Category: Books
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The Great Gatsby
What’s behind the enduring appeal of The Great Gatsby? The lives and dreams of its star-crossed lovers? Or the fact that it reads like a dream? Reading it again, I was utterly entranced, such is F Scott Fitzgerald’s gift as a writer. He can show you beautiful people and places…
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A man’s reach should exceed his grasp: Browning
Poor Andrea del Sarto. A successful Italian painter who was overshadowed by his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. We admire the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael while Andrea del Sarto is almost forgotten. Yet that is what makes him more like most of us. We may not…
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Adlestrop, Edward Thomas and Sweet Tooth
I had to look up this poem after reading about it in Ian McEwan’s novel, Sweet Tooth. Adlestrop, a poem by Edward Thomas, comes up in a moment of intimacy between the heroine, Serena Frome, and her lover, Tom Haley, a writer.
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Sweet Tooth: A love story
Ian McEwan, author of Atonement and Amsterdam, which won the Booker prize in 1998, knows how to begin a story. Sweet Tooth has your attention from the get-go:
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Lionel Asbo: What the dickens, Martin Amis!
Martin Amis is a brilliant writer and he really lets it rip in his novel, Lionel Asbo. The colourful characters could be descended straight from Charles Dickens. Amis writes about the modern English chav with the same gusto as Dickens wrote about Victorian low life.
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From Falstaff to Elvis Presley
This is why I love the World Wide Web. It took me from Falstaff to Elvis Presley.
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1963: Annus Mirabilis, Beatles!
I saw a video of a concert given by the Beatles in 1963 which made me think, oh my God, 50 years have gone by since then, some of the young fans singing along with their idols at the concert may no longer even be around any more, but gone…
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Joseph Anton: Rushdie on Rushdie
I remember watching on CNN the World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001. I could not believe my eyes as the two planes commandeered by al-Qaeda terrorists hit the twin towers, bringing them down in tongues of fire, clouds of smoke. Nearly 3,000 people were killed and retribution followed…
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Margaret Thatcher and the books of her time
I blogged about Margaret Thatcher and the music of her time and have seen quite a few articles since then about the British pop music scene of that era. One should recall the books, too. It was a grand time for booklovers. P.G. Wodehouse died in 1975, but one could…
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