Irvine Welsh reviews Murakami Ryū's latest novel in today's Guardina - "The dustjacket of Ryu Murakami's latest novel, Audition, somewhat pompously describes the author as a "renaissance man for the modern age"." Except that I saw Audition, the film based on this novel, some point around 2000 and it came out in about 1999. It's based on a novel by ( Read more... )

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/quiz/2008/dec/09/oliver-postgate-hot-topic

5/5 - easy peasy.

Interesting, despite being on the Grauniad bookblog - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/dec/08/books-sam-jordisonRead more... )

Is the books world short-changing its bright young women?

Do men have an unfair advantage in our literary prize shortlists?

A variation on why don't women write books with big ideas (to which the answer is, I suspect, if they do it doesn't get counted as a big idea) which also then takes in why don't women present big documentaries ( Read more... )

I subscribe via lj to two Guardian feeds: their general largely news one, and the books one. I tend to right click to follow up a story, and it fills me in with material I might not catch on their hideously designed webpage and certainly not see on the book pages (the blog seeming to consist of self-evident manifest bollox written by trolls of one ( Read more... )

Charlie Brooker gets it:

So it's here at last. The dawn of the dumb has broken in earnest. Two mistakes occur - first Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross overstep the mark with an ill-advised bit of juvenilia, then someone decides to broadcast it. Two listeners complained, but that's by the by: it shouldn't have gone out. But then the Daily Mail - not ( Read more... )

So I'm googling for images for a lecture on comedy and sexism, when I stumble across:

The Nympho Librarian"The prim miss took off more than her mask of respectability behind the stacks ... to any man who asked"

And that led me to:

The Image of Librarians in Pornography"Librarians are always concerned about their image, and much attention has ( Read more... )

Where are the books by women with big ideas?

Books like Freakonomics, defining significant cultural or economic trends with a punchy title, never seem to be produced by women. But why?
Apparently Naomi Klein and Susan Faludi don't count; nor Greer, Russ, Millett, Carter, Woolf, Wollstonecraft, Rowbottom, Paglia, Rubin, Dworkin, Gilbert and Gubar, ( Read more... )

Closing tabs:

Iain Sinclair has been banned

Is there an equivalent for Venus?

Some online sf

Blotchmen by Kevin Cannon

I still well up when I realise he's gone - I am so soppy these days.

The joke's on me
Humphrey Lyttelton was a born comedian - but even he had a script. Iain Pattinson the man who wrote the gags for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, recalls his razor-sharp wit