Category: Books & Reviews

Literature, culture, fiction, non-fiction, writers, authors and the craft of writing.

Snow White and the Huntsman reviewed

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Music & ReviewsOne Comment

Loading

Take one part Brothers Grimm and one part Malory’s Morte d’Artur, add a dash of Tolkein, a pinch of Joan of Arc, a sprinkling of Robin Hood and a sprig of English folklore; mix it in a bowl with copious CGI, great natural settings, remarkably good stage sets, and what do you have? The 2012 film, Snow White and the Huntsman. The epic film (at least in the two-hour-eleven-minute extended version we watched last night) was an action-packed adventure that never made us feel it was dragging excessively. Seems, however, we and the critics disagree. I was impressed by the ……… click below for more ↓

Waterloo, 200 years later

Books & Reviews / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

This June we will be a short two years from the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo*. It is expected to be a large event, especially since the 100th anniversary was not celebrated because it fell in the middle of WWI. That gives us enough time to reconsider the battle and to read the histories and reports about it. Wouldn’t it be grand to stand on the field that day, 200 years later? I have been reading about Napoleon’s campaigns and the events of his reign for many decades, since the early 1970s when I first read David Chandler’s ……… click below for more ↓

Rasputin: Two Perspectives

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

Perhaps no character stands out in pre-Revolution Russia as much as that of Grigory Rasputin. He was influential, enigmatic, charismatic, secretive, held no office, yet had enormous influence on the events and people of the era. How could a barely literate peasant affect the destiny of an empire? In many ways, Rasputin was the icon of the changing times, in others he represents the end of the old era, the last gasp of the autocratic, superstitious Russia. Mythologies grew up about and around him during his life, and even more so in death. No matter how you view him, he ……… click below for more ↓

Shakespeare’s Lost Plays

Arts / Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

Shakespeare’s canon, as it is known today, is incomplete. The Bard is known to have written several plays that were not, for various reasons, included in the First Folio printed shortly after his death. Other plays, several included in the third folio, were attributed to Shakespeare after that publication, but most are known not to have been written by him, and have since been rejected (called the Shakespeare Apocrypha). Some, like Pericles, have be given grudging acceptance in the modern canon. Many modern scholars accept Pericles as a collaboration between Shakespeare and a lesser talent (George Wilkins is suggested), but ……… click below for more ↓

The Pulp Renaissance

Arts / Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

In the late 1950s, I came across a copy (1912; an original edition, I believe) of Edgar Rice Burrough’s first published novel, Tarzan, The Ape Man, on my parent’s bookshelf in the basement. A forgotten book, one my father had likely brought with him from England when he immigrated here in 1947, something from his own boyhood. It sat beside old volumes of the Boy’s Own Annual and other English books. Of course I had to open it and read it. From the very start, I was fascinated by it, by the adventure, by the sheer fantasy of it all. ……… click below for more ↓

Plato, Music and Misquotes

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotes11 Comments

Loading

I spent a pleasant morning, Saturday, browsing through the works of Plato, hunting for the source of a quotation I saw on Facebook, today.* I did several textual searches for words, phrases and quotes on sites that offer his collected works, along with other works by classical authors. Now I must admit that in my reading, I have not read everything Plato wrote. I’ve read several dialogues, and then mostly pieces from his works. Reading the entire Republic has, sadly, defeated me, but I have it available for another try when I retire. Despite my unfamiliarity with his full canon, ……… click below for more ↓

The Missing Lines

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Literary pretensions / US Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

The National Museum of Iraq – known originally as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum – once housed some of the oldest works of literature in the world. Treasures from the origins of civilization, from the cities of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria were on display*. In 2003, when the Americans invaded**, a battle was fought between US and Iraqi forces at the museum. The Iraqi troops fled, and looters came in. According to Wikipedia: According to museum officials the looters concentrated on the heart of the exhibition: “the Warka Vase, a Sumerian alabaster piece more than 5,000 years old; a bronze Uruk statue from ……… click below for more ↓

April, the cruellest month

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / History & Biography / Places & GeographyLeave a comment

Loading

April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of filing one’s taxes before month end, always a painful chore. I started thinking about April while watching the movie, 1911, about the Chinese uprising against the Qing Dynasty, in 1911 (saw it this weekend). Fascinating period of Chinese history that led to the first republic under Sun Yat Sen, but, I wondered, was it so interesting elsewhere? Yes, it seems ……… click below for more ↓

Culloden and the Family Tree, 267 Years Later

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Personal Reminiscences / Places & Geography / War & MilitaryOne Comment

Loading

It doesn’t begin with Culloden. History is seldom so neat and precise that a single event can be identified as the start or end of a thing. Rather, Culloden was a hinge, a point at which events changed direction, when the door to the past was closed and one to a very different future opened. You might say it really begins centuries earlier, in the long, bitter wars between England and Scotland that trace their roots to the Norman conquerors. But that’s too vague and longwinded. It would be better to say it the introduction to the story was written ……… click below for more ↓

Enter Christopher Marlowe – Again

Arts / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Loading

Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. The challenge to his authorship isn’t new: for the last three centuries it’s been the most popular whodunit of literature: trying to uncover the true identity of the author of the world’s greatest dramas and comedies. I can’t think of another author of note in the world who is considered not to have written the works under which his or her name is penned. Even Shakespeare’s many contemporaries are considered ……… click below for more ↓

The Consolation of Literature

Books & Reviews / Literary pretensions / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And read about literature. Sometimes literature is made more meaningful, brought into sharper focus by analysis and deconstruction. I started reading Shakespeare’s Shakespeare: How the Plays Were Made (John C Meagher, Continuum, New York, 2000) last night. He opens by saying: There are as many legitimate ways of reading Shakespeare’s plays as there are of having a conversation, making a meal, or rearing children. I suppose we assign meaning to whatever ……… click below for more ↓

The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Religion / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

“When confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed.” That’s one of the few quotable pieces I’ve found while reading through The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall. Originally published 1928, it has gone through several editions, most recently as an oversize, 750-page paperback in 2003. The full, ostentatious title includes this: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy … ……… click below for more ↓

Another Zen tale

Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Literary pretensions / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

Loading

Carrying on in the tradition of my last post, here’s another of the stories from Paul Reps’ book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Before I repeat it, consider the story of Diogenes, the Greek philosopher and founder of the school of Cynics (cynos is Greek for dog, thus the “dog” philosophers). Diogenes once complained that, “Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.” I might add municipal politicians to that list… He broke almost every rule of civic and social convention to teach his philosophy, almost like a Zen master using koans to break the bonds of rigid ……… click below for more ↓

A Zen story

Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

There are all sorts of great stories, great tales of wisdom and enlightenment, to be found in Zen Buddhism. They often have that sort of eternal depth and universal meaning to our lives, regardless of your personal beliefs. The one below came back to me, last night, while I was walking my dog and pondering why some people remain so angry over little things, why they can’t move on. It goes like this… Two Zen monks, a young and and old one, were walking along the road on the way to visit a monastery in the hills. They came to ……… click below for more ↓

10,000 words too many

Arts / Books & Reviews / Internet & Social Media / My Writing / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Loading

Been working the last two-and-a-half months on my latest book for Municipal World. A bit of a challenge, actually – trying to combine marketing, branding, advertising, public relations and communications topics into one coherent yet succinct package has been difficult. There are so many things to say, so many areas to cover, that brevity often escapes me (there are those that say it’s always that way with me…). I’ve been reading about three dozen books on the topics, and an unknown (but very high) number of websites and white papers on the same subjects. I have almost 2GB of PDF ……… click below for more ↓

Back to Top