Theo Tait on Gordon Burn

Nice, longish essay in the LRB this issue, by Theo Tait on Gordon Burn’s Born Yesterday which I have written about now and again. A more unified and organised book would have excluded many of Born Yesterday’s highlights: the brilliant description, for example, of Kate Middleton being hit simultaneously by a paparazzi ambush and a … Keep reading

The News as a Novel

Am reading Gordon Burns’ Born Yesterday at the moment. Burn is one of my favourite writers, whether he’s producing non-fiction such as his remarkable books about serial killers (Peter Sutcliffe in Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son; Fred and Rose West in Happy Like Murderers) or the recent Best and Edwards about the Manchester United players; or … Keep reading

Dead tree web 2.0 reading list

There are a number of books out there which are covering a lot of the stuff I am interested in with regard to the web and collaboration. It might be worth coming up with a reading list – how about a challenge to read them all by the end of the year?! These aren’t necessarily … Keep reading

Regeneration

Am currently reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration, all about Siegdried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and other fictional soldiers recovering at Craiglockhart War Hospital during WW1. I must admit to, shamefully, not knowing an awful lot about the ‘great’ war before reading Oxford University Press’ World War One: A Very Short Introduction. It so interested me that I … Keep reading

Advent Calendar

A poem from today’s Guardian Review by Rowan Williams: Advent Calendar He will come like last leaf’s fall.One night when the November windhas flayed the trees to bone, and earthwakes choking on the mould,the soft shroud’s folding. He will come like frost.One morning when the shrinking earthopens on mist, to find itselfarrested in the netof … Keep reading