'Richard' in The Bookseller.

There's a nice mention of Richard from Emma Giacon, content Manager of Amazon in the new issue of The Bookseller: "A raw and touching work with appeal far beyond Manics fans..."

I'm going on holiday for a week.

'Dry Stone Wall'

dry    stone  wall
now  wet     and
full    of     frogs.

"Easily Pleased"

Currently Reading

Harvey Pekar

I wrote a few words about the life of the recently-departed Harvey Pekar for The Guardian.

"Crap"

I am reading over the book that I have spent a year working on (not Richard, which was largely written September 2008 - March 2009) and experiencing a sinking feeling at the realisation that it is possibly, what Umberto Eco or Alain de Botton might call, "crap".

This Summer...

...I will also be reading....

Culture

Reading

Listening

Watching

A Trip Out

We took a trip to Hadfield at the weekend, more widely recognised as Royston Vasey in The League Of Gentlemen.

...then on to nearby Padfield, sometime home to Shaun Ryder and Bez.

They weren't there.

And then to Kinder Scout - well halfway up it, anyway - in the high Peaks, home of the Mass Trespass of 1932.

Then I ate my first pork pie since 2002.

~ 'The End' ~

'Imperial Bedrooms'

Bret Easton Ellis has a new novel entitled Imperial Bedrooms coming out on Picador. And very good it is too. I've written this piece for The Guardian about the influence of pop culture upon his work (and vice versa).

(And on a personal level I'm beyond excited to have a novel coming out in the same publisher, in the same year.)