ok this one made me snort laugh

‘once he stepped over the threshold the scene could continue at its usual pace and in its usual form, but until then he lingered, slowing everything down, wondering exactly what on earth he should notice in this new place 2 metres to the right of where he’d been, before he returned to the point’

ahhhh, happy release day!!!

It's alive!!

people think the difficult bit of books is plot and character arc and emotional depth and whatever else but oh no it is absolutely the very simple transitions through 3D space while keeping the purpose and momentum of the scene going without over-describing the physical action

Screenshot of a tweet reading: everyone who enjoys reading novels should try to write a scene. even a paragraph of a scene. try to get someone in and out of a room. will change how you read forever

‘try to get someone in and out of a room’ ok well firstly it’s very rude of this guy to correctly identify the part of writing books i find the most maddening. TRANSITIONS. it’s fine when you can just start a chapter like ‘they’re here now’ but movement??? through doors??? with purpose??? agony!!!

as a connoisseur of dramatic and very silly monster films i can’t tell you how excited i am that this is releasing on my birthday

‘this hippo isn’t playing games’ - sublime, perfect, 10/10 no further notes

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?

from the annals of getting high on your own supply (gift link) www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...

Ultimately Silicon Valley’s fatal flaw is that it has a glut of losers in a loser echo chamber and they have no idea why nobody else thinks their ideas are good and fun

A pretty black cat with yellow eyes sitting up on a blanket on an armchair, looking regal as she stares to the left of the camera

a Cat Who Isn’t My Cat visits the garden & as i was feeding Finch in the kitchen with the back door cracked he heard the food & bolted inside, scared himself, went full hiss at me & suddenly Finch leapt to stand on my feet and hiss back with fur raised like NO, THAT’S MY HUMAN 🥹

i’m so sorry

it’s possible i’m feeling very over-tired today

look i’m sorry i keep answering emails but they keep coming & i have to answer them again & then there’s another one & another one and i just want to tick ‘answer emails’ off my list forever but forever never comes because there’s always another email & i always have to answer it

Laura’s hand holding the book The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks, featuring a steam train surrounded by mountains

14. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

i’ve thoroughly enjoyed a day reading this. a fast-paced fantastical travelogue of a journey on a behemoth of a train, through a land that’s been learning its passenger’s secrets. one for fans of Annihilation!

A very large fluffy white cat with a black moustache tipped upside down on Laura’s lap with his eyes closed and his front paws curled in front of him

current view from my face

ah mate i’m sorry. enjoy the trip! 💚

i regret to announce the fancy wine is objectively better than the bottles i usually buy at the supermarket

btw it isn’t ‘find some kind of scored edge’ that doesn’t exist as i thought, but ‘use a knife (or wine key, apparently) to find the edge of the cork and cut a circle around it’, in case anyone else was wondering

i know i’m a pleb because J is out this afternoon so i thought i’d treat myself to a glass of wine from the v fancy bottle his wine-connoisseur uncle gave us at christmas, but i just had to google how to get past the seal on a bottle with a cork because i usually buy twist-top 🫣

i’m famously bad at pre-ordering but when i saw this a few weeks ago i’ve never ordered something so fast! the doloriad horrified me (positive) and i’m hoping for the vivisectors to do the same

somehow cut the very tip of my tongue quite badly eating a slice of apple and now my mouth is filled with blood. is this cottagecore horror

did hercule type this

Screenshot of a tweet by the daily mail reading ‘asteroid half the size of a giraffe strikes earth just two hours after it was discovered by astronomers

this unit of measurement was certainly a choice

A large fluffy white cat with grey markings and a black moustache tipped upside down on the floor next to a coffee table, his little face staring at the camera and one of his front legs stretched out above him

looked up from work and-

i was walking down the local high street with james just now when a very lovely woman stopped me and said ‘sorry to bother you, but you didn’t write Awakened by any chance did you?’ and proceeded to tell me how much she loved it. I FEEL LIKE A CELEBRITY

Laura’s hand holding the book Raw Content by Naomi Booth, featuring a pale background and a vibrantly colourful landscape of the York moors, with a pregnant belly looming over the background of the hills

13. Raw Content by Naomi Booth

i love pretty much everything Naomi writes and this one was no exception. a hugely interior novel about the intense experience of early motherhood, but also of how place and family shape us and the intricacy of care

he really has!

Photo taken from above of a white cat with a black moustache sitting on Laura’s lap. His head is tilted up and his eyes narrowed happily as Laura’s hand strokes under his chin

home from york and i’ve been immediately reclaimed by hercule

‘You may never want to make a decision again’ - I wonder if I can get this on a book jacket 😂😁