First, some background: last year I wrote a review of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. I had a lot of comments from people who didn’t understand the ending, and since then I’ve been inundated with people searching for things like “Sense of an Ending explained”. I felt bad, because my original review [...]
Archive | Reading RSS feed for this section
Where are the Women?
Palestinian Women by Fatma Kassem This book is a series of accounts by Palestinian women who lived through the ‘Nakba’ of 1948, in which they lost their homes and were either forced to leave the newly-formed state of Israel or were internally displaced within it. Except that it’s not. Not really. We don’t really hear [...]
Today I’m at Read.Learn.Write
Yes, I’m back! Fresh from my guest posting debut yesterday on The Undercover Soundtrack, I’m over at Read.Learn.Write today, talking about Why Reading and Writing are Inseparable. In the post, I talk about how I used to read widely but passively, just consuming books rather than truly engaging with them. And then I started this blog, [...]
“The Brothers” by Asko Sahlberg
The Brothers, by Finnish writer Asko Sahlberg, is the first in Peirene Press’s series of the “Small Epic”. The publisher also draws comparisons with Shakespeare and William Faulkner. No pressure, then. Surprisingly the book did not disappoint. It’s only 122 pages but does pack in a lot of story, including among other things warring brothers, family [...]
“Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
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 an excellent [...]
German Literature Month readalong, Effi Briest – part 3
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 known what the [...]
German literature month readalong – part 2
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 building of tension through [...]
German Literature Month readalong – part 1
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 you to readalong with [...]
“The Problems of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell
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 [...]
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, [...]
-
“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending, explained
-
Introducing “A Virtual Love”, coming to a bookshop near you in Spring 2013
-
Finding some inspiration
-
Beauty is a sleeping cat
-
Test of stamina at Bim Literary Festival, day two
-
Earl Lovelace at Bim Literary Festival
-
Austin Clarke at Bim Literary Festival
-
Learning from Derek Walcott: Bim Literary Festival, day one
-
Great opportunity for unpublished UK writers
-
litlove: You did better than I would have done - three hour...
-
-
Andrew Blackman: Ah, thanks a lot Vishy! It's interesting that you...
-
-
