Sticks and stones

Sticking up for the stick
Where are the sticks? The archaeological record is incomplete

Wood decays, so sticks haven’t reached through the archaeological record quite as successfully as stones have to tell us how they were fashioned, and how used, by our early ancestors. There must have been sharp sticks for poking stuff, clubby sticks for bashing things, hooked sticks for back scratching — or indeed pulling a fruit-laden branch within the easy orbit of a languorous arm.

ALEXANDER LANGLANDS provides a whistle-stop tour of the Stone Age from the Paleo- to-Neolithic in The Stick Is an Unsung Hero of Human Evolution: Stone’s silent sister in the archaeological record.  Not only does he lament the absence of the stick, but also the fading knowledge and skills needed to hand-craft stick-oriented tooling, such as fishing rods and flint-tipped spears.

SMART Giveaway on Goodreads

Prolibris is marking the year since the publication of SMART with a giveaway on Goodreads.  There are 5 paperback copies to be won, and the giveaway runs through April to May 7th.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Smart by Joel Mentmore

Smart

by Joel Mentmore

Giveaway ends May 07, 2017.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

IndieReader Discovery Awards Verdict

“SMART delivers in droves—Mentmore writes terrific prose and dialogue that truly dazzles.”

 

Eat my dust
The Race is On

 

IndieReader Discovery Awards are announced towards the end of May, but the panel are publishing pre-award verdicts – here’s their verdict in full:

 

“Joel Mentmore’s SMART, clever, quick, and pithy, is the rare novel that is fantastically contemporary, a nightmare of technology that is doubtless chilling even weeks after reading. A high-tech thriller that is both a mystery of heart-stopping suspense and the tale of a perplexing, ambivalent male friendship, SMART delivers in droves—Mentmore writes terrific prose and dialogue that truly dazzles.”

 

Review of SMART and Interview with IndieReader

Here’s the link to the interview I did last year with IndieReader, which they kindly published over the holiday period.

Joel Mentmore on finding inspiration in the Early European History section of the British Museum when his smartphone died

 

I  was a particularly tardy blogger towards the end of last year and realise that I probably haven’t posted the link to the terrific review of SMART which IndieReader published earlier last year.

Indiereader’s final verdict:

SMART is an intriguing and thoughtful exploration of smart technology, of human tools and their effect, real and potential, on human society, wrapped up in a clever and entertaining story.