💬 Discuss: What books are you reading at the moment?

Share your recommendations in the comments

Discussion time this week — what book(s) are you reading at the moment? Would you recommend it? I’ll head down to the comments with what I’m reading, too.

With a bit of luck we can all find some excellent new titles to add to our to-read piles.

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Part of the reason for turning today’s newsletter over to a community chat is that my arms are mostly made of jelly.

Let me explain.

I’ve been taking apart old furniture and building new shelves, which has required more screwing of screws into walls than I’m used to. As someone who only occasionally engages in DIY, my tools are fairly basic, the consequence being that my arms are now deeply unhappy.

Photo by Tekton on Unsplash

In fact, and this is a first for me, I at one point managed to give myself an extreme cramp in my left arm that caused it to be locked in a weird position against my chest for a couple of minutes while I stomped about the kitchen in quite a lot of pain, looking like a sort of confused home improvement Nosferatu. Not recommended.

To make this even slightly relevant to the newsletter, it does remind me a little of why I always bang on about using Scrivener. When I see writers clearly having a hard time, not enjoying the process, and struggling to get the words down, I wonder whether — in some cases, at least — it’s due to using the wrong tools for the job.

Sure, all you need to be a writer is a pen and some paper. It’s joyously low tech. Just like you can put a shelf up with a five quid screwdriver you found in a drawer. Sometimes, though, when you’re doing something more complex, more challenging, the basic tools can end up getting in your way, or holding you back.

Next time I do some DIY, I’ll have invested in a fancier, more modern screwdriver. Just like there’s no way I could write Tales from the Triverse if I wasn’t using Scrivener.

On which note, I’ll hand over to the comments after a couple of useful links: