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One brief book recommendation, once every month. Fiction and non-fiction, for the casual or voracious reader.Subscribe.
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I was once told that, if I'd like to write, or write well, it's best not to read any books on writing and just sit down for an hour every day to plow right ahead. Needless to say, I've ignored that advice and read a great number of them; books by writers like John McPhee, Brian Dillon, Vivian Gornick and Annie Dillard, covering a variety of ideas and tools—things to remember, and things to forget. Continue reading →
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Janina Duszejko lives in a remote Polish village in the Klodzko Valley where you're unlikely to find cell reception, and where only two of her neighbours, Big Foot and Oddball, stick around for the winters. She's a bit of a recluse. A former engineer of bridges, she likes to translate the poetry of William Blake with her friend Dizzy, teaches English now and again, studies astrological charts (writing down the dates and places of birth of everyone she meets, when possible), and is what many would consider an oddball, herself. Continue reading →
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John Hersey – Hiroshima (1946)
AUG 2023‘In referring to those who went through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Japanese tended to shy away from the term “survivors”, because in its focus on being alive it might suggest some slight to the sacred dead. The class of people to which Nakamura-san belonged came, therefore, to be called by a more neutral name, “hibakusha”—literally, “explosion-affected persons.”’ Continue reading →
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Nick Cave's output in the last four years has been very prolific: with Warren Ellis, his leading creative companion, he's written several albums (Carnage, Ghosteen), an EP (Seven Psalms), a few soundtracks (Blonde, Dahmer, and La Panthère des nieges), and he featured on a handful of songs by others. Continue reading →
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‘Tell me the truth, I said’.
‘What truth?’ he echoed. He was making a rapid sketch in his notebook and now he showed me what it was: a long, long train with a big cloud of black smoke swirling over it and himself leaning out of a window to wave a handkerchief.
I shot him between the eyes.