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Joyce & O’Brien; Ulysses & At Swim Two Birds

Mr Flann O'Brien

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...]

Buying Books: The Perils of Nabokov

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...]

Skip To The Next One…

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...]