Thursday 26 July 2012

Going for gold

Right, that's quite enough of the Mountain Lion dictation nonsense. I tried it with an academic book, with which it coped quite well except for the punctuation - it even managed to get 'proto-colonialist' right, but I still find I can type faster than I can speak in the patronising 'Englishman-to-foreign-Johnny' manner required to get it to comprehend me.

Plan for the day? Sort out some odds and ends at work, including some research and typing up notes from a Grievance meeting I attended yesterday as a union rep, pack some clothes, books and the office (Mac, HDD, camera, chargers, lenses, accessories) and high tail it down to That London ready to wear polyester and smile a lot at the Olympics. The eternal question of course is which books to bring. Will I be too tired to read Proper Academic Books? How many? I have a horror of running out of reading material. I seem to have acquired a lot of fun books this week: the new Adam Roberts, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, Eoin Colfer, M. John Harrison etc. I've just finished David Peace's Nineteen Eighty Three, which was dark, disturbing, stylistically chewy and utterly horrific. So I either need something to contiue that mood or a complete palate cleanser. Perhaps a great big Trollope (and something to read afterwards. Boom). Any suggestions?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.faber.co.uk/work/may-twelfth/9780571250455/

Newton Heath 18 said...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Olympic-Flames-ebook/dp/B0082M9B2Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343307004&sr=1-1

The Plashing Vole said...

The Mass Observation one really does float my boat, even though it's about a coronation day.

As to Emma's suggestions… a romantic novel set in the world of Olympic Showjumping. Very apposite. But no.