edition Normal People for the princely sum of £4

I say this as a guy with non-negligible insecurity about both height and body image, but I'd love to see the stats of the average height of regular gym-going men compared with overall population figures

I wonder whether Yorkshire Tea higher-ups refer to themselves as being in 'Proper tea management'

Lovely stuff, that's definitely one for the collection.

Very true, and actually another book I read this year

I don't know whether it's a symptom of my reading taste or something else entirely, but I seem to be coming across more books that feature a massive pyramidal building. So far I've got Malarkoi, The Three-Body Problem, and Y/N. Anyone got more to add to the collection?

Today's purple Connections category is appallingly weak, I mean, caf??

Text above a toilet that has been rubbed off so it now says "to let sue only"

Very specific rental conditions

'Doc, my heart hurts'

'pfft, hurts shmurts'

'yes, exactly!'

Moment of appreciation for the German for heart pain being "herzschmerz"

I always want to write longhand because it feels proper, authory, but then I'm met with the challenge of reading my handwriting

I enjoy the NYT puzzle Tiles, but when you boil it down to its basics - matching shapes and colours - it does feel like I'm playing a game for 3 year olds

Percival Everett's (current) publisher saying people hadn't heard of him until James. He was nominated for the Booker for The Trees, which was also a Pulitzer runner up. And it was UK indie publisher @influxpress.bsky.social who did the heavy lifting in the UK in celebrating/publishing him.

Off the back of a recent typo, I'm considering starting a petition to rename biographies 'lifetomes'

Friday: Your order will be delivered on Tuesday.

Today: Your order will arrive today!

Also Today: Your order will arrive on Wednesday.

Buying a laptop raiser for my desk because I'm very much in my 30s now

V exciting book post today! New Murata!

Balancing the books Publishing's problem with men

This is a fascinating, balanced and entertaining(!) piece on men in publishing from @samjordison.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/samj/p/b...

I've realised I never put this here, but my PhD thesis is available in full here (eprints.soton.ac.uk/492373/) should anyone have any interest in what I spent a good five years faffing around with

Bringing a book into the world Some notes on the publication of Waterblack, a fantasy masterpiece - and a very heavy book.

open.substack.com/pub/samj/p/b...

A few words about the publication of Waterblack.

I successfully employed this trick when stuck in a loop with an automated answering machine for a delivery company, being finally put through when I told it in no uncertain terms to put me through to a f'ing human

Just seen someone post a "Cool London Travel Hack" on Instagram. The hack? The Tesco meal deal.

It's January, it's wet and cold. I'm unemployed. I'm trudging morosely to the gym for a shower because our hot water tank has sprung a leak. Soon it will surely become apparent that I'm in a scandi noir film.

Yeah, that's about right.

A can of violet sour beer by Vault City Brewing

Discovered this beer today, and I know what's going to happen. I'm going to fall in love with it, I'll go to stock up, and it will be sold out, never to return

Elon Musk is just Kirk van Houten with money

A copy of Anna Karenina with quotes from the book embossed on the upper cover

I like these Word Cloud Classics editions, I think they're nice, but the quotes on the cover of this are from a different translation than the text inside, and that is just an insane thing to do

That works, but I was thinking 'Miss, whyyyyy'

A photo of a number plate reading MI55 YYY

If this number plate is owned by a primary school teacher, it's genius. If not, it's a baffling choice.

Just had the quickest drop of excitement after seeing that a job at Robot Wars was actually a finance job at Robert Walters