Okay, there is the SRS CANON as taught in EngLit classes.

Then there are books which are still read and enjoyed and may never have been (or only temporarily) out of print since they first appeared, but somehow do not make it into that league - if they do get set on courses it will be as Proletarian Novel (Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered ( Read more... )

Was just reading a review of the new biography of Olivia Manning, in which the (male) reviewer describes Guy Pringle in the Balkan and Levant Trilogies as an 'essentially comic character'.

I ask myself how many women readers feel that Guy strikes a comedic note, or whether, like me, they are too busy cringing in horror at the thought of being ( Read more... )

A number of things spotted recently made me think, wow, these people have never read any classic Golden Age SF, have they:

Seen somewhere, claim that children no longer need to learn arithmetic, they can just ask their smartphones. Story by ?Asimov set in distant future where machines do all the calculating. An ordinary joe-type guy is discovered ( Read more... )

Because the Berks is about to start and I'm not sure how much time and spare energy I'll have for turning any of these into any more coherent and thought-through posts.

***

Class in sff. How very basic is usually is. May get some kind of nuance of hierarchieis within court-type spaces but only within that limited group. In rural-ish settings, ( Read more... )

O dear, I am not sure I want to watch the new (3-episode - how can you do it in 3 episodes of an hour each, in 1974 it was 13 hour long episodes) TV adaptation of South Riding.

I will concede that I am profoundly prejudiced against Andrew Davies's 'new' version for reasons enumerated here in Mark Bostridge's excellent and respectful article about ( Read more... )

I have a niggling feeling I may have posted to this effect before, but can't actually trace it if I did.

Was thinking, pursuant to recently reading Wigs on the Green, about books one reads because one has encountered them mentioned in other books. It's not just that I first encountered mention of WotG in Decca Mitford's Hons and Rebels, but that I ( Read more... )

One thing about being off for several days last week, it gave me an opportunity to get stuck back into this. I began watching before Christmas, and then got distracted by various things (like watching the Brass DVDs with partner).

What strikes me about it is how leisurely and spacious a production it is. 13 episodes of c. 50 minutes, i.e. almost ( Read more... )