Category: Book reviews
-
How are your borderlines?
Ambling down the road outside the hotel, having a last fag before bedtime, and I see legs. There’s a bloke standing behind those overhanging bushes. Swivel on my heel, natural as can be, because my intention, obviously, was to walk precisely that far then march smartly back to the hotel. Contemplating the fact that I…
-
Still doing politics
Notice to those doing whatever it is they are doing in Westminster: politics has left the building – mind you don’t get left behind. Thank you, LabourBAME Hastings and Hastings and Rye Labour Women’s Forum for an excellent gathering and an excellent supper in Hastings last night. Thank you, speaker Marc Wadsworth for reminding us…
-
Really useful feminism
Why we should all read Julie Bindel’s new book I’ve been wondering why feminism grabbed me so much the second time I looked, but not the first. I remember feminism going on around me when I was a teenager. I had a vague idea it involved a lot of arguments about whether you should shave…
-
On re-uniting the left
All white people are racist; all men are sexist, racism and sexism are systems that can exist and oppress without the presence of a single person with racist or sexist intentions; sex is not biological but exists on a spectrum; saying you are not racist, sexist or homophobic is proof that you are; language can…
-
My Christmas Homework, 2016 (or, why we still look back in anger )
NB This was written in 2020. I am re-posting now to help this petition reach the million mark (We made it! Now, how about 1.5 million, to match the numbers on that famous march in London – or perhaps more, for all those on the other ‘don’t attack Iraq’ marches around the world.) Homework, set…
-
Books in times of lockdown
Well, here we are in lockdown again and among the trials and tribulations, our beloved bookshops are closed once more. If you’re in Hastings, please remember Bookbuster and Printed Matter still have ordering systems in place, and other shops around the town – and everywhere! – are offering their titles through online stores. Here’s a…
-
Have *you* ever heard of the Froggicorn?
Giants, unicorns, mermaids, dragons… They’re very famous, everyone knows what they are, even though (shh!) they may not quite… exactly… er… exist. But no-one has heard of the Froggicorn. Why is that, when the Ancient Teller of Stories thought the Froggicorn was The Loveliest Mythical Beast of them All? I read this every day for…
-
Beauty is still dying
When I read Sheri S Tepper’s ‘Beauty’ back in the early ‘90s, I thought she had done me an injury. I enjoyed it, but the Ending (not the ending of the book, The Ending) was just too dark. Not fair. I just read it again, here in 2020 and, when I got to the bit…
-
In the Absence of Hard Evidence
In the absence of hard evidence of a divine engineer in the sky, I’d say the patterns in your mind are who you are. This is my thought for the day because it became necessary to clean and decorate the back room, and to do that, it was necessary to move two wallfuls of books,…
Kay Green 