#TheirBrilliantCareers #review and my #reading in September

“Actually, most of my previous publications listed in ‘Their Brilliant Careers’ are made up! It’s all part of the joke. The only real one is ‘The Weight of a Human Heart.’” “…as much as I love Australian literature and hope my fondness…comes thru in the book, it does tend to take itself a bit seriously […]

#UtopiaforRealists #review and my #reading in May

Consider this: The word utopia means both “good place” and “no place.” What we need are alternative horizons that spark the imagination. And I do mean horizons in the plural; conflicting utopias are the lifeblood of democracy, after all. …in the revolutionary year of 1968, when young demonstrators the world over were taking to the […]

The Handmaid’s Tale #review and my #reading in April

“Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won’t do that again.” The Handmaid’s Tale p. 307 I suspected re-reading The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood prior to viewing the Tribeca film festival premiere of the new tv series was potentially risky. It is such a great book that this latest adaption – and there have been many – could […]

My #reading April 2016

Every day I work on the edit of my book. I slog away, shifting chunks of material and moving them back, eating my salad in a daze, wondering if the linking passages I’ve written are leading me up a garden path, or are sentimental, or violate some unarticulated moral and technical code I’ve signed up […]

February 2015: My Reading

There’s been a good variety of books completed this month including graphic novels, historical fiction, essays, memoirs, biographies, contemporary fiction, revolutionary pamphlets and plenty of history. Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Paine Last month I consumed oodles of Orwell and re-read Hitchens’ evaluation of the author’s importance to contemporary literature and journalism. This has led to re-discovering […]

January 2015: My Reading

It is not a New Year’s resolution but I intend to write one blog post a month about what I’ve been reading. Usually I write a roundup of books enjoyed twice a year but these posts do not tend to say much in the sense of being reviews. They are more lists with a few […]

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