Pharmakon

Pharmakon, by Dirk Wittenborn, ( ISBN 978-0747598107), is a good read. It’s a novel which tells the story of one American family, starting with a focus on the father, a psychologist, then following the story of his youngest son. The territory of the book is the treatment of mental health, and in some ways, that [...]

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Popco

I enjoy books for different reasons. Popco, by Scarlett Thomas, (ISBN 978-1847673350) is one of several novels I’ve read this summer and which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. It strikes me the novels I’ve read are all very different and I wondered if maybe I enjoyed such diversity in the same way I enjoy the company of [...]

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Muriel Rukeyser’s how to be a hero

I’ve just read Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry (ISBN 0-96381-833-3). An extraordinary book.
Here is the paragraph which hit me right between the eyes. Here’s where she hits the nail, squarely, on the head….
If our imaginative response to life were complete, if we were fully conscious of emotion, if we apprehended surely the relations that [...]

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Passions and Tempers

I’ve just read Passions and Tempers, by Noga Arikha (ISBN 978-0-06-073116-8)
I expect you’re familiar with the four terms, melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine. They might not be everyday words any more but they’re certainly still common enough currency for most people to have at least some idea what they mean. They are, of course, the [...]

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The Spirit Level. Alternative paths out of this mess we’re in

I don’t know about you but in the middle of this “world economic crisis” I’m just not hearing what seems like a decent plan. The main so-called solutions seem to be about how to get people borrowing and spending again. But weren’t borrowing and spending actually at the heart of the problem? Wasn’t it the [...]

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Supersizing the Mind. Andy Clark

Where does your mind exist? There’s a longstanding “common sense” view that it’s inside your skull. But, it’s becoming apparent, that is far from the whole story. Yes, of course a lot of what we call the mind is related to brain activity and the brain is indeed inside the skull, but many researchers are [...]

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Liv Ullman. Changing

In The Discoverer, Jan Kjaerstad mentions Liv Ullman’s “Changing”, and states that many people who read it changed their lives. Well, The Discoverer is a novel, so I wasn’t sure if such a book actually existed. A quick check on abebooks found that it did and I ordered up a copy for a few pounds. [...]

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The Jonas Wergeland trilogy

It’s about four years ago now since I stumbled across Jan Kjaerstad’s The Seducer (ISBN 978-1905147014). Kjaerstad is a Norwegian author and The Seducer was the first of his great trilogy to be translated into English. It hooked me from the very start. I loved it, wallowed it, swam in it, just became totally absorbed [...]

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The Wonder Room

I’m reading The Discoverer, by Jan Kjaerstad (ISBN 978-1905147366) just now and a few pages back he mentioned something called a “studiolo”. This was a secret room hidden deep within a palace (usually not even on the architect’s drawings, and often windowless), in which a Prince would keep a private collection. The key to the [...]

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The Night Train to Lisbon

I read a lot of non-fiction. Something to do with my being insatiably curious. I often post about the non-fiction books I read, both as reviews which you might like to read, and to share what I learned or what thoughts they provoked for me. But what about fiction? I’ve decided I don’t read nearly [...]

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