This book is pitched just at the right level for me. I am interested in philosophy, but don’t have enough knowledge of it to be able to understand some of the more complex works. I tried Wittgenstein recently, for instance, and it didn’t take. But this short introduction to some of the basic problems of [...]
Archive | October, 2011
The Secret Life of Pronouns, etc…
My Dad sent me an interesting article from New Scientist magazine recently called “The Secret Life of Pronouns”. It’s based on a book of the same name by James W. Pennebaker. Now the article was fascinating (I’ll get to it in a minute), but I just wanted to put in a quick plea first. Please, [...]
Congratulations, Julian Barnes!
So he won his Booker after all, the man who’s been shortlisted three times but never won before, and who once famously referred to the prize as “posh bingo”. To be honest I’m a bit sick of the Booker by now – there seems to have been more publicity about it than usual, or maybe [...]
“C” by Tom McCarthy
Well, that was a bit different. Don’t come to this book expecting plot, character development or anything like that. The main character, Serge, is like a conduit for signals from the radio that his father is experimenting with when he’s born and that he himself develops a fascination with as he gets older. He’s not [...]
New Booker rival announced
I was interested to see today that a new Literature Prize is being established, possibly from next year, with the intention to rival the Man Booker Prize. I wasn’t aware of the controversy about the Booker apparently prioritising readability over artistic achievement. The two shortlisted books I’ve read so far have certainly had plenty of [...]
“Half Blood Blues” by Esi Edugyan
This book has it all: a compelling story, a great setting (black jazz musicians in Nazi Germany and occupied Paris), lyrical prose that perfectly captures the voice of the bass-player narrator, Baltimore-born Sid Griffiths, while also weaving in elements of the music it describes. It has jealousy, betrayal, a nice twist in the ending, and [...]
Guardian feature on independent bookshops
I’ve lamented the decline of independent bookshops on this site in the past, so was pleased to see a Guardian special section on independent bookshops last weekend. It’s available online – I was particularly interested in the listing of all the independent bookshops in London, but there are also similar articles for the other areas [...]
“The Flanders Road” by Claude Simon
Not an easy read, this. The style is experimental, with prose that mimics the way we think rather than the way we’d normally tell a story. So there’s a lot of jumping around from memory to memory by association rather than logic or chronology. The sentences are often long and winding, with digressions and then [...]
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The 20 best Caribbean book blogs
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Liebster Award reloaded
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The cafe killer
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The Kindle Report: does it beat paper?
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The next big thing…
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We could take a train, be miles away by morning…
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Ten years ago: Voluntary poverty in New York City
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Some interviews
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Giveaway: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2003
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How to Improve your Foreign Language Immediately
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Andrew Blackman: Hi Geo Good to hear from you. I love the way yo...
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Leslie Finkel: Andrew, I appreciated your review and the comme...
