Thomas Pynchon and our desire for meaning

Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 is no easy read. Some might even call it torturous.

Several short sentences about writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg

This book belongs in the home of every writer.

Whether you’re a fledgling or a critically acclaimed novelist, you will find yourself returning again and again to its irresistible lines of advice, of caution, and of motivation.

Five tracks to take your mind elsewhere

Sometimes we wish our minds would just switch off, which is near impossible. Here are some tracks to allow your mind not to shut down, but to wander.

Ludovico Einaudi – Fly

Einaudi’s minimalist pieces are simple and yet they never cease to instil emotions you might not have known were hiding. The tentative strings play silently as the piano echoes on, a delicate yet purposeful pattern that takes you to other places. It’s difficult to dwell on the mundanities of daily life when your ears are being blessed by Einaudi.

Radiohead – Daydreaming

The name says it all. This song is dreamy and wistful, swirls of sound and texture merging to form something that promises to take each listener on a different path. I’ve attached the music video below, because it’s beautiful, but I’ve found that exploring this song without visuals is something of a surreal experience.

Enlightening reads

Get to know me a little better by exploring the list below:

It’s All Absolutely Fine: Life is Complicated, So I’ve Drawn it Instead by Ruby Elliot. Orion Publishing Group, London, 2016.

From It’s All Absolutely Fine, pg. 72

Ruby Elliot shares her experience with anxiety, depression, eating disorders and bipolar through raw, brutally funny cartoons. This is more of a comic book than anything else, but it features short yet poignant snippets of writing in each chapter as Ruby shares the trials and small triumphs of mental health problems. There is a likeness between her written anecdotes and her drawings: they don’t have happy endings, and that makes them all the more relevant.