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nii-parkes

“Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes

By On 3 December 2011 · 6 Comments

This is a VERY belated post for Ghanaian Literature Week, organised by the wonderful Kinna. I signed up for it back in October, but since then a few things have sucked up a lot of my time and energy.

Anyway I did read a Ghanaian book during the week itself, and it was [...]

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German Literature Month readalong, Effi Briest – part 3

By On 21 November 2011 · 8 Comments

So it’s week 3 of German Literature Month, organised by Lizzie and Caroline. We’re reading Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane.

Why do you think Effi kept Crampas’s letters?

I found it a little implausible at the time, because it was such a huge risk for her to take, and she must have [...]

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German literature month readalong – part 2

By On 14 November 2011 · 6 Comments

It’s the second week of the Effi Briest readalong, hosted by Lizzy and Caroline as part of German Literature Month. Here are Caroline’s questions and my answers.

What strikes you most in this novel, what do like or dislike the most?

One thing I like about the novel is the gradual [...]

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German Literature Month readalong – part 1

By On 5 November 2011 · 12 Comments

I am participating in the readalong of Theodore Fontaine’s Effi Briest as part of German Literature Month. Here are my reactions to the first 15 chapters. Questions posed by Lizzy.   Q1: Welcome to the 1st German Literature Month Readalong!  Had you heard of Theodor Fontane and Effi Briest before now?  What enticed [...]

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“The Problems of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell

By On 31 October 2011 · 8 Comments

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 [...]

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“C” by Tom McCarthy

By On 17 October 2011 · 11 Comments

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 [...]

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“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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“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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“Social Ecology and Communalism” by Murray Bookchin

By On 26 September 2011 · 6 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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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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