Andrew Blackman
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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 [...]
Nice list of summer reads posted by largeheartedboy, linking to all the “books you must read this summer” lists. I like lists, so a list of lists is even better. It’s a US-centred list – wonder if someone has done a similar roundup of recommendations from UK newspapers and reviews. Maybe I should do [...]
Kinga at the Book Snob has a great post listing the 21 best sites about reading and writing. Along with well-known ones like Goodreads and London Review of Books, there are some that were new to me and look very interesting, like The Believer. The post also made me realise how many places [...]
I don’t often admit defeat when I’m reading. I tend to slog away to the end of a book, even if I’m not enjoying it much. Partly this is stubbornness, partly pride, but partly also a belief that most books contain something worthwhile.
Recently, though, I had to admit defeat. More specifically, I had [...]
I paid a visit to the excellent Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green recently. The owners put out an appeal to everyone to buy an extra book from the shop to help them survive and pay off their bank loan. So I went along, and bought a couple of books, A History of [...]
So all the newspapers have been publishing their end-of-year roundups. Some even started back in November. Here’s why I won’t be doing my own little roundup of the best books of 2010.
Basically, it’s because I haven’t read very many of them.
Don’t get me wrong, I do read quite a lot. You can [...]
I was on a panel recently at Whitechapel Idea Store with Alex Wheatle and Mark Piggott, discussing “London: fact and fiction”. When I heard a week in advance what the topic was going to be, I thought about all the famous London books I hadn’t read, starting with Alex Wheatle’s and taking in other big [...]
Saw a good post on the Guardian website about “lucky dip” reading – buying a book you know absolutely nothing about. It makes the valid point that people who shop online are less likely to stumble on new books than they would if they were browsing a bookshop. That’s certainly been my experience – [...]
Saw this very sad snippet of news in the 29 August edition of Freedom magazine:
At least 73 migrants have died at sea after ships repeatedly passed them by despite their being in difficulty after their dinghy ran out of fuel. Commercial vessels have largely dropped the sea code of helping such vessels if they’re [...]
Sorry, this has nothing to do with reading, or writing, or anything else this blog is supposed to be about. I just read an amazing piece about bees in the latest issue of the New Internationalist, and before I throw the magazine I wanted to record some amazing facts.
To make a pound of honey, [...]
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- Kommunal ekosocialism | Svensson on “Social Ecology and Communalism” by Murray Bookchin
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- Kwadwo on On the Holloway Road – free sample
- Andrew Blackman on “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
