I don’t remember much about the year 1984. Apart from that bloody Eurythmics song. I blame this. It’s been updated (20th anniversary) and remains as notoriously difficult as memory serves. It’s a standard text adventure (with a few[…]
Belgium Fannydangle[…]
Douglas Coupland – Eleanor Rigby I always look forward to Douglas Coupland books. In typical style, Eleanor Rigby is buzzing with ideas; Liz is a grown-up Coupland character (someone who would have received less sympathy in earlier novels). She[…]
Kurt I couldn’t place the song at first. It was drifting across the courtyard and flaking in the breeze. I wondered where the radio was and why it was playing gringo music. I roused myself and followed the source of the noise. It wasn’t […]
A Defence of Mike Riley I feel the level of criticism is unwarranted. He got most of the decisions right. The Ljundberg / Ferdinand coming together was probably the most controversial. It was a push, but Ljunberg’s reaction was to get on with i[…]
El Diego Maradona has rushed out his story after a succession of problems with his heart. “This book isn’t about my private life,” he says, curiously for an autobiography, and context is relegated to the footnotes. The subtext is Ma[…]
Sunday Evening Television – Midsummer Murders MM is now so synonymous with Sunday evenings it’s difficult to say which came first. It’s set in a part of England bereft of the dangers of multi-culturalism, where odd people are rechri[…]
Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty My local book group discussed this last month. I was the only one who enjoyed it. I felt I had to justify my position but found it difficult to explain why I liked it. It wasn’t nostalgia (the iconic[…]
Coins on the Railway Line It was the summer of 1980, the last week of the school holidays. Ashes to Ashes was top of the charts and West Ham had recently won the FA Cup. My dad was on my back to get out of the house. So I phoned some friends and we h[…]
Bernardo Belloto Slaughterhouse Five is a book I read every couple of years. It is strange and horribly beautiful and I’m not sure I understand it all. More civilians died in Dresden than in both nuclear attacks on Japan combined. I don’t[…]