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1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, review-type thing
How to write about a monster like 1Q84 (official site) without giving too much away? I suppose I could start by mentioning the things that it isn’t. It isn’t, ultimately, the crushing disappointment...
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Five or six musical things I loved in 2011
It was a year of live music – Josh T Pearson holding a revival tent meeting for the Church of the Sacred and the Profane in the Barbican, Wolvserpent and Wolves In The Throne Room generating a...
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I am listening to Year of the Tiger by Fucked Up
It’s a 15 minute ‘single’ by the Canadian post-hardcore band, Fucked Up. I’m listening through headphones for the first time. I wish I had the lyric sheet handy. Two minutes in and several layers of...
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The despair of the Inter-Galactic Hitchhiker
I’ve been re-reading Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels over the last week. It’s been an odd sort of ride, pulling me deeply into my past in some ways and highlighting...
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So what have you been listening to lately, Dad Who Writes?
I thought you’d never ask. Laurel Halo’s Quarantine Horseback’s Half Blood Bong’s Mana-Yood-Sushai DIIV’s Oshin Cold Summer’s Wake Richard Skelton’s Verse of Birds Circle of Ouroboros’ The Lost...
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Treasure Island
It’s been a while. Blame it on moving house, school holidays, work, lethargy… Anyway, it’s Friday and there’s time for a few quick notes about a book I just read. Anyone who hasn’t read Treasure Island...
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Book update – Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked/Artemis Fowl/Black...
I’m reading YA/MG again after a long detour into myth and tarot related materials (all grist for the mill, mind). I haven’t actually finished the new Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked by...
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Alan Garner’s Boneland
How on earth am I supposed to respond to Boneland, Alan Garner’s completion of a trilogy begun with the Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath nearly 50 years ago? Boneland tells a the...
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Book –“Red Shift” by Alan Garner (1973)
Back when I was in secondary school, I tore through Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor. Red Shift, along with its immediate predecessor, The Owl Service, was...
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“The Rebel Worlds” by Poul Anderson (1969)
Poul Anderson’s The Rebel Worlds begins so promisingly: Make oneness. I/we: Feet belonging to Guardian of North Gate and others who can be, to Raft Farer and Woe who will no longer be, to Many...
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Romance and bromance and YA fiction
I struggle with romance. That is to say, I struggle with the idea that YA without romance is coffee without milk. For one thing, coffee without milk is actually a pretty undiluted coffee experience....
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“The Guest Cat”, by Takeshi Hiraide (2015)
My wife and I have lived with cats for twenty years now which is a shocking realisation. This book, an unexpected birthday present, is a meditation on how the relationships between ourselves and our...
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Adoption, the hole called ‘Mummy left me’, and New Skin by Torres
There are certain events in films, books and even songs that I have a problem dealing with. When I saw Artificial Intelligence and the mother drives away, leaving the robot boy, David, abandoned in the...
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I am listening to Year of the Tiger by Fucked Up
It’s a 15 minute ‘single’ by the Canadian post-hardcore band, Fucked Up. I’m listening through headphones for the first time. I wish I had the lyric sheet handy. Two minutes in and several layers of...
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