Coming Soon!!! by John Barth: What’s it about?
I’m not sure how useful the above question is in general, but it’s something we all ask and I guess almost all reviews try to address it too. I was thinking of this while reading John B[…]

I was watching the Eurosport coverage of Roma-Juventus tonight. It was a magnificent game, with Emerson and Cassano really terrific for Roma, who won 4-9. You’ll be less than astonished that when things went wrong, Montero got himself sent off.[…]

England, Their England
Reading through the latest Marvel Essential volume, collecting loads of Tomb Of Dracula, I came across something that reminded me of a special small pleasure of mine in American comics. On the splash page of issue 7, when Marv […]

I keep watching Charmed, as I’m easy meat for anything like that, as I was for I Dream Of Jeannie and Bewitched and Buffy and almost anything else with magic on TV (do they have to star women? I’m not sure). But tonight’s episode on[…]

Deception by Philip Roth
There’s something impressive yet still insubstantial in Roth’s work that is at its peak in this very slight book. I’ve read just about everything he wrote, and enjoyed them, but I’ve never been quite c[…]

Gonza The Spearman
There’s some first-rate discussion of two approaches to acting on this ILE thread (before it zeroed in on Brecht), but there is another approach to the art that isn’t the default modern western style, the psychological […]

Borderliners by Peter Hoeg
I hope any Hoeg fans of my acquaintance who are writing books about school rebellions have read this, as that’s what it’s about. Specifically, three odd kids in an experimental school in 1969, trying to understa[…]

The Voice Inside – Christina Aguilera
I’ve never been a Christina Aguilera fan at all, not her records or her image or anything. But this is really terrific. Obviously I knew she had a strong voice, but I didn’t think she had the wi[…]

R.I.P. Tony Thompson
I don’t suppose too many of us are able to say an awful lot about what makes one drummer better than another – I’m certainly not. Still, I wanted to mark that probably my second favourite drummer ever (behind th[…]

Chinese jade
There are about ten 20th Century prints in a corridor near the Korean room; and in the lobby of the rear entrance a case holds about as many very old pieces of pottery; and so much for Japan at the British Museum. Prehistory and the last[…]