You see lots of crazy stuff on social media. My Facebook feed (and I am a relative newcomer to FB) alternates between regaling me with AI generated stories of family conflict which approach Greek tragedy in their proportions (who would have thought spending one kid’s college fund on another or wearing white to your stepsister’s …
Tag Archives: books
On Celebrating Bloomsday In Style
I suppose my first exposure to the writings of James Joyce was similar to that of most other people of my generation, through the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back To School. In it, the hot English professor played by Annette Kellerman walks into the lecture theatre on the first day and starts reciting from Molly …
Will George RR Martin Do A Robert Jordan On His Readers?
I do like ‘High Fantasy’, having read The Lord Of The Rings for the first time at age 11. Back in my teenage years, many fantasy series had comments on their cover referencing Tolkien to encourage people to buy those lesser works. For example, The Sword Of Shannara had ‘For those looking for something to …
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Not Everyone Likes Rock N Roll….
I just finished reading Land Of The Long Weekend, the late Ronald Conway’s 1978 critique of 1970s Australian society, culture and consumerism. It was heavy going. Whilst I am quite well read, Conway was even more read, in the way of an autodidact, and fond of quoting his interpretations of many famed authors and philosophers …
The Father Christmas Letters
I suppose a few of my primary school teachers were potentially great, but flawed. My grade five teacher (let’s call her Miss T) was a quite accomplished, well read, and well travelled woman who taught us how to knit, to play a bit of piano, and lots on nutrition. Unfortunately, she was not very good …
The Stultification Of Literature: The Real Threat From Artificial Intelligence
Not that anyone can tell too closely from my library (which is sorted in what I call ‘autobiographical order’), but I have a marked preference for the works of Anthony Trollope over those of Charles Dickens. I am pretty sure that I have read all of his novels and most of his short stories, although …
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Rise Of The Street Libraries
I’ve always been a bit of a Tom Wolfe fan, back since I read The Right Stuff at age 16. The movie, which was made around that time, remains one of my all time favourite films (indeed, you might have read something I wrote here a few years ago comparing the movie to the new …
Reddit – The Rebirth of Greek Tragedy as a Social Media Trainwreck
It took me quite a while to ‘get’ King Lear. Whilst familiar with Macbeth from high school English class, Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest from having read them independently in my teenage years [my initial copy of the Complete Works – I now own four (all unsurprisingly gifted to me) plus separate paperbacks of …
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When Steampunk Collides With Jeeves and Oscar Wilde – A Brief Review of Forrest Leo’s ‘The Gentleman’
I usually think that certain novels or songs could only be created in the era that such genres thrived in. Jazz music is from the Jazz Age (ie the roaring 20s), and Disco is very 1970s. Regency novels are very, well, Regency. And can you imagine Dickens in any time and place but the Industrial …
Lost For Words! 