dreamer_easy | (no subject)

Just finished Richard Hammond's On The Edge, his account of his crash and recovery from the resulting brain damage. Since there's so much he can't remember, the book's partly penned by his wife Mindy, whom he modestly (and correctly :-) says is the better writer. It opens with a few brief couple of chapters on Hammond's childhood stunts involving bicycles and his joining the Top Gear team - fans of the show may be disappointed with the few appearances by the other presenters, although they get a couple of terrific cameos. There's a detailed account of the crash. The bulk of the book is the story of Hammond's journey through Oliver Sacks land: the goldfish memory, the bizarre and sometimes aggressive behaviour, the confusion and dread. It's confronting - especially Mindy's side of the story, which moved me almost to tears at times - but also full of love and determination. I reckon the book could have used one more edit - there's a fair bit of repetition and some glitches with words and numbers - and I'd have liked more technical or medical detail, but it's very readable; I got hooked and powered through it in a couple of days.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What IS the accepted way of portraying emoticons within brackets? I (almost :-)) always end up with these bizarre double-chinned/nested affairs...

I tend not to have the problem so much, as my mouth shape is usually not a standrd bracket, but even so, what I do is put a space between the two brackets, thus:
( Hi! =:o} )

or, if I *really* want to make things clear, I insert the following sequence:
Space, Ampersand-n-b-s-p, Space.
That appears as:

( Hi! =:o} )

I do something similar - still regular brackets, but with a few spaces before the last bracket to set them apart.

Actually, I more often use the amp-n-b-s-p trick *before* the emoticon, to help separarate it from any trailing punctuation on the preceding sentence. E.g.:

(I really do love my ellipses... =;o} )

Halfway through the book at the moment. It's terrific, and all too easy to get caught up in the worry and fears during the hospital segments. I agree about the bits of repetition, but I suppose they're writing from the heart, and from memories of a pretty jumbled time - plus of course it's Mindy's first writing attempt. It'll be interesting to see if she writes anything else. Hamster did say something (on the Jonathon Ross show?) about her being offered a writing deal, but it's not always easy to tell when he's being serious. :)