Finally got around to seeing (just about) Anish Kapoor's outdoor sculptures, Turning the World Upside Down, in Kensington Gardens late afternoon on Wednesday, only a few days before the show ends. It was overcast and already heading towards dusk, and then thanks to my excellent map reading skills we wandered quite a way along the …
Continue reading a smattering of culture, a modicum of nature
Can you guess what I've just finished reading? Have you heard of the novel The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell? If not, can you conceive of a novel composed entirely of questions? Have you already formed your own question, along the lines of: is it really a novel? Who is the interrogator, posing these surprising, …
Now, I'm not an academic, nor an intellectual, but I do enjoy the occasional stimulating if brain-fogging encounter with that side of life. So, as soon as I saw last night's lecture at the British Museum advertised (part of the London Review of Books' Winter Lectures series), I knew I had to go: Cervantes, Balzac …
I've just finished Girl meets boy by Ali Smith, published by Canongate as part of The Myths series. Smith's book is a retelling of the myth of Iphis in Ovid's Metamorphoses - and so much more besides. Set in Inverness in 2007, the novel deals with different kinds of transformations: falling in love; discovering your …
Last Thursday evening, along with a few other hardy souls, we braved the bitter weather to listen to a reading of Poems from Guantanamo at the Calder Bookshop, near Waterloo. The book consists of twenty-two poems, written by detainees in Guanatanmo Bay, most of whom are still held there, uncharged yet with little prospect of …
about let me tell you - a novel by Paul Griffiths, published by Reality Street Editions, which I came across at last year's Small Publishers' Fair, and finished reading at two minutes past midnight this morning. The premise: Ophelia speaking for herself, breaking out of the role assigned to her in Hamlet, but with only …
Ventured up to the British Library yesterday, to see the latest of their wonderful (and, amazingly, free) exhibitions, Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices. The exhibition explores the development and spread of the English language, in all its rich variety, covering aspects such as slang and dialect, and how the language has absorbed influences from …
Working my way through the latest issue of the London Review of Books (I must finish it before the next fortnightly issue arrives, otherwise low-level panic sets in), which is chock full of far too stimulating reviews and articles. When will I find the time to read an actual book? This issue (cover date 23 …
To the London Review Bookshop on Tuesday evening to hear Lydia Davis read and discuss her work with Kasia Boddy. My interest was piqued by a recent enthusiastic review in the LRB of Davis's Collected Stories. The collection runs to over 700 pages, yet I'd not come across her work before. Many of the stories …
I finished reading Herta Müller's The Land of Green Plums last weekend. There's a disturbing childlike quality to the writing, which reminded me a little of Unica Zürn's Dark Spring - the sense of pervasive threat, a thread of brutal violence beneath the sometimes fairytale atmosphere. I did find the novel difficult to get into …
Hilaire 