Apart from watching that movie, most of the day I have been reading and have finished yet another paperback, a novel this time, but it was relatively short , unlike the one I am reading now, which is Margaret Atwood's “The Blind Assassin” (currently at page 92 in this 600 plus page book ( Read more... )

I had not realised until this morning that the clocks went back overnight. At least we gained an extra hour in bed. I though it was ten when i woke up but in fact it was only nine. So i turned on the radio to hear the morning news and the selected reviews of the newspapers (BBC Radio 4) ,then i switched to Radio Four Extra to listen to a piece ( Read more... )

A couple of recent literary deaths this week, the first being Harper Lee, and my particular favourite Umberto Eco, who wrote the splendid "The Name of The Rose". I have a couple of his books, both of which i  need to read. I have already read that famous novel which became a film and "Foucault's Pendulum" , and thus , will have to start reading ( Read more... )

I just watched the DVD A Most Wanted Man based on the novel by John LeCarre set in Hamburg Germany. A fantastic thriller that i totally recommend.

Here is a You Tube feature on that book with the author in Hamburg. There is also a version on this on the special features of the DVD.

Click to view

For Kurt Vonnegut fans here is the author reading from some of his novels.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/hear-kurt-vonnegut-read-slaughterhouse-five-cats-cradle-other-novels.html

I found this on You Tube concerning the novel Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It gives another aspect to the novel to help me come to terms of what it is about.

Click to view

Is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" a masterpiece of art? Or is it, as Chinua Achebe persuasively argues, a racist and deplorable book? What are we to make of Kurtz's dying words, "The ( Read more... )

S.J. Parris "Sacrilege : A Novel" (Doubleday)


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We have now reached the penultimate day and the lady who was absent yesterday is back and from speaking to her, i found out that she had an outpatient visit at the hospital. As for, George, the guy whom i have been helping with his spelling, is still coming back to me to work out the spelling of words. He is s beginning to see the light when i ( Read more... )

Took some cold tablets, just in case it gets to become a full blown cold, and thus stem it before it does ( Read more... )

Today i did another covert visit to a brand of travel agents. It was a cold very foggy morning when i left this morning but after i alighted from the bus the sun was out and it fell quite warm. Picked up a few cheap books for fifty pence each. Two novels, a biography and weird science..


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