Posts by Carol Stewart
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Hard to disagree, AC Young.
Every time I watch the Parliament coverage on TV, I am struck by just how awful John Key is. He doesn't seem to have a strategy in Question Time beyond laying every current problem at the door of the previous administration and this surely can't carry him much further, it's pretty lame already. -
Is there any way Don Brash could be forcibly required to attend Jim Hansen's lecture?
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from Tom Lehrer:
Who needs a hobby, like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: Re-reading Lady Chatterley -
Very well said (Russell, that is). Many have disagreed, but I thought Obama played it nicely in his speech with his focus on the 9/11 victims and the sober tone with no hint of triumphalism. Although plenty of that certainly followed.
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Thanks Jackie for that suggestion. I have Falling Man sitting on my bedside table (snapped up at a school book fair, of all places) so will move him up the queue. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is now on my list too.
Jolisa - thank you very much for your interesting thoughts. I quite enjoyed Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and was interested to note that it's on the EngIish syllabus for my teenage nephews who go to school in Perth, WA (Perth Modern, amazing school). More, I think, as an example of postmodernism than anything else. The manic tone seemed strangely appropriate in the context of the novel being about a nine year old boy trying to make sense of it all.
I mentioned Jonathan Raban's books before - I just finished reading Surveillance, a novel set in Seattle in 2006 in an atmosphere of ramped-up fear, paranoia, spying and prying, all in the name of homeland security. It's a very subtle exploration of these themes, I think. One of the reviewers reckoned he'd reach for it first if putting together a 2006 time capsule.Must get back to work now, but will quickly note that Kim Hill is interviewing David Mitchell on her show tomorrow, at 11:05. I didn't realise that he is himself a stammerer and is going to talk about that - he described it so, so well in Black Swan Green. (now, that was a case study in how to do a young narrator).
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What a pleasant thing to be able to spend money on.
And now you are in my saved payees list. Just saying. -
I wonder if you've got any thoughts on the post 9/11 literature, Jolisa?Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely loud and incredibly close would be one example; also the writings of Jonathan Raban over in Seattle, both fictional and non. You probably know of lots more.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to Kracklite,
Ah, turtles, well now, one of my favourite writers, Ursula LeGuin, uses them as a motif in one of my favourite novels, The Lathe of Heaven. They have a wonderful absurdity, and yet, ahem, dignity in their slow grace
Ditto with one of my favourite writers, Russell Hoban, and his lovely book Turtle Diary.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
If there is a book that makes a better case for why we shouldn't think in terms of humanism vs the sciences than The Periodic Table, I have yet to encounter it.
Just so. I think it may be my favourite book ever.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Incidentally, and speaking of humanism, science, physics, one of the most wonderful books ever to have been through a printing press is the transcript of the conversations between Primo Levi and physicist Tullio Regge, which I see to my surprise has been translated into English even.
Thanks Giovanni. Anything by Primo Levi has my undivided attention.