An badly-named group called the Dove World Outreach Centre and its leader, one Reverend Terry Jones, have gained notoriety of late for promoting ‘International Burn a Quran Day’. A YouTube user I really like, Anekantavad, has an elegant riposte: Don’t Burn Any Books Day. He holds up a series of books from his library – [...]

The polemic of Obamacare and the nature of the NHS continues. There is a really important contribution to be made by Dr A. J. Cronin, a doctor of some note. Dr Cronin died in 1981, and the contribution is not scientific, but moral. It is not a paper, but a novel, called The Citadel. I [...]

The thesis of Garreau’s 1981 book, The nine nations of North America, is deceptively simple. Not only, he argues, are the borders between the states of the USA and between that country and Mexico & Canada are artificial constructions – they clearly are – but that they are irrelevant. There are commonly recognised regions with [...]

I’ve recently subscribed to a great sci-fi podcast – Escape Pod. There are lots of things I like about it – it’s released under a Creative Commons license, it still manages to pay its authors – but mostly the fiction is really good. The RSS feed is here and there’s an archive at escapearchive.org. Some [...]

I’m entering NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple – from 0001 on November 1 to 2359 on November 30, write a fifty thousand word novel. The emphasis is on quantity over quality. Although it started out as national in the USA, it is now very much international. From the What [...]

I went to the Wellcome Collection’s exhibition of London skeletons, mostly found during rebuilding and renovation works, on Euston Road. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a rather sobering experience. Nearly two thousand years of life and death in the capital are displayed, from the probably overweight, bon-vivant William Wood (84) to an unborn child, its bones still [...]

According to Dave Osler, it’s a Miliband-Johnson ticket. According to The Times, via Leon at Pickled Politics, it’s a Miliband-Harman ticket. According to the Evening Boris, it’s Jack Straw and there are ten junior ministers ready to resign. I’m going to use someone else’s description of rumour as it seems rather fitting.

If you’re quick and you’ll review them. Visit BlogAPenguinClassic.co.uk. I’m going to be reviewing an anthology of Imagist Poetry. xD.

Norm Geras (not to mention Simon Thomas and a Random Jotter) are trying to do an A to Z of books they’ve read. Here’s my effort: a – Jorge Amado – Gabriela, Cravo e Canela b – Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 c – Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness d – JP Donleavy – [...]

The effect of the picaresque novel – seeing things through the eyes of a traveling, rough diamond – would influence, outside of Spain, Voltaire (Candide), Kipling (Kim) and umpteen Westerns. It also led, I think in no small part, to the creation of the most recent album I have bought, Picaresque by the Decembrists. I [...]