Reviews and other ponderings
While listening to Conrad’s ‘Typhoon’, the other day, I found myself getting quite annoyed by the carefully placed ‘subtexts’ of the story. I used to view all literature as a puzzle to be solved, and gradually worked up to more and more cryptic puzzles. T.S. Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’ was an early favourite, with all of its [...]
Much harder than I thought. One of the many problems (leaving aside the physical difficulty of making it sound natural) is the temptation to try an cram in too many meanings: the guy was obsessed with puns. When he says ‘made’ he also, on another level (usually a more rude level) meant ‘maid’. ‘Sun’ means [...]
Get it hereA short novel I will remember for its epic description of a, well, a typhoon, if you must know. The story is involves a very Conradian situation – a white man showing more concern for his racial ‘inferiors’ than is considered seemly by his fellow europeans. And he manages to work in lots [...]
Get it here.I was left a little dissatisfied with this book. I think my frustration was founded on one main problem: Is it fact or fiction? A nagging part of me felt that this shouldn’t matter, besides, these things are subjective. But the author protests many times that it’s all factual. And if the eventual [...]
Close readers of the LibriVox forum will know that I have volunteered to do a solo recording of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I have always loved these poems, and know several of them by heart. This is a cause of great grief to my friends and family, who object to someone rattling off fourteen line stanzas without [...]
Get it hereThis is a dystopian science-fiction novel. That’s something of a genre nowadays, but I get the feeling that this an original. The problem now is that one is constantly reminded of the many followers who borrowed its ideas. Within no time you get the idea – no names, just numbers, horrid ruling class [...]
I just finished this about ten minutes ago, so my impressions are rather unformed. I can, however, say this. It is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Really, I hear you cry, so a historic work of world literature is worth reading in your opinion? Stop the press.I know, I know. Still – I was expecting something much [...]
I am listening to ‘War and Peace’ Book 1 at the moment. I was surprised that the book was originally divided into fifteen books. Dig a little deeper, and you will find that it was originally published in four volumes. This got me thinking about how sometimes the ghost of old technology can linger, and [...]
Get it here.What an odd book. Science-fiction, in its original, unalloyed form. Today, science-fiction assumes that our heros stride about in an artificially aged space ship, looking anti-heroic. We are not invited to ask: how does the ship travel from star to star? How is it that they are not floating? If travelling faster than [...]