This is my favourite time of year, the vague days after Christmas where all the urgency has gone out of everything, all the pressures of the festive period are lifted. There’s still chocolates and biscuits and cake, but I don’t want to eat them. Every year, by about the 27th what I really want isContinue reading “The Vague Days of 2017”
Category Archives: Eugenides
Go Wide Or Go Deep
Is it better to read a wide variety of writers, or to read a small number of writers more deeply? When I was in my early twenties I was starting to take writing very seriously and so I figured I needed to take my reading very seriously as well. I didn’t feel that I wasContinue reading “Go Wide Or Go Deep”
Re-reading old favourites; The Virgin Suicides
I don’t tend to re-read books very often. Sometimes I dip back in and read little bits, but not the whole book. Whenever I pick an old favourite off the shelf I end up feeling like I ought to stop and read something new. As though time is so precious and finite that there isn’tContinue reading “Re-reading old favourites; The Virgin Suicides”
The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
I first discovered Jeffrey Eugenides after seeing the film adaptation of his debut, The Virgin Suicides. I liked the film so much I read the book, and promptly fell more in love with the book than I was with the film. It is darkly poetic and had the tone and quality of magic realism withoutContinue reading “The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides”
Summer’s gone
Seems summer has finally ended. Last Sunday, against all expectation of how my Sunday’s usually happen, I was in a forest in Rugby with some friends playing laser-tag for a stag-do and worrying that I didn’t have any sun-cream on. This weekend we put the heating on and I had to wear a coat when I wentContinue reading “Summer’s gone”