Xanthorrhoea/grass trees: they only grow around 2cm a year so these are big old ones

When you lose a bet and want to put a brave face on it.

There should be a cap on what ANYONE can earn. Singling out writers seems a bit nuts given most can't even afford air.

Finally, a partwork I can get on board with, except I'm a dumbarse monolinguist. The complete non-Maigrets of Simenon:

A man can no more separate books and covetousness than a' can part young limbs and lechery.

When you go to the effort to commission Robert McGinnis to do cover art for your movie's fictional pulp novel, but can't be bothered to type up something for the inside.

Margaret Atwood meets a brain surgeon at a party. Hearing she's a writer, he tells her: "I can't operate on you, you're my son!" Margaret Atwood bursts into tears. "But doctor," she says, "...I am Atwood!” How is this possible? (retweet if you agree)

Book cover designers like wet ladies: paintings by Samantha French

"..in which Bierce cunningly delineates the way a subjective eternity of agony is experienced in the instant of stepping on Lego in the night..."

OI, YOU WANT A MOTHERFUCKING COFFEE YOU OUTRAGEOUS CAFFEINNE-SUCKING FREAK?!! IT'LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!

must be nice, being able to feel joy

Melissa Caustic Cover Critic I don't know where else I'd see tits on the internet if it wasn't for on book covers.

(When you have an old photo of Rita Hayworth and some early 2000s morphing software)

Reading Kate Kruimink's latest, her Weatherglass Books Novella Prize-winner, and it is superb.

Just checked, and this task is still there in the database, mysterious and unfulfilled.

Thinking about this from Brandon's funny review of the new Kushner book, and an adjacent problem I've found in a lot of recent US fiction is books hinging on a powerfully charismatic individual who the author is completely unequipped to make actually charismatic (or interesting)

I identify with this keyboard.

BAD BOOK IDEA: An atlas of all the made-up, thinly imagined, assembled-out-of-clichés fictional African, Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Latin American countries created for hacky novels, comics and movies.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed. . (The splendid Anton Hur has finally arrived.)

Patted a crocodile today.