A Chinese Garden of Serenity by Hung Tzu-ch’eng
My friend Vishy gave me A Chinese Garden of Serenity for Christmas. It was such a nice surprise to open the package from India and…
Halcyon Days
The phrase “halcyon days” has always meant nothing more to me than general nostalgia. Since moving to Crete, and more particularly since…
A Story in Two Pictures
Look what my landlord brought home this morning… And then I saw this…
“Rogue” sociology?: Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh
What a difference a title makes, or even a subtitle. The version I read, the US edition which I received as a…
Paul Robeson: A Watched Man by Jordan Goodman
If you’ve ever wondered just how far government agencies will go to keep us safe from ideas that they find dangerous, this…
2013 reading highlights
I’m always a bit suspicious of those “Best books of 2013” articles. I read lots of them anyway, and carefully note down all the…
Interactive apps for books: Q&A with author Vince Kamp
Personally, I like reading traditional, app-free books. I like to immerse myself in a story, taking a break from all the pictures…
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
OK, how good is this opening paragraph? My father still lives back in the road past the weir in the cottage I…
The limits of automatic recommendation systems
I was reading an article in NewScientist the other day about a system devised by academics at Royal Holloway, University of London,…