Category: Words
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Coming Up for Air
After The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell’s next book was Homage to Catalonia, which was about the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, he published the novel Coming Up for Air, a first person narrative covering a few days in the life, and many years in the memories of George Bowling. Bowling is a 45…
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Wigan Pier
In 1936, British publisher, Victor Gollancz agreed to publish a book by Eric Arthur Blair on the imprint of the Left Book Club. Blair had been educated at Eton, but having failed to secure a University scholarship, had joined the British colonial service as a policeman in Burma. He came back to Europe as resolute…
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Utopian SF
SF readers, check out this essay in the Boston Globe Ideas section, by Joshua Glenn – Back to utopia. It’s mainly about the critic Fredric Jameson, and his views on Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany and utopian ideas in modern sf. More on utopian fiction by Jameson, an essay – The Politics of Utopia.…
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The Last Spike
Wikipedia’s start page lists anniversaries, selected from a main entry listing events on that date in history. For November 7, 2005, the selections from the general November 7 entry include the beginning of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia (it was October on the Julian calendar in Russia), the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge…
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Elementary Particles
The Elementary Particles is a novel in French by Michel Houellebecq, published in 1998. The English translation by Frank Wynne was published in 2000 and released in the UK as Atomised, elsewhere as The Elementary Particles, and is regarded as a brilliant literary and intellectual novel. Houellebecq was awarded the prestigious French literary award, the…
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Crap in the Forest
Forests of the Night by James W. Hall is to be avoided. I picked it up at the library, hoping for a good story to fill in the long weekend. Hall is an experienced writer with many books to his credit, in the suspense and mystery genre. The quotes on the jacket were positive –…
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Master & Commander
A comprehensive historical and literary review of the work of Patrick O’Brien – the Aubrey and Maturin novels in the New Criterion by Robert Messenger. O’Brien is one of my favourite writers. This review emphasizes some of the history. I like the novels in which Maturin has the chance to act on his interests as…
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Early Winter 2004
I read a few mysteries and reviewed them at Blogcritics. “Bad Business” by Robert B. Parker – the latest Spenser, and “The Last Good Day” by Gail Bowen, the latest in the Joanne Kilbourn series. I enjoyed them. “Poisoned Cherries” by Quentin Jardine was trashy. I wrote some music and movie reviews too. Canadian folk…
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Reading List – late October 2004
I finished Larry McMurty’s “Sin Killer” and reviewed it for Blogcritics. I have picked up the next novel in that series, but I haven’t started it. I haven’t finished “The Lives of the Saints”. I went to the River Heights Branch of the library to look for one or two books by Earl Emerson and…