Reviews and other ponderings
In all matters, it is generally a good idea to follow the advice of one’s spouse. So, Great Expectations it is. I have always loved Dickens, but discovered rather late that he published all his books serially. So, three chapters or so represented a fortnightly subscription. And he wrote them as he went along, reacting [...]
Get it hereI saw the film based on this book back in 1988, when I was 20 years old. Perhaps you remember it: Julian Sands got to plant the most romantic kiss in history on Helena Bonham-Carter. The fact that Julian’s career didn’t quite reach the highest of heights may well be put down to [...]
Get them hereI have finally finished recording Shakespeare’s Sonnets. It took me about four times longer to complete than I expected. It generally took between three quarters of an hour and an hour to get ten usable sonnets. And I mostly gave up trying to improve the reading, rather than feeling that it could not [...]
Get it here.A very entertaining romp – which starts slowly, and builds up to a great conclusion. I had expected a light, sword-play filled pot-boiler, and was quite surprised when the first few chapters seemed to suggest a philosophical novel, pondering the nature of political power. This deeper aspect reappears at odd moments in the [...]
In my review of Ulysses I referred to it being a tribal book. By that I meant that one’s membership of a certain type of literary tribe is indicated by one’s opinion on it.If you follow this link, it will lead you to page on the BBC, where Ulysses is discussed by all comers, after [...]
Get it here. Well – has the emperor got new clothes, or no clothes? I don’t know. Perhaps its a skintight bodystocking. Its hard to read this book with an open mind. It has become such a tribal piece of literature that it seems that you can either claim it as the greatest novel in [...]
Title says it all. Nearly got me, but the end is in sight.