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To the tune of: At Swim Two Birds – Coda
Joyce, 1918
James Joyce’s Ulysses is an acclaimed masterpiece, one of the key works of the 20th century. Joyce himself was a peripatetic piratical genius, wandering the world dispensing wisdom and blarney in his white suit and eye-patch. Or so my English teacher told me. I think he was both dull and a bit of a git, but I guess when your face is against the window, there’s no room for reflection.
Why did that critical 1920s generation say Ulysses was so good? Well, it was the longest of [more...]
To the tune of: April March – Poor Lola
You are browsing the second-hand books in a small town’s famous covered market, waiting for the other reader to finish whatever the other reader is finishing, when you happen across a book. It is amongst the Books You Normally Read and The Books You Like The Cover Of, a most fortuitous placing, and it is a Book You Always Wanted To Read as well as a Book You’re Ashamed You’ve Never Read, and possibly a Book You Pretend You’ve Read.
It is Lolita, a book you are so familar [more...]
http://londonist.com/2008/12/prizewinning_medical_trivia.php
Congratulations to Dan Griliopoulos, winner of our Medical London competition. We asked for a piece of trivia connected with medicine in London, and Dan provided this:
“The premier London medical story has to be that of Samuel Pepys’ stone. Not the actual operation – which was long and painful (without anaesthetic) or highly dangerous (without modern medical techniques they had to cut up through the perineum to actually reach the kidneys where the stones were forming) – but his later love for the tennis ball-sized lump of crystalline urine. He’d carry it in his pocket everywhere, show it [more...]
Quint from the Disney Presentation! Disney’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s KING OF THE ELVES! — Ain’t It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.
WALT DISNEY’S KING OF THE ELVES, based on the Philip K. Dick story about a gas station attendant who receives a knock on the door one rainy night. It’s a group of elves. Small, maybe a foot tall each. They are all green, with leaves and foliage growing off of them.They beg him for shelter from the storm. Despite his better judgment he allows them to stay and as [more...]
Seeing that someone came up with a list of the most significant Sci-Fi and Fantasy books of the last Fifty Years, I thought I’d have a read over it and see which ones I’d absorbed… it turns out to be about 90% of them, as the following list shows – ones are in bold that I’ve read. I’ve also seen most of the Sci-Fi movies that Wired put in their top twenty. Perhaps I should cut down on the escapism… How’s everyone else doing?
Books
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le GuinNeuromancer, William GibsonChildhood’s End, Arthur C. [more...]
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