Love, pens, and zen-like calm

   

    A little miscellaneous post for you:

 

    Here is a generous offer for Cornflower readers: if you quote the code GLOBE5 when booking tickets for the play Eternal Love at Edinburgh's King's Theatre (March 18th. to 22nd.), you'll get a £5 discount.

    This is the Shakespeare's Globe production of the story of Abelard and Heloise by Howard Brenton and it's billed as a "funny, passionate and legendary love story". Click here for more information including a short video clip from the writer. It sounds excellent, and I shall go if I can.

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    Reading a publisher's catalogue yesterday, one book in particular caught my eye: Adventures in Stationery: Stories From Your Pencil Case by James Ward is not due out until October, but a lot of us are stationery fiends so may want to add it to the pre-Christmas wish list! Here's the blurb:

    "From the first fresh sheet of a hipster's Moleskine notebook to the last gnawed biro lurking at the bottom of a briefcase, stationery is an inescapable part - and pleasure - of our lives. But while few are immune to the lure of of flickable rubber bands or a novelty Post-it note, we rarely, if ever, think about why they are and who first dreamt them up.

    Drawing on a lifetime's obsession and research in the obscurest of places, this is a tale of brilliant designs, accidental inventions, bitter rivalries and epic feats of procrastination, laced with Proustian nostalgia.

    In a quiet way, the inventors of Sellotape, the highlighter and Tipp-Ex have changed our lives; this book, for anyone who's ever had a favourite pencil case or pondered the evolution of desk organisers, restores them to their rightful place in our hearts and minds."

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    And speaking of "procrastination" and "desk organisers", as I tackled the overflowing inbox this afternoon and moved books from one pile to another, I thought this might prove helpful!

Comments

[rachel]

I got just a little over-excited by the book about stationery, and then read on, to find it won't be out until next October! Still, I can wait, chewing my biro, flicking my rubber bands.....

[Dark Puss]

I'm sure you have un-peeled Sellotape in the dark and seen the light flashes, but did you know that you can generate X-rays too? I thought you might be interested to see this news item about the work from 2008 which was published in Nature.