books – Page 12 – don't confuse the narrator

like it or not

I started writing this blog back in 2007 and there are currently 875 published posts. At the beginning I didn’t tell anyone I was blogging and the readership grew very slowly. Even now, although there are usually a few people who press the ‘like’ button each time I update, the posts don’t inspire many comments.
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on target

I’m not at all sure that I like targeted ads and automatic sign-ups to mailing lists when you buy from a website; I may have nothing to hide, but I don’t like the idea of my emails being read and of organisations – public or private – keeping tabs on me.

Sometimes the ads and mail outs are so wildly off-course that they are funny, but on occasions it’s uncanny how well they seem to know you. An email in my inbox this morning makes me suspect that Big Brother is watching me personally:

amazon targeted mail ("as you've shown an interest in books...")

It’s absolutely true: I have “shown an interest in books.”

I don’t think that can possibly be true of a few million other people whose email addresses are on record with Amazon, can it?

permission granted

I had an email early this week asking for permission to include three of my limericks in an English school workbook, which is to be published in September ready for the new academic year. This wasn’t really a surprise as I’d agreed with the author back in February that she could use them. Even so, I had half forgotten our conversation and wasn’t sure when the book was due out or when I might hear.
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summing up

Recently I don’t manage to update the blog as often as I would like, although I do try to write at least one post a week. The problem is, of course, that I am doing many other things as well.

Bees on white foxglove spire — it's not just the bees who are busy

Perhaps this excuse would sound more believable if I did a round up of a few of my more recent writing achievements and activities. So, in no particular order:
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timber!

I went for a walk the other evening and found my path blocked by a tree.

There are, of course, a host of literary connections I could make: Birnam Wood; the Ents of Middle-Earth; the “very, very country dance” of the Narnian trees that Lucy dances her way through to reach Aslan in Prince Caspian; the trees that “walk[…] down the side of the cutting” in the landslide scene of The Railway Children…
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