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I just write all over my books. Underline bits i like and write thoughts beside it.

Some people dislike the habit but... they're my books.

I've never read him, but his introduction to Alasdair Gray's 1982, Janine is excellent as well.

'classic' that i've enjoyed the least...

Mill on the Floss.

They're making me read it :(

Awful writing. Combined with a philosophy that makes me physically shake with anger. Not a good combo.

Joyce - PAYM

'Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby...

George Bernard Shaw didn't hate shakespeare and its hard to suggest that dickens was the pinnacle of the novel considering the serialisation of his stories. Excellent writing but, in novel terms,...

I think my favourite explanation was related to Nabakov's love of solving chess problems. Pulling exquisite beauty, and taking the read with him, on a novel about raping a child was the problem that...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Ayn Rand is an awful writer in fiction and non-fiction.

She's an awful, awful philospher. How on earth could she be at the top of a list of non-fiction writing!? This is why...

Yeah. Changeling by Robin Jenkins is the only one I can remember, though.

all of Simon Schama's the power of art is available on youtube, and I would second 'Gombriche's the story of art. Is what got me into to art in the first place.

How late it was, How late is excellent. I would also thoroughly recommend that. I would also thoroughly recommend his latest novel Kieron Smith, Boy and many of his short stories. Kelman is excellent.

Seamus Heaney
Simon Armitage
Edwin Morgan

Three well-regarded contemporary poets. Indeed, one a nobel prize winner.

Persian art's being getting a lot of expo here recently, but mostly down in London so I can't actually afford to go and see any of it, haha.

An excellent, affecting novel called 'The Changeling' by Robin Jenkins. About a boy who is taken on holiday from the slums where he lives by a well-meaning teacher and confronted with the...

Righteous indignation?

It's just quite a funny anecdote. Was I wrong in thinking that he made broadcasts for the Germans (I think he thought he was making them for the Americans?). It's simply...

I like wodehouse a lot because he seems to come across exactly like wooster.

Going and broadcasting with the nazis and then, when accused of working with the nazis, just going 'buh?'.

classic.

Most of Waugh's novels aren't like Brideshead. ie they're funny. Scoop is hilarious.

That said, if you don't find woodhouse funny, you probably don't have a sense of humour :P (I kid)

I've not read that book, but going by the key words ' Books about confusion, emotional inertia, and the like' I could recommend a book called The Trick is to Keep Breathing. Very much about emotional...

I don't think it's intrinsically bad but, specifically rhapsody in blue, this jerky kind of almost swing frankly just puts me on edge. The melodic invention really wasn't inventive enough to pull it...

Blue Rhapsody has always jarred with me. It's always played better by jazz musicians. And it's always played better by Jazz musicians who shirk Gershwin's rhythms and actually swing. People go on...

Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully;...

Having an argument isn't vilification. Not to bring it up again though as apparently we're not allowed to discuss politics...




Anyway, book that changed my life...

hmm...

Gombrich's...

How can it be considered holistic when one of it's express aims, I thought, was to remove anything that couldn't be considered close-reading. That is to say, in new criticism, reference to historical...

Is Blood Meridian a great deal better than The Road? I read The Road and liked it, but not nearly as much as i expected to. And certainly not as much as The Human Stain. I've read nothing else by...

I've not read anything by DeLillo, but Roth is great. I enjoyed 'Human Stain' immensely and will definitely be reading more by him when I have time.