The Unread Odyssey: One Man’s World Record Pursuit for Untouched Books

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In a world where achievements come in the form of fast racecars and senior citizen skydiving, there’s a lone wolf in West Yorkshire with his eyes set on a record that’s in the grasp of practically anybody who has walked past a bookshop. Meet Frodo Leatherbound, a literary iconoclast hell-bent on venturing where most of us haven’t intentionally dared to tread.

He hopes to break a world record with the largest collection of unread books on his bookshelf.

As we enter his cluttered, yet charmingly pretentious library (really, his living room, from what we can see of it), it’s a sight to behold. We are mesmerised by the towering shelves bulging at the seams, crammed with books Frodo can’t even remember the names of. Some of these volumes, we notice, are duplicated two, three, even four times, like they’re breeding more books in various editions and bindings.

A cursory glance will reveal an impressive mix of subjects; there is everything from biographies of long-forgotten pop stars to the collected wisdom of world leaders, Guinness World Record books dating back two decades, poetry anthologies, hundreds of classics, a smattering of contemporary tomes, and three signed Delia Smith books.

Aptly named, Frodo insists his genetic disposition to book hoarding is a legacy passed down through some bookish DNA, courtesy of parents who have refused to comment. In a wave of nostalgia, he recalls his youth, growing up amidst a world of picture-books, hefty journals, huge hardbacks, and even the charming pop-up books that characterised his formative years. Read more

The definitive guide to becoming burnt out

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Is the relentless rat-race becoming too easy for you? Do you need to shake things up a bit, take things up a notch, show that you really love to face challenges? If full blown exhaustion is your goal, follow these eight steps to make sure you really empty the tank of all it has!

  1. Set aside some time to plan your work week on Sunday

What better way to make sure you’re ready for the work week than to go through all of your work tasks before you actually start? If you say no to spending time with family on Sunday, you can use your free, unpaid time off (of which you have two days – plenty!) to get a head start and make sure you’re raring to go at 9am the next day! Surely you can’t expect that planning for work would be part of your work hours?

  1. Say yes to absolutely everything

Can you take on this task? And that task? And this task is too much for your co-worker, can you help, even though you are drowning under the weight of your own task list? Of course you can! If you don’t have time to do it, simply find the time. If you want to be a good employee, you must say yes to everything before someone else does. You might not be compensated, but at least you can look in the mirror and say you did it! Read more

9 Things to do when your date starts rapping in the car

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The evening went amazingly well, even better than your week of fantasies thought it would; each night of charming conversation from the moment you swiped right all culminating to this very moment, the way God intended. A candlelit dinner ending in laughter over wine and a shared tiramisu, a walk along the river with his hand on the small of your back; you exchanged stories about your youth, he told you his mother would just love you. The chemistry is off the charts and you can’t wait to go home all giddy and starry-eyed.

Now you’re in his car. And he’s rapping.

The fire has been blanketed and you’re dryer than his mouth during the five minutes he’s spent delivering rhyming couplets to you and you’re looking for a swift exit. You’re too gobsmacked, too stunned to ask him why, why are you subjecting me to this? so you endure until it’s time to go home and get back on T*nder.

Unfortunately, it will most definitely happen again. Fortunately, you can keep these tips handy for the next time you’re trapped behind the bars of an unwarranted fire-in-the-booth session. Read more

NEWS: Local woman has the courage to watch a film alone

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Town members of Co-dependentville have gathered  to express their admiration and respect for a local lady who was spotted sitting alone at the cinema. Pathetic Patrick, resident of Stalkershire just few miles away, reported the story to us after he was ‘minding [his] own business, and just happened to see her there. And it wasn’t the first time either!’

‘It’s incredible,’ Mother Marlene said, nacho cheese on her dress and tears glazing her eyeballs. ‘I can’t believe how brave she is, it’s really quite an amazing thing to see how far we’ve come in the world, as women, as people. If she doesn’t want to have children so she can continue doing things alone (unlike the rest of us), she should definitely carry on! She should, because she won’t be able to do that after she has kids. Us parents have so much responsibility, it would be nice if someone could take our little wretche– bundles of happiness off our hands so we could have the same opportunities.’ She smiled as she looked down at the three children sitting innocently by her feet, red-cheeked and pouting, each with a mixture of ice cream and Fanta spilled down their front, one with a glob of snot hanging out of his nostril. Marlene seemed to have a handle on her animated children while the man beside her (we later learnt to be her husband) was intently tapping away at his phone, updating his 34 Twitter followers with the criticism they did not ask for.

Across the crowds, a local influencer, Vain Veronica, was spotted, fixing her hair behind her ears as she almost wept into the camera of her phone.
‘For real, she’s just so inspirational! I really hope I can be like her when I’m older; so unbothered about what people think. Her strength is like… really inspiring to us all, I could never in a million years walk into a cinema alone – imagine if someone saw me! They wouldn’t let me live it down, I’d be all over everyone’s socials. The meme pages just wouldn’t shut up about me. I just don’t live the sort of life that lets me do things out of the ordinary, I like to just keep a low-profile as I’m a really private person, you know?’
We didn’t get to speak to Veronica, so we captured her words, verbatim, from her Instagram story. We also learnt, a few hours later, that she went out for dinner with her two close friends, where she ordered three French martinis, a side of prawn dumplings, and another side of the waiter. She got food poisoning, however, sent the waiter home, and spent the night sat on the toilet instead. Our thoughts are with Veronica at this difficult time.

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