I have a special fondness for the stories of wayward—particularly British—ex-pats getting into trouble in foreign places that they fail to completely understand. Often these protagonists (sometimes the authors themselves) are heavy drinkers, stumbling through essentially existential narratives. Graham Greene would be the quintessential example of these kind of writers, but also Anthony Burgess—particularly when he writes about [...]
As my final post of 2010 I am once again presenting my (now 14-year-old) son’s top-10 list of reads for the past year—with only minimal editing and no comment. The only thing I can say about Harry’s list this year is that I’m overwhelmed with pride at both the adventurous nature of his reading habits (consider [...]
I was going to let it pass without comment, but the knowledge has been nagging me, insistently, with a need to share. Yesterday marked the anniversary of the release, in December of 1979, of the greatest rock-n-roll album of all time: The Clash‘s London Calling. I’ve told this story before, but it’s my party and [...]
Time, once again, for an entirely subjective and somewhat erratic list of favourite reads—this one for the year 2010. This time, I’m trying a little experiment. I’m often uncomfortable with hawking stuff through this blog—an admittedly awkward trait for someone attempting, in some fashion, to be a bookseller. But, just to see how it turns [...]
Since it made my top-10 of the decade, Richard K Morgan’s outrageous noir-fantasy The Steel Remains has continued to occupy a small, dark corner of the back of my brain—largely because I learned, shortly after reading the novel, that it was the first in a planned trilogy tentatively identified as A Land Fit for Heroes. Normally I’m not a huge fan [...]
Damien G. Walter, in a recent Guardian blog post, attacks what he sees as a failure on the part of literary fiction—with its apparent obsession with realism (or its complete disconnection through postmodernism)—to confront the “real” issues of our times; he quotes J. G. Ballard: “We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass-merchandising, advertising, [...]
Over this past summer, I set myself the task of finally reading Herman Melville‘s popular doorstop Moby Dick. I’m pleased to say I completed it, but not until the end of the season. Halfway through the novel I began alternating my reading with comics as a way of pacing myself. So, the obvious question I [...]
Alberto Manguel‘s excellent article on The Wind in the Willows encouraged me to finally read a classic that had somehow eluded me in childhood; despite being one of my sister’s favourites. This is odd because of the overall influence my sister had on my early reading. I always looked up to her and picked up [...]
As part of my ongoing attempt to become more literate in classic science fiction I recently finished a couple of books by quirky legend Philip José Farmer: the seminal To Your Scattered Bodies Go and the odd but charming Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life. TYSBG is the first in Farmer’s Riverworld books. In it, we [...]
I love lists and I’m clearly not the only one. A man who has earned a significant reputation for his understanding of intra- and intercultural intertextuality, Professor Umberto Eco, has even written a substantial book on humanity’s obsession with lists—in fact, he argues for the transcendence of list making. I love lists because they are [...]
