Infertility/Infidelity: not just similar words
Plainly there is a causal connection between infertility and infidelity. I base this finding on extensive research* conclusively demonstrating that whenever an adulterous woman becomes pregnant, it is ve[…]

Essential Daredevil volume 2 by Stan Lee and Gene Colan
This is mainly worth having for Colan’s lovely art. He doesn’t do the most dynamic and powerful action scenes, but he draws beautifully, and the quiet scenes are an absolute joy &#82[…]

White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
He’s an odd writer. I like his ghost stories, none of which seem quite like any other stories I’ve ever read, as if there is an endless series of different ways of handling this old genre. But are these va[…]

The Scar – China Mieville
I’d been meaning to try Mieville for a while, due to recommendations and reviews. Weirdly, I found the book pretty different from what the critics has led me to expect. The first one inside the cover has the Tele[…]

Fundacio Miro and other Barcelona notes
One major point about this excellent museum: don’t think you can walk up there from the nearest metro station – it’s a long way up. Anyway, it restructured Miro in my mind: this has some magni[…]

Portrait Of An Artist, As An Old Man – Joseph Heller
I’m a sucker for metafiction, and this is full of it. Heller, in his last novel before his death, tells of an old writer who started with a critical and commercial smash, who is trying […]

Gates Of Eden – Ethan Coen
I didn’t know that one of my favourite filmmakers ever had written a book until I came across this. It’s a collection of short pieces, a few reading like radio scripts, and it has all the strengths of his […]

As a former maths teacher (briefly), you can imagine how impressed I am with this woman’s teaching. (Brought to my attention by Anthony Easton.)[…]

Sumo in crisis
I’d not been able to see any sumo wrestling since ITV Digital went under a couple of years back. I’ve had Sky now for five months, and there was no sign of it – I thought maybe it wasn’t on any channels I have. […]

Language and the brain
There are a bunch of conditions that affect how the brain handles language. The ones that are reasonably well understood relate to damage to specific parts of the brain or are genetic in origin, but there are others where we do[…]