Orcs and Oulipo – TLS piece by Peter Hoskin on Fighting Fantasy
There’s an affectionate piece on Fighting Fantasy books on the TLS website by Peter Hoskin (I am not sure if “TLS Online” means it will not appear in the print…
Category: commonplace book
“Something terrifying and majestic at the same time” – From “Broken April’, Ismail Kadare
Without the knocking at the door, everything would be so different that at times he was afraid to think of it, and he consoled himself with the notion that perhaps…
“occultist, explorer, traveler, cannibal, and journalist”
Reading F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up I came across a reference to a William Seabrook: William Seabrook in an unsympathetic book tells, with some pride and a movie ending, of…
Lough Neagh sand in Croke Park and Stormont – An Irishman’s Diary, January 2008
Came across an interesting Irishman’s Diary on Lough Neagh by Paul Clements from 2008 . Some highlights: Lough Neagh was famed in the past for its winter floods and many people…
“an expert on Brecht, the law of contract, the price of light bulbs and how to stack loo rolls”
The full text of Henry Hitchings‘ review of Nicholas Hytner‘s memoir in the current TLS isn’t available online, but there is just enough to include this gem: “The artistic director of a…
Happy World Listening Day!
It is World Listening Day. I am a bit leery of too many confected “Days” However, anything that encourages listening is itself to be encouraged. From the World Listening Project…
“our work, though perhaps smart, was by no means wise”
The geodesic dome was the brainchild of Buckminster Fuller, a polymath perhaps noted best for the number of his ideas than the successful execution of any of them. Geodesic domes are…
Some extracts from “The Woman Who Waited”, Andrei Makine
‘She is a woman palpably meant for happiness (if only purely physical happiness, mere bodily well-being) and yet so casually, it seems, she has chosen solitude, loyalty to an absent…
Séamus Sweeney 