Tag Archives: sharing

Pedantique-Ryter is reaching out to wring necks

a giant monster reaching outHas anyone been reaching out to you lately?
No, I don’t mean reaching out like the monster we see here, though there are monstrous doings afoot.

I’m talking about the nasty kind of reaching out newspeak (© G Orwell) that apparently means “contact” or “get in touch with”. You might have read it, for example, in those interminable emails about how important you, the customer, are to business X and how much X values your input. So they invite you to start “reaching out” to X’s “customer care” team to give X feedback on how wonderful they are (not).

[I may have to come back to “customer care” one of these days.]

Dross, Rubbish, Junk, Debris, Detritus? Take your pick…

Continue reading

Inspiration: Love Letters not Analysis

Inspiration: Criticism or love letters?

love letter inspirationBack in the early 60s, theatrical criticism in Britain threw up its hands and resorted to love letters instead. The cause was Vanessa Redgrave starring in As You Like It, directed by Michael Elliot. She was 24 years old and luminous, with a voice that still pushes all those emotional buttons in the weekly Voice-Over to Call The Midwife.

Bernard Levin, a notoriously astringent theatre critic, wrote “If the word enchantment has any meaning, it is here,” and fell in love with her. Fifty-four years later, Michael Billington was still rhapsodizing about the performance in The Guardian.

The Award-Winning, Five-Star, Chart-Topper Delusion

5 star delusion not inspiration

In spite of his rhapsodies, however, Billington, a professional to his fingertips, couldn’t quite resist calling it “her gold standard Rosalind”. As if there were some sort of industry blueprint.

Amazon, with a star-rating system based on hotel comparator techniques, seems to be doing something similar. So do the bestseller charts. But, as (best seller) Patricia McLinn recently pointed out, sadly they can be manipulated, so they are not statistically reliable.

Sharing a Magical Journey

When someone recommends a book to me, what I remember is how they felt about it, not their measured assessment of the style, theme and content. I certainly don’t care if, after they’ve finished, they’d give the book ten out of ten or a patronising seven and a half for effort.

through door to magic - love letters inspiration

 

 

I want to know what it was like to go through the door into the world of that book.

 

 

Continue reading