Month: February 2007

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  • MySpace

    We all know that MySpace is rubbish, but I hadn’t realised, until I went to play with it, just quite how rubbish it is. Considering its popularity, you might think that they’d make the damned thing a teeny bit user friendly. You’re stuck with default sections and to do anything neat at all, you have…

  • The Bullet Trick

    I read Louise Welsh’s first novel, The Cutting Room, and liked it, but the prospect of a new novel with a magician protagonist and set in the seedy part of Berlin amongst other places was irresistible. The action takes place in three cities, London, Glasgow and Berlin. As the novel opens, William Wilson is putting…

  • Restless

    William Boyd is always worth reading, and this novel has done especially well. It’s probably selling more than all his previous novels combined by virtue of it being on the Richard & Judy list. It was also shortlisted for the Costa Coffee Book Prize. And you know what? It’s really good. It’s basically a spy…

  • Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

    Catching up with a few recent books still. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was the Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago – you can’t miss the sticker on the cover telling you as much. The author, Paul Torday, also popped up on the Simon Mayo book segment a couple of…

  • Blue Shoes and Happiness

    I read something recently that suggested that Alexander McCall Smith is able to knock out another No.1 Ladies Detective Agency novel in a fortnight or so. That’s probably not quite the case, but he certainly is a one-man publishing phenomenon putting the likes of Terry Pratchett (in his prime) in his place. As well as…

  • Music in the Co-op

    So I popped around to my local Co-op to pick up a few essentials after work. Outside, a single unseen tinny loudspeaker was blaring out classical music. Very strange. I looked up, and thought that perhaps someone in a flat above was enjoying the music. Then I found out what was really going on. It…

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  • Banned Books

    And speaking of The Independent – it has a new promotion running on Saturdays called “Banned Books.” Each week you can buy one of “25 cutting-edge titles, censored classics and literary landmarks” for £3.49 with your Saturday Independent (at selected stores). They gave away the first in the series, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess,…

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  • Quiz TV Again

    A great piece by Janine Gibson in the Mediaguardian blog referring in particular to a Daily Mirror piece (scroll down). I wholeheartedly agree with it all.

  • Weekend Trips with The Independent

    Everyday The Independent shouts its environmental credentials, taking a sometimes very contrary view over what should be that day’s headlines. I think their shouty issue-led headlines actually wear the reader out over time and they should be used a bit more sparingly, but it’s fair enough that they bang their drum about what we’re doing…