Posted in books, blogging on Apr 9th, 2010 18 Comments »
A couple of weeks back I got an email from a publisher, asking whether I was thinking of writing a book, and if so would I keep them in mind. So I wrote back saying yeah, I’ve got a couple of ideas, and I sent them on a proposal. I gave them a brief synopsis […]
Posted in Economy, books on Mar 8th, 2010 8 Comments »
The title of New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work is slightly misleading: the book’s focus is not so much the transformation of work in recent years, but rather the distance between the discussion of work by academics, journalists, and politicians, and the material reality of work in the 21st century.
The nature of work is changing, […]
Posted in books on Oct 29th, 2009 10 Comments »
Unlike Jim, of this parish, I think Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal is a great little book:
“For thirty-five years now I’ve been in wastepaper, and it’s my love story” says Hanta in the opening line of the book. He goes on to describe his methods for work, and for using his job […]
Posted in books on Feb 18th, 2009 17 Comments »
Well, I’ve been much too busy trying to remain employed in these recessionary times to bother with anything as non-productive as writing for a blog. Actually, that is not completely true. While work does tend to stem the tide of beautiful blog posts streaming from consciousness, I can’t say that it is the only reason […]
Posted in satire, books on Sep 19th, 2008 3 Comments »
I’m afraid I’m about to again demonstrate my adhesion to the Western Death Cult that comes down to me from my maternal side. During the summer my wife* ordered a French translation of a collection of short stories by an American writer by the name of David Foster Wallace. The title, ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous […]
Posted in books on Apr 17th, 2008 4 Comments »
Guess who got a new digital camera?
The photo is of my father-in-law’s library, which is now situation in the recently converted attic. It’s his first opportunity to store his significant collection of books in one room and it’s a fine collection. Although a lot of it is not to my, perhaps narrow taste there […]
Posted in History, books on Feb 12th, 2008 1 Comment »
Thomas Jones unpicks James Wood’s How Fiction Works and finds that a critic who declares himself an enemy of literary theory can also find himself out of the loop when it comes to history too.
He has a strong sense of literary history - divided into two periods, pre- and post-Flaubert - but his sense […]
Posted in irish culture, books, Ireland on Oct 17th, 2007 4 Comments »
While we should be delighted by the news last night that Anne Enright has won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for The Gathering we should not automatically use it as a jingoistic expression of national pride. One can remember those absurd stories of parents who previously had no interested in Cricket rushing out to […]
Posted in cinema, books on Oct 12th, 2007 No Comments »
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog is perhaps not as well known as his masterpiece Master and Margarita. Both feature animals who are partly human, or at least are animals who have characteristics that one considers to be human.
In The Master and Margarita, the companion of the visiting Professor (who may or may not […]
Posted in dublin, books on Jul 27th, 2007 7 Comments »
Inspired by this thread I went out to Blackrock and was just in time before Carraig Books closed for lunch. I got two excellent second hand books: one, a Four Courts hardback, Reading Irish Histories, Texts, Contexts and Memory in Modern Ireland, which feeds directly into Conor’s original Reveries post.
The books editor […]
