Category Archives: Books

Reviews, comments and thoughts on books

Chimanmanda Adichie’s Single Story

“I have always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person, without engaging with all the stories of that place and that person. ” Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Books, Multiculturalism | Leave a comment

The Bookseller of Kabul

Dragging this sort of roman a clef into the court-room is a terrible precedent for free expression. Continue reading

Posted in Books, Human Rights, Middle East, Political Correctness | 2 Comments

Mieville on Teleporting

At the event on Tuesday night, I remarked that China Mieville and Cory Doctorow share an irritating trait, which is to lathe my own ideas into science fiction books, many years before I even have the thought for the first … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Science, Space Travel | 3 Comments

Doctorow/Mieville

Some photos from the event on Tuesday night Continue reading

Posted in Books, Diary | Leave a comment

Multi-Signature Letter on Azerbaijan

The letter in The Guardian is an example of a multi-signatory letter, an age old tactic for all types of political campaigner. Continue reading

Posted in Books, Europe, London | Leave a comment

Harper Lee on the Modern World

I am tired of this lazy shortcut, which equates using technology with stupidity of having an ‘empty mind’. What do Lee and the other smug detractors of the Internet think we are doing with all this technology? We are consuming ideas. We are thinking, collectively more deeper and with more eclecticism than ever before. Continue reading

Posted in Books, Internet Philosophy | 1 Comment

The Empty Chair (a.k.a. Cory Doctorow is Away)

I wrote and performed an impromtu poem at the London Book Fair. Continue reading

Posted in Books, Human Rights | Leave a comment

Fallout

My photoset on Flickr, showing the economic fallout of the volcanic erruption… Continue reading

Posted in Books, Economy, London, Visual | Leave a comment

Blog Burning

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post – ‘Write A Blog, Kill Your Career‘, about the possibility of bloggers going into politics and the trouble that their archives might cause them.  I linked to a marvellous cartoon by … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Internet Philosophy, Politics | 1 Comment

Judging a Book by its Cover

An event report I wrote for the English PEN website. I’ll admit, I judged this event by its cover. I assumed that an discussion titled ‘Judging a book by its cover’ would be about book jacket design, rich and fertile … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Elsewhere, Literature | Leave a comment