Fred > Recent Status Updates

“It was exactly the kind of dingy Edinburgh rental accommodation that she and her mother used to inhabit […] despite a million buckets of Flash, or the yellow squirt of Jif around yet another stained old bath, each flat still contained a thin layer of melancholy, coating everything they touched.”

Another good strategy insight: show some vulnerability (even if it’s false), especially when people might see you as a dangerous threat.

I wonder if Robert Greene has read this. It exemplifies a lot of his principles: for example, sometime it’s best to let the other person move first. Don’t do a full-frontal riposte; dodge out of the way and deliver side attacks (Tris’s fight with Molly). Also - as poor Edward realised - you don’t want to be the obviously strongest member of a group!

Tris is learning a lot of Robert Greene’s concepts: enter action with boldness, always move first, and elevate yourself above the battlefield. Quite literally, in Tris’s case.

Turned out my review of ‘Earth’ was completely naive. It wasn’t a ‘glorious’ ending at all - Boyne has just revealed what happened afterwards. I feel so sorry for Evan!

Yes.

Celebrating turning 22 - and finishing the required reading for my whole degree(!) - with my favourite modern-day author!

This might be one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. I hated it at the start, but this narrator is a good guy - I’m on his side. Even if he makes some spectacularly awful decisions.

This is really good stuff. It’s a shame James Robertson is not better-known - a modern-day writer who writes SO well (better than a lot).

This is great so far. You can’t beat the core cadre of spy writers - Fleming, Conrad, le Carré, Buchan, and Greene.

I’m surprised by this. It’s really funny.

So good!! I’ve forgiven the convoluted writing, because the plot is a total gut-punch.