by Thomas Mann A Review 'Cases of recovery were rare; eighty out of a hundred of those infected died, and in a horrid way, for the disease struck with savagery and often presented itself as the most severe "dry form".' Usually regarded by scholars and critics as a novella, Death in Venice has the characteristics …
Category: Book Review
Homo Deus
A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari WARNING! - This book contains spoilers - spoilers of liberal humanism, and possibly of the whole human experience. 'People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.' Harari's earlier book Sapiens challenged us …
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 'We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.' Around two-and-a-half million years ago in the course of evolutionary history, something remarkable happened, something with stupendous consequences for this planet on which we all live. A quite unremarkable ape-like creature …
Not all universes are the same (3)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman "While the beasts of prey, Come from caverns deep, View'd the maid asleep." These three lines by William Blake from his poem The Little Girl Lost preface the first chapter of The Amber Spyglass, the final volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Aficiandos of Blake will know …
Not all universes are the same (2)
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman The Subtle Knife is the second book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. At the end of Northern Lights, we left Lyra on the bridge from her universe to another. Now the author leaves us in suspense to introduce a new protagonist. Will Parry is a twelve-year-old boy …
Not all universes are the same (1)
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman ‘Lyra looked, and there was no mistake. Pantalaimon clutched at her, became a wildcat, hissed in hatred, because looking out with curiosity was the beautiful dark-haired head of Mrs Coulter, with her golden daemon on her lap.’ The main protagonist in Northern Lights is Lyra, a twelve-year-old girl who lives …
The Dispossessed
by Ursula Le Guin A Review 'Kimoe stared at him, shocked out of politeness. "But the loss of -- of everything feminine -- of delicacy -- and the loss of masculine self-respect -- You can't pretend, surely, in your work, that women are your equals? In physics, in mathematics, in the intellect? You can't pretend …
After Twilight
The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer A Review What does a writer do after hitting the jackpot? Well, in this case, she does something new. After taking the teen market by storm in the mid noughties, scooping awards and breaking records (and dawn) with both books and film adaptations of her Twilight Saga, Stephenie Meyer has …
Ghosts in the Atom
Review Schrödinger's Kittens by John Gribbin 'The special theory of relativity tells us that it is impossible to run alongside a beam of light at the same speed the light is moving; relative to some chosen inertial frame, you can in principle get your own velocity up as close to the speed of light as …
Best Westerns
The Open Road by M.M. Holaday [I am grateful to the author for sending me an advance reading copy of her novel, to be published at the beginning of April] ‘ “It’s so big out there, it’s like the ocean. The sky is huge and the land goes on forever. You’ve got to see it …
Magda Green Books 