Complete Tosh.com

Ben Hammersley is putting last weekend best:

"30 hours later, we found a place with a cocktail consisting of Absinthe, Bourbon, and Martini Dry. I am now quite tired."

After the photographs, but before the Absinthe cocktail, there was a rowing boat and cigars. And gaggles of really smart people milling around after the Online Flash Film Festival. It was all great fun.

Maybe our companion – guide, indeed – during our three day-er in Barca is feeling a little more alert tonight… Andrew Losowsky (for it was he) has just won the non fiction category in the Lulu Blooker awards, the first literary prize for books based on blogs, for his book The Doorbells of Florence.

Huge, hearty congratulations to him. But I hope he’ll forgive me if I’m a little relieved I can’t toast his success tonight… after the weekend, my capacity isn’t what it was.

To Foyles tonight, to see Mark Billingham and Chris Brookmyre talk about their new books, and the other things that authors talk about at such events. It was an interesting experience.

I know Chris – this was the first time we’d met in years, but back when he was just an extremely promising author (rather than royally successful author) we both worked on the Edinburgh Evening News, and played football together. Well – he played football in what I recall to be a quite jinky way. I just tried to stop him.

Despite that, he graciously signed my copy of his new book tonight, and recalled my late-in-life conversion to the ways of diddy football teams through my adoption of Swindon Town. He’s a St Mirren fan – Swindon and the Saints share not dissimilar records of failure punctuated by intrusions of glory, although the Paisley side are on the up again now, while Town are plumbing new-ish depths. He’s had a wonderful season travelling around Scotland, visiting every away ground and managing to make the front of the Paisley local paper, dressed as Batman, for the final match. Of course.

It was fascinating to see the authors deal with the evening. You imagine being an author to be quite a solitary experience, but every year (or so) they have this scramble around the country dealing with large gatherings of very keen, very involved fans. The contrast between these two parts of their working lives must be huge.

Both dealt with the potentially awkward situation with aplomb, but I can’t help wonder if they get asked questions about their ideas (Billingham: “we just make shit up”) or how to get into writing (Brookmyre: “persevere”) at every stop. Then it’s back to the word processor, and it must be hard to not have the pleas of fans – for the return of particular characters, storylines or agendas – echoing in your mind as you take the huge plunge of launching into a new book. Remember: this is an 80,000 word, six month gamble of imagination that may – or may not – bear fruit. And your professional reputation hangs on it all. What voices in your head do you listen to?

One thing I had confirmed from the evening: Chris, on his perseverance theme, said everyone had a book in them, but fewer had a second in them when they realised, or were told, the first one was crap. He wrote three before getting his fourth accepted. The first three, he said, were him learning.

He learnt well. And Having read and admired both Billingham’s and Brookmyre’s work – indeed, been slightly in awe at the imagination and research of both – I still very much doubt I have the first book, let along the follow-ups.

I may be wrong, of course. If so, there’s the intro for my first unflattering review.

Am back from the high seas. Lots of pix on Flickr, and some new books in the reading list… all of which I’ll get around to writing about sometime, I’m sure. Really.

But first: the exciting news that Tim Worstall’s anthology of the best of the British blogosphere, 2005: Blogged is published later this week (ignore, I’d say, Amazon’s rather pessimistic view of when it’ll be available – it’ll be sooner than that, I’m sure).

Now, I’d normally come over all cool about such a development, of course – “blog posts? In a book? Pah! What’s the point of that?” – but since the dear chap’s gone and stuck this post in as the first entry of January, he’s bought me off. Not my best post of the year, I’d argue, but I can see why he wanted to use it – you know: agent of MSM goes postal in blog post. And it does, after all, feature the word “fuckwittery”.

The other bloggers’ stuff is really good, from what I’ve read so far. Even the index, which shows the Guardian to be the most referenced newspaper, and Polly Toynbee to be more talked about than the whole Daily Telegraph. And, it should be noted, he’s referenced around 100 blogs in here: plenty that even the most ardent UK blog scourer will not have come across before.

So: click on the Amazon link without delay: buy now, buy often, your Christmas present problems sorted for another 12 months, Completetosh’s trickly revenue streams swollen to an almighty gush. Go on. If you don’t my sickly kittens will starve*.

And disregard the fact that the “other customers also bought” link for 2005: Blogged currently includes The Big Book of Masturbation: from Angst to Zeal.

Mrs Completetosh would say this is an apt title to sit alongside a blogging anthology. But the rest of you would, I’m sure, agree it’s a jolly unsporting Amazonbomb by some bitter blog types whose posts didn’t make the cut.

You would, wouldn’t you? Oh.

* this is a lie.

New from O’Reilly: Home Hacking Projects for Geeks

"Farnham, UK–Take a geek and a PC, add a soldering iron, a home, and a copy of "Home Hacking Projects for Geeks" (Northrup and Faulkner, O’Reilly), and you’ll give new meaning to the words "home improvement." From fearless neophytes to tool-wielding masterminds, the home hacker in any geek will find new inspiration and plenty of hands-on guidance to take on a variety of home-transforming projects once relegated to the world of sci-fi.

This fun new guide combines creativity with electricity and power tools to achieve cool–and often even practical–home automation projects. Never again will you have to flip a light switch when you enter a room or use a key to open your front door. With a few off-the-shelf devices, some homemade hardware, and a little imagination, you can create your own high-tech habitat."

Oh my. Mrs Tosh and the mogs will doubtless be taking cover should this book arrive in the next Amazon delivery. My last excursion into home electrics, in an attempt to replace a horrible light fitting, ended up with us unable to turn the kitchen lights on without also turning on the hall lights, and the study lights not working at all. A professional was called out, along with a promise not to do that again. But with a feature list like this…

"-Remotely Monitor Your Pet
-Make Your House Talk
-Remotely Control Your Computer’s MP3 player
-Create Time-Shifted FM Radio
-Watch Your House Across the Network
-Build a Home Security System"

and a pay-off paragraph like this…

"If you’ve ever thought with envy that the Jetsons had it made, or looked around your house and mused, "I bet I could make that better," then you’re ready for "Home Hacking Projects for Geeks."

… this book is sold. Although I should probably get one of these at the same time.

Pengiun has come up with the great idea of releasing a series of 20 paperbacks “thin enough to slip into a commuter’s pocket featuring thinkers and revolutionaries from Seneca to George Orwell, from Machiavelli to Ruskin, St Augustine to Marx and Engels” according to today’s Guardian. It’s to be sold as an attempt to “inspire readers to discover or revisit some of the great philosophical and revolutionary writers”.

Something fit for universal praise? No, of course not.

“John Sutherland, professor of modern English literature at University College London, yesterday led the assault, suggesting there was an ‘inherent timidity of textual choice’ [in the series of books].

He said: “What the editors have done is to choose the short and easy option every time … bite-sized snippets from Hazlitt, Orwell, Woolf, Freud etc. Hanging over the project is the sense that this curriculum is all you need and one senses a disinclination to raise the hurdle too high for the paying customer. This list shrinks down great ideas to smarty-sized sweety size.’”

It’s ironic, if fitting, that an academic can criticise someone for shrinking great ideas (great ideas that would otherwise be known to only a few) down to “bite-sized” or “smarty-sized sweety size” proportions (which, as a result, lead to the ideas becoming known to a far broader audience).

Not that they’re all bad, of course. Thank goodness for AC Grayling, whose fascinating What is Good? I’m reading at the moment. He has a straightforward observation: “If we show people that there are interesting and accessible ideas in these works it may draw them into the great treasure trove of ideas. It is a good thing.”

There: bite-sized, to the point, and absolutely right.