Category: Book reviews
-
Knowing is believing
People need their hope back. Here it is… The reasons why it’s so hard for ‘the left’ to re-group and push back into party politics are many but the main one is that getting back into party politics may not be what we need. The real tragedy is that many who have lost faith in…
-
Re-open, re-read, re-treasure
Once upon a time, I became a published author. – guest post by S P Moss The year was 2012 and it was all courtesy of Kay Green and her brainchild, Earlyworks Press. Or, more correctly, twin brainchildren as my first novel was published by Circaidy Gregory. [Earlyworks Press was for competition anthologies, club and…
-
It feels as if nothing works because nothing works!
Well, not for us, anyway. Further to my habit of writing very strange book reviews… I started at the beginning with Fake Law, and industriously read the introduction. It’s a very odd introduction because it’s absolutely full of malicious, misleading rubbish which appears designed to foment Farage-style general rage against the EU in particular but…
-
There is absolutely no justification for supporting Israel
We were talking about language this afternoon, about how you can be led astray by accepting the wrong words for things, or by allowing yourself to be persuaded to reject words that others find uncomfortable hearing. The event was a talk by Ghada Karmi and I assure you, listening to a Palestinian whose family were…
-
The old stories are the best
When a good author gets hold of a classic theme, like Antigone for example, and applies it to an important current topic like what happens to Muslim families when politicians are trading on hatred and fear, the result is likely to be a gripping read. That’s why although Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is a story…
-
What do you do when your country is complicit in such a crime? Here’s what…
First Gaza, now the West Bank. We’ve been out protesting for nearly a year, and the forces of the establishment are taking a toll on our activists — but here’s an idea that could change that: Any of us can, at any time get called up for jury service and right now, what you do…
-
Different century, same result – nameless corpses
When it comes up in conversation – or worse, as it does all too often, in confrontation, it’s always difficult to explain the distinction between traditional, class-based left politics and the post-modernist, identity-based kind (often called ‘progressive’). Trying to do so can seem like a pedantic intervention, and often gets those who don’t know much…
-
Is this the weirdest book review I’ve ever written?
First off, I’ll need to apologize to the friend who lent me the book. It is not as new as it was. I have wrestled with it, I have wept over it, there was even a stress-related incident with a strawberry jam sandwich. I am not normally like that with books but this was that…
-
The Meaning of Everything
Dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive (ie, presenting examples and definitions of how words are being used out in the world) not prescriptive (ie, their job isn’t to tell you what the words ought to mean, or how they ought to be used). What they definitely should not be is proscriptive (ie, they can’t tell…
-
A million birds, two books, one life
Imagine you’ve been swept up into a high-flying flock of birds – a flock as numerous as a gathering of every swirl of starlings ever seen on a winter’s night. Imagine flocks of every species spiralling into one; every colour, every aspect and temperament that birds can display flickering around you as you swoop and…
Kay Green 