Revisiting the favourite literature of our childhood and youth can often bring disappointment. There may be several reasons why this is so. For one thing, reading tastes change as we grow older. The world changes too; ideas about what is acceptable, amusing, moral, and so on, do not remain fixed. That is not to say …
Category: Humour
In Other Worlds
(SF and the Human Imagination) by Margaret Atwood A review In this non-fiction work, dedicated to her fellow sci-fi and fantasy writer, the late Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood talks about the literary influences of her childhood. A series of essays and book reviews of works that have inspired her, In Other Worlds takes the …
Book Review: Measuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann (Die Vermesserung der Welt) This novel is a double biography of two of the giants of science, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, fast-paced and told with irreverent humour. 'It was both odd and unjust, said Gauss .... that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether …
Something Nasty in the Woodshed
I was reminded just the other day on going through my 'Reader' of this piece, which I wrote some time ago. As this is one of my very favourite books, I thought I would re-post my review today! Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons 'You would expect, by all the laws of probability, to find …
Maddaddam
by Margaret Atwood '.... [A]nyone who liked smelling daisies, and having daisies to smell, and eating mercury-free fish, and who objected to giving birth to three-eyed infants via the toxic sludge in their drinking water was a demon-possessed Satanic minion of darkness, hell-bent on sabotaging the American Way and God's Holy Oil, which were one …
Fun With (German) Grammar
Christian Morgenstern - - taking the "P" out of poetry * Now for something totally different! A little while ago, on a visit to Germany, a friend introduced me to a poet whose work seems to defy attempts to translate it into English. His name was Christian Morgenstern (the poet, not the friend) and he …
F is for ……. friendship
Screw Friendship by RG Manse I picked up this book on a recommendation from WordPress. The main protagonist of this story, set in present-day Edinburgh, is Rosy, an eighteen-year-old student at Heriot Watt University. Rosy has never known her biological father, Frank Friendship, but has grown up with her mum Irene and step-dad Findlay. She's …
War – What War?
Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie A Review 'Beer does not taste like itself unless it is chasing a dram of neat whisky down the gullet, preferably two drams.' It is 1943, and war with Hitler is dragging on. The inhabitants of the two islands of Todday, like the other peoples of Great Britain, are suffering …
Jane's History
The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st by Jane Austen [Henry the 8th] ' . . . [his] last wife contrived to survive him, but with difficulty effected it.' [James the 1st] '. . . had some faults, among which & as the most …
Elections and Economics
Numbers to Deceive The unexpected result of the recent British general election set me thinking about statistics, and polls, and how (un)reliable they are - and how people love to lie. I also wondered what Steven Levitt would make of some of the numbers. For those who don't already know, Steven Levitt is a professor …
