Posts by: Andrew Blackman

“Half Blood Blues” by Esi Edugyan

By On 10 October 2011 · 13 Comments

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, [...]

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biggreenbookshop

Guardian feature on independent bookshops

By On 6 October 2011 · 7 Comments

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 [...]

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“The Flanders Road” by Claude Simon

By On 3 October 2011 · 14 Comments

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 [...]

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Giveaway!

By On 29 September 2011 · 9 Comments

I haven’t done much writing this week. I’ve been helping my wife launch her new photography website, fotodisiac. I have learned more about CSS, mySQL databases, wp-config files and the like than I ever wanted to!

Anyway it is finally up and running now, and to celebrate, she is giving away a book, [...]

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“Social Ecology and Communalism” by Murray Bookchin

By On 26 September 2011 · 7 Comments

This book is a good, short introduction to the ideas of Murray Bookchin. He draws on anarchist and socialist thought to come up with a model of social organisation that will be more fair not only to humans but also to the planet.

Bookchin’s thesis is that capitalism has reached crisis point, both socially [...]

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10 hours to live – please act now!

By On 21 September 2011 · 7 Comments

Troy Davis is almost certainly innocent, but he is still scheduled to be executed at 7pm EST today (midnight UK time). There is no physical evidence against him – he was convicted of murder purely on the testimony of witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted their testimony. Several said they were coerced by [...]

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JulianBarnes

“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes

By On 19 September 2011 · 28 Comments

I bought a signed copy at Highgate Bookshop, took it home and read it from cover to cover without stopping. That’s partly because it’s a short book (150 pages, with fairly large type and liberal use of white space) but also because it really drew me in and made me want to read more. [...]

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New review for On the Holloway Road

By On 15 September 2011 · 10 Comments

On the Holloway Road picked up a good review from Emma over at Book Around the Corner yesterday. I don’t normally tell you about every review, but I wanted to highlight this one particularly because of a beautiful description of my main characters, Jack and Neil. Emma compares them to Sal and Dean in [...]

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Lists

By On 12 September 2011 · 15 Comments

I love lists. So many books, so many thoughts and ideas condensed into a single, well-ordered list. I came across a good one over the summer, listing the top 105 works of 20th century Arabic literature. Wanted to link to it to remind myself where it is, and also because I thought it might [...]

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“Maybe This Time” by Alois Hotschnig

By On 7 September 2011 · 12 Comments

I found this a very unsettling collection of short stories. I mean that in a good way. Being unsettled is often the prelude to thinking about things in a new way, and to me that’s one of the most important functions of literature.

The stories are very varied in style and content, but many [...]

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